For more than a century, parts of California have been using groundwater faster than the resource can be replenished. As a result, aquifers are dwindling—a mounting challenge for irrigators, communities, and ecosystems.
The negative impacts of over-extraction include subsidence, shallower wells running dry, and water-quality deterioration. If overextraction remains unaddressed, groundwater will become more expensive and less reliable. This could have rippling economic and social consequences.
Strawberries, by Ellen Bruno.
California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014 (ten years ago), a law that aims to protect and restore our aquifers. Going forward, traditional management tools may not be sufficient. To comply with SGMA’s mandates, new and creative management strategies are needed.
Financial incentives can help change practices that contribute to groundwater overuse. Innovative programs already operate successfully in California’s Pajaro Valley, a prime farming region. Our research shows that these incentives have effectively influenced behavior and are less costly than other management options.
The Pajaro Valley is an agricultural region between the Coastal Range and the Pacific Ocean, south of Santa Cruz and north of Monterey. It is well-known for growing crops like strawberries, apples, and artichokes—crops that, in addition to being lucrative, are also water-intensive. Agriculture accounts for 90% of the Pajaro Valley’s freshwater demand and contributes to the basin’s groundwater deficit of 12,000 acre-feet/year.
Pajaro Valley is similar to many of the state’s agricultural regions; current and projected water demand outpaces what existing resources can supply.
Butter Lettuce, by Ellen Bruno.
But this region is taking a different approach to managing groundwater. In other parts of the state, individual pumpers generally don’t pay more for their water than the energy costs to operate groundwater pumps. Unpriced groundwater can lead to more pumping. The Pajaro Valley, however, charges groundwater users extraction fees. These fees incentivize irrigators to flexibly steward groundwater resources.
Groundwater fees can be leveraged in two ways to improve sustainability: they can be increased to disincentivize pumping, which reduces overall groundwater use, or pumping fees can be offset using a rebate for recharge, which increases overall groundwater supplies.
The Pajaro Valley began levying pumping fees in 1994 to generate revenue that helped fund basin management activities. For many years, the local water agency charged all pumpers the same price per acre foot for extracting groundwater. But in 2010, the agency started charging a different price for those inside a special coastal zone that receives recycled water.
This change provided an opportunity to understand how farmers respond to price increases. A comparison of groundwater use between those inside and outside the special zone, relative to their use before the price split, shows how an increase in water fees decreased groundwater use. Our study found that fees were effective at reducing water use, especially when farmers were given enough time to adjust.
The local agency has continued to innovate with new incentive programs. One such program—called Recharge Net Metering, or ReNeM—provides rebates on pumping fees to landowners who improve infiltration on their property. Similar to solar net metering for electricity, ReNeM subsidizes groundwater recharge projects on private property. ReNeM’s subsidy is performance based, meaning the more water a project infiltrates, the bigger the rebate.
Our study results indicate that the ReNeM program is cost-effective. At roughly $570 per acre-foot of water, ReNeM increases water supplies at lower cost than other viable management actions. This calculation included the annualized capital costs of the design and construction of recharge projects, operation and maintenance and opportunity costs of land used for recharge instead of farming.
Financial incentives are not a perfect solution. They won’t work everywhere, but the success in the Pajaro Valley shows promise for other groundwater-dependent agricultural regions. Our research shows that financial tools can help achieve groundwater sustainability goals in a cost-effective way.
Under California’s state groundwater law, local groundwater sustainability agencies are legally required to bring basins into balance by 2040. If these agencies want to succeed, they will need to innovate. The Pajaro Valley’s story offers hope. Learning from the region will be essential as California and the broader Western U.S. endeavor to more sustainably manage water resources in the years to come.
Further readings
Bruno, Ellen M., Katrina Jessoe, and W. Michael Hanemann. “The Dynamic Impacts of Pricing Groundwater.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, forthcoming. Draft available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mx8q1td
Bruce, M., Sherman, L., Bruno, E., Fisher, A. T., & Kiparsky, M. (2023). “Recharge net metering (ReNeM) is a novel, cost-effective management strategy to incentivize groundwater recharge.” Nature Water, 1(10), 855-863. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-023-00141-1
Ellen Bruno is an assistant professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. Molly Bruce is a research fellow at the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Katrina Jessoe is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis.
*This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2019.
If you inspect small streams in northern California, including those that seem too small or warm for any fish, you will often see minnows swimming in the clear water. Chances are you are seeing a very distinctive native Californian, usually called California roach. This fish is a complex of species that occurs as far north as Oregon tributaries to Goose Lake and is widespread in tributaries to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, as well as in rivers along the coast from the Eel River to Monterey.
“California Roach” is the name originally given to some minnows collected in 1854 from the San Joaquin River. When the great Stanford ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann put these fish into their grand monograph Fishes of North and Middle America, they decided it looked like the roach (Rutilus rutilus), a common minnow in England and Europe. They then gave it the scientific name Rutilus symmetricus. While the relationship to European roach was dismissed by John O. Snyder in 1913, the unfortunate common name of “roach” stuck. Snyder placed California Roach in its own genus, Hesperoleucus, and divided it into six species, based on body shape and counts of fin rays and scales (see Table). His species were also based on the isolation of their home waters from other watersheds, which would prevent interbreeding.
Because roaches are small inconspicuous fishes, little formal attention was paid to their taxonomy (or status). By the 1950s, there seemed to be a general consensus that Snyder’s species were at best subspecies and the California roach was back to one species. This was reflected in the classification presented in my 2002 book, Inland Fishes of California, although the species was divided into eight subspecies. Then, Andres Aquilar and Joe Jones (2009) looked at populations that were part of this ‘species complex’ using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. Their analysis indicated that two of Snyder’s species, northern roach and Gualala roach, were strongly supported as ‘good’ species. The other six subspecies I listed in 2002 were at least supported as distinct genetic units by their analysis.
To clarify the relationships among the species more firmly, new techniques in genomics were brought to play. This effort was led by Jason Baumsteiger, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Watershed Sciences and in the genomics laboratory of Mike Miller. He performed restriction-site associated DNA (RAD) sequencing on roach samples collected throughout California to discover and genotype thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) (see Baumsteiger et al. 2017). This detailed examination of the genomes of roaches from throughout their range allowed determination of how much each population had diverged from other populations. Among other things, it allowed for ‘rules’ to determine which populations were species, subspecies, or distinct population segments.
Distinct population segment (DPS) designations are based on the use of DPS designations under the national Endangered Species Act; they are isolated populations that are distinctive, but not quite different enough so to be called species or subspecies. DPS designations are widely used for determining whether or not salmon and steelhead populations are eligible for protection under the ESA.
The application of genomics to the taxonomic relationships of roach populations (Baumsteiger and Moyle 2019) resulted in our recognition of five species, four subspecies, and 5 distinct population segments (Table 1). The five species each have distinctive, interesting features.
The California roach is the most widespread species, historically found in streams throughout the Central Valley, with many opportunities for adaptation to local conditions, such as those found in the Kaweah River (hence the Kaweah roach DPS). It appears to be losing these locally-adapted populations rapidly, however, as they become increasingly isolated by dams and damage to streams, and by invasions of their small stream refuges by green sunfish and other non-native predators.
The Clear Lake roach is a bit of mystery because it a perfect hybrid between coastal roach and California roach. This fits the geologic history of the region, which has been alternately connected to the Russian River and to the Sacramento River. Presumably representatives from both watersheds made it into the Clear Lake basin at times and hybridized. The hybrid was apparently superior to either parent species in its ability to persist in streams tributary to Clear Lake. Today, the Clear Lake roach is more isolated than ever, because the lake is full of non-native predatory fishes.
Hybridization also has led to the development of new species in the northern roach. This roach inhabits small streams and springs of the upper Pit River basin and looks like other roach species. So we were surprised when the genomics study showed that about 80% of the genome was like that of the hitch, a related species in a different genus (Lavinia exilicauda). This seems to have been from an ancient hybridization, perhaps when Sacramento Valley fishes invaded the Pit River region thousands of years ago. Curiously, we also found that the roach-like fish abundant in Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, on the upper Tuolumne River, also are hitch-roach hybrids even though they were introduced into the reservoir by persons unknown.
The southerncoastal roach is also known to hybridize with hitch, where the two species occur together naturally, but these hybrids seem unimportant to the populations of both species. The presence of subspecies and DPSs in the coastal roach distribution reflects the isolation of coastal watersheds from one another with enough connections in the past to keep populations from differentiating enough to be labeled species. This also makes the Gualala roach a bit of an anomaly, given that watersheds on both sides of the Gualala River contain coastal roach. The northern coastal roach also shows how rapidly a species can spread when introduced into new watershed, in this case the Eel River. These roach, probably introduced in the 1960s, now occupy most of the accessible habitat in the Eel, one of California’s largest watersheds; the genomic study indicates that they came from fish in the Russian River roach DPS, just to the south, so were pre-adapted for conditions in the Eel River.
This study of small fishes demonstrates again the high endemism in fishes that are adapted to the special, often harsh, conditions in California streams. This surprising diversity is another example of what makes California special and needing of a well-supported, state-wide conservation strategy. The roach species complex is also good example of hidden biodiversity revealed by new genetic techniques. Modern genomics can support conventional taxonomic methods to designate species, subspecies, and DPSs and should improve our ability to conserve California’s richness of fishes.
Northern roach. Photo by Stewart Reid
Common name
Scientific name
Snyder 1913
Moyle 2002
Notes
California Roach
H. symmetricus
H. symmetricus
H. symmetricus
Name applied to all roach by Moyle 2002 and others
Red Hills Roach
H. s. serpentinus
–
H. s. subsp.
Serpentine endemic; Tuolumne County
Central California Roach
H. s. symmetricus
H. symmetricus
H. s. symmetricus
Tributaries to Central Valley
Kaweah Roach
H. s. symmetricus
–
H. s. symmetricus
DPS, Kaweah River
Clear Lake Roach
H. symmetricus x venustus
–
H. s. subsp.
Hybrid that behaves like a full species; tribs. to Clear Lake
Coastal Roach
H. venustus
–
–
Originally multiple species/subspecies
Northern Coastal Roach
H. venustus navarroensis
–
–
Introduced into Eel River.
Russian River Roach
H. venustus navarroensis
–
Lumped with Clear Lake Roach
DPS, introduced into Eel River
Navarro Roach
H. venustus navarroensis
H. navarroensis
H. s. navarroensis
DPS, Navarro R.
Southern Coastal Roach
H. venustus subditus
–
–
Tomales Roach
H. venustus subditus
–
H. s. subsp.
DPS, Tomales Bay streams
Monterey Roach
H. venustus subditus
H. subditus
H. s. subditus
DPS, Salinas-Pajaro watersheds
Northern Roach
H. mitrulus
H. mitrulus
H. s. mitrulus
Pit River; originated as hybrid with Hitch.
Gualala Roach
H. parvipinnis
H. parvipinnis
H. s. parvipinnis
Gualala River
Further readings
Baumsteiger, J. and P. B. Moyle. 2019. A reappraisal of the California Roach/Hitch (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae, Hesperoleucus/Lavinia) species complex. Zootaxa 4543 (2): 2221-240. https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4543.2.3 (available as open-access download)
Baumsteiger, J., P. B. Moyle, A. Aguilar, S. M. O’Rourke, and M. R. Miller. 2017. Genomics clarifies taxonomic boundaries in a difficult species complex. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0189417. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189417 (available as open access download)
Moyle, P.B. 2002. Inland Fishes of California. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Peter B. Moyle is a UC Davis Professor Emeritus of fish biology and an associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Classic California roach habitat. Dye Creek, Tehama County, July 2014
California WaterBlog is a long-running outreach project from the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, a research center dedicated to interdisciplinary study of water challenges, particularly in California. We focus on environmentally and economically sustainable solutions for managing rivers, lakes, groundwater, and estuaries. This week, for UC Davis Give Day (April 19-20) we’re sharing a little about the Center and the work we do. I’m Karrigan Bork, the Center’s Interim Director, helping out while Director Andrew Rypel is on sabbatical, and I’ll be your guide for this brief tour through the “Shed”. If you would like to donate to help the Center continue important work, I’ve shared our giving link below.
Students sampling the Tuolumne River as part of an Ecogeomorphology trip.
The Center for Watershed Sciences has always been about moving beyond single-issue and single-species approaches to water management. Geologist Jeffrey Mount and fish biologist Peter Moyle founded the Center in 1998, and it really got going with the addition of agricultural economist Richard Howitt, civil and environmental engineer Jay Lund, and hydrologist Thomas Harter. We remain a place where biologists, geologists, hydrologists, engineers, economists, legal scholars and others work together to help understand and solve California’s complex water problems.
Today, the Center is home to a team of Professional Researchers who pursue projects to fund their own labs at the Shed, employing teams of students, post docs, and specialists to conduct a wide array impactful research. We also offer physical, intellectual, and institutional space for faculty in various departments across campus who are pursuing interdisciplinary work within UC Davis, across the UC system, and with other research organizations around the world. The Center’s work is designed to be problem-focused and immediately relevant, pointing to better ways to manage water, species, and habitat in California and beyond. Our research is nonpartisan and focused on good science, not easy answers.
CWS specialists pull an otter trawl. PC Mette Lampcov / The GuardianPicking through aquatic vegetation pulled up in an otter trawl. PC Mette Lampcov / The Guardian
The Center is a productive place; in 2022-2023, Center-affiliated research produced almost 60 publications, mostly in peer reviewed journals, but also in books and law reviews. We’ve pioneered groundbreaking work on salmonid floodplain use, thiamine deficiency as a major cause of Central Valley salmon mortality, minimum flow protections, process-based meadow restoration techniques, and tracking salmon habitat use through isotopes in their otoliths and eyeballs. We also conduct a monthly sampling program for fish and invertebrates that has been going on for more than three decades! It’s really incredible research that informs management decisions.
I’d like to highlight just a few areas of ongoing work at the Center:
Rafting down the Tuolumne River for an Ecogeomorphology class experiential learning expedition.
The Center is very active in education and outreach, through UC Davis classes like Ecogeomorphology and engagement with high school, junior high, and elementary schools like salmon in the classroom as well as our work to bring environmental education into underserved schools. Our DEI committee works to help us live our philosophy of “providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people.”
We receive funding from a diverse portfolio of sources, including foundations, public agencies, and conservation groups. Most work is funded by grants for particular projects, which helps the Center to do really interesting and significant work, but which generally doesn’t fund some basic and more innovative and pioneering needs. It can also be difficult to fund research and engagement travel for graduate students, vital for developing engaged scientists. Funding educational opportunities like our famous Ecogeomorphology class is always a challenge, especially for students of limited financial means.
A graduate student sorts through zooplankton samples. PC Caroline Newell.
Water and environmental innovation in California requires gifts from individuals and foundations, beyond more staid and traditional agency-funded research. Some of our biggest historic contributions to California water and ecosystem management have come from such funding, seeding new ideas and extending applications from other work. If you’re excited about the Center’s work, getting students and academics engaged in California’s water and environmental problems, and if you enjoy this blog, we hope you’ll donate in support of our mission. The link below allows donations directly to the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Fig. 1. Boardwalk leading to Julie Partansky Pond, Davis, CA. March 2024.
Each morning is similar, but different. As we approach the pond on the wooden catwalk, you can hear the birds calling, eventually you start to smell the freshness of the ecosystem, the glitters and splashing ahead gives some indication of bird activity on the water. Sometimes an alligator lizard scoots past along the floorwork – occasionally even two. Steam rises from my coffee cup, to varying degrees, depending on how quickly we got out the door. And then there are my three kids, also ever changing. Each day, one to three are in-tow, usually chatting it up about geology, Egypt, space, or the day’s most pressing sports news.
And so it goes on most mornings, ideally when the mist is still fresh or the winter fog lingering, the Rypel family ventures to the “the duck pond” aka Julie Partansky Pond in north Davis. The routine is partly about draining excess energy from the young kids while enjoying time with them. Yet I’ve also come to deeply value the chance to just be in nature every day, even if it’s fleetingly brief. Accomplishing that can be difficult with young kids, perhaps even more so inside the heavily developed northern California metroplex. On most days though, the fastest and most efficient escape, is to the pond.
The wildlife is better than one might think (Fig. 2). Because the pond goes bone dry in the summer, the fish are not usually the star of the show, although there are some seasonal aquatic biota (turtles, dragonflies, Sierra chorus frogs, even zooplankton). It is difficult for this fish professor to admit, but I’ve come to take great comfort in getting to know and learn the birds here. The ducks and Canadian geese are the regulars, but there have been some special visitors from time to time. A swamp sparrow last winter caused much ruckus among the birders. We watched that little bird for a solid week – its tiny legs hopping amongst the sticks and snags on the water’s edge. I’ve seen hooded mergansers, likely transients from the nearby Sacramento River. There are almost always woodpeckers and scrub jays present. At nighttime, there are owls. Last year, I encountered a coyote (young male of course) several times over the course of a month. The morning of writing this, I smelt and finally spotted a skunk lumbering through the shrubbery.
Fig. 2. Sampler of wildlife and views from Partansky Pond, Davis, CA.
The somewhat abundant wildlife here is yet another example of the power of water and wetlands to activate nature in a semi-arid region like California. During the dry season, when there is little water, there are also far fewer birds or wildlife. When it floods in the fall, the whole ecosystem comes alive. Seeing this is a daily reminder that we are on the right track when thinking about flooding wetlands and rice fields for birds and fish, and hopefully also snakes, turtles, bats, beavers, and bugs. It is just one small pond in the middle of a suburban community, but I can’t help think what many more of these ponds might do for our struggling wildlife communities. And of course, the reverse is also true – wetland losses continue to threaten biodiversity at all scales.
It is also incredible how rapidly the pond can (to use a Calvin and Hobbs term) transmogrify me back to my childhood, and to my Dad. Dad was a lifelong duck hunter and a huge supporter of Ducks Unlimited. Though he never lived in California, he was a fierce defender of wetlands, and understood the importance of conserving these habitats. And while he has been gone for 20 years now, each morning, when I see ducks, invariably I think of him. I can almost immediately smell the wax that he used on the back porch at “the cabin” to clean ducks in the fall. And I can feel the tippyness of the skift as we sat, father and son, motionless in a bed of semi-frozen cattails at dawn in October. It’s amazing how nature and water can so quickly re-animate these old and lucid memories.
Every day is similar, but different in nature. Something about experiencing that daily constitution must be good for the human condition. Thus, it is with astonishment that we so openly cede our rights to recover and be with nature, often to economic forces that benefit just the few. Even still, it is observable how resilient nature can be in its ability to bounce back once given a chance. The pond seems to teach this lesson every morning. It also makes me consider daily those who don’t have access to any nature – people whose lives are dominated by concrete, war, or are without time to slow down and think. Everyone should have public access to natural places. On the best mornings, I can see how novel ecosystems like these could propagate, and create interesting new landscapes where human structures blend into natural ones that are well-managed. I think of the great possibilities of new habitat for fish and wildlife within our idiosyncratic human cities. On other mornings, I just hope that the dew will last a little while longer, and that the kids refrain from screaming long enough to absorb a little more.
Salmon face many stressors that significantly reduce their survival. Persistent challenges include habitat degradation, predation, pollution, and climate change that threaten already at-risk populations. Conservation efforts in California engage with the complexity of these stressors, yet in recent years, a new threat has emerged to salmon restoration in the Central Valley. The absence of a seemingly inconspicuous nutrient, vitamin B1 or thiamine, has been impeding restoration. The gravity of this situation becomes apparent when considering the analogous struggles of salmon populations in the Baltic Sea and Great Lakes regions, emphasizing the global ramifications of this emerging threat (Balk et al., 2016).
Thiamine deficiency complex (TDC) was first documented in California salmon in 2020 when hatcheries in the Central Valley began noticing apparent lethargy, corkscrew swimming, and high mortality rates in their juvenile Chinook (Mantua et al., 2021). As researchers from UC Davis, NOAA, CDFW, and beyond sought to understand the causes and impacts of this vitamin deficiency, we saw an opportunity to engage youth in authentic scientific research.
In fall 2021 the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences began collaborating with the Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) to launch our Spinning Salmon in the Classroom program, where high school students in Glenn, Tehama, and Colusa counties joined a 50+ member research team working to understand how TDC affects California’s Central Valley salmon. This program has since expanded to five counties, engaging over 1,800 high school students and their teachers. This collaboration has led to many educational and scientific opportunities, allowing students to participate in collecting high quality data for scientific studies, teachers to receive professional development support, and promoting direct interaction between students and university and agency scientists.
Building the Program
As researchers across the United States investigated the emergence of thiamine deficiency in California, a team from the Center for Watershed Sciences and Center for Community and Citizen Science at UC Davis, NOAA Fisheries, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, developed an observation protocol and lesson sequence for the CDFW Classroom Aquarium Education Program. This program was developed to help gather data on thiamine deficiency during early salmon life stages. Students’ data is used to quantify thiamine dependent early life stage mortality to calculate the concentration responsible for acute mortality in California Chinook salmon. Data submitted by students in this program is vital to understanding the effective concentration (EC50) of thiamine needed for fall run juvenile Chinook in the Central Valley, information not previously known (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. (A) Distribution of thiamine concentrations in families of eggs raised by classrooms in 2021 and 2022, with the percent survival of fry from each family group color coded. (B) A conceptual dose-response relating concentration of thiamine to survival of fry. Dashed line shows EC-50 value, i.e., concentration where survival is at 50%. Data from subplot A will be used with other data to fit a dose-response curve for thiamine-dependent fry survival in the Central Valley.
Each participating classroom receives an aquarium and 30-35 fall run Chinook salmon eggs from Feather River hatchery untreated with thiamine supplementation. The classrooms then submit regular observations on mortality and behavior related to the symptomatic expression of TDC as the fish develop (Fig. 2). This mirrors thiamine-dependent mortality experiments at UC Davis, attempting to understand this same concept for our other salmon runs in the Central Valley. Throughout the program, students learn about the scientific method, data collection, and experimental design as they engage with the scientific practices aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In addition to lessons in the program, students receive hands-on learning experiences through field trips, including the final release of the fish into the local watershed at the end of the program (Fig. 3).
Figure 2. Tanks are set up in classrooms for students to record weekly observations about mortality, behavior, and water quality.
Figure 3. Students make observations about the salmon and record environmental conditions before releasing them back into the river.
Engagement with Researchers
After the pilot year of this program, we realized the great benefits of connecting students to scientific researchers on our team. Introducing students to a scientific community helped them realize the importance of interdisciplinary science and allowed them to ask questions and receive real time answers. Their questions helped show that science is not done alone when answers often had to be given by several researchers, each with a different area of expertise. While participating in this program, students and teachers communicate with researchers through email Q&A, classroom visits, and field trips (Fig. 3 & 3). Each classroom is assigned a specific researcher with applicable backgrounds and expertise pertaining to their taught subjects. This allows for direct and open communication while also removing barriers between the classroom and researchers. The benefits of engagement often go both ways, with students’ insightful questions sparking new lines of scientific inquiry for researchers.
Figure 4. Rachel Johnson, NOAA Southwest Fisheries fisheries biologist and UC Davis affiliate, leads a field trip as each classroom gets connected to a researcher.
A Focus on Underserved Youth
During the pilot year, classrooms were recruited from College Opportunity Program GEAR UP, servicing first generation college bound students. In years 2-3 the program expanded to additional counties to engage students in continuation high schools, juvenile halls and deaf-hard of hearing programs. Resources for classroom engagement (https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/salmonintheclassroomresources/home) centered on creating access for students often underserved by participatory science programs. We aim to explore ways professional development for educators and youth education programming could improve STEM learning and deepen students’ exploration of a range of college and career paths.
Community and Citizen Science focuses on how people who wouldn’t traditionally qualify as “scientists” are taking up tools of science to address environmental problems, locally, regionally, and globally. Traditional power structures in science need to be disrupted to include more voices, more sources of knowledge, more ways of thinking about environmental problems, no more so than youth. CCCS has recruited teachers working with student populations who are often the least likely to have had authentic environmental stewardship programming and have worked over the last year to refine and revise student and teacher supports for these populations. We built in additional opportunities for student voice to be brought to the forefront by designing resources and opportunities for outreach. Engaging under-resourced students and systems in our region, this program focused on lessons using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to support students as they begin to see themselves as having power to advocate within their own community.
Next Steps
Year three of our Spinning Salmon in the Classroom program was completed at the end of February, with over 370 student observations and 120 student questions submitted. We seek to expand this program to new schools and classrooms forming novel and exciting ways of engagement and inclusion. The data collected by these students has given our research team a new understanding of thiamine dependent mortality in California Chinook and their data will soon be published within our juvenile mortality model in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (Fig. 1). We are excited for the future of this program and to learn more of how engagement in scientific research can benefit students in the Central Valley.
Author affiliations: Abigail Ward, Assistant Specialist, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences; Peggy Harte, M.Ed., Youth Education Program Manager, UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science
Further Readings
Balk, L., Hägerroth, PÅ., Gustavsson, H. et al. Widespread episodic thiamine deficiency in Northern Hemisphere wildlife. Sci Rep 6, 38821 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38821
Mantua, N., R. Johnson, J. Field, S. Lindley, T. Williams, A. Todgham, N. Fangue, C. Jeffres, H. Bell, D. Cocherell, J. Rinchard, D. Tillitt, B. Finney, D. Honeyfield, T. Lipscomb, S. Foott, K. Kwak, M. Adkison, B. Kormos, S. Litvin, and I. Ruiz-Cooley. 2021. Mechanisms, impacts, and mitigation for thiamine deficiency and early life stage mortality in California’s Central Valley Chinook salmon. N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 17: 92–93. https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/92.93.
Successful aquatic restoration traditionally comes from extensive research and knowledge of the system, collaboration among stakeholders, and thorough planning. But what if there was another way to ensure restorations are creating the results we want to see? With increasing effects of climate change, urbanization, and other anthropogenic factors, aquatic organisms, especially ones that are endangered, need successful restorations more than ever to aid in their survival. One Ph.D. student at UC Davis, Madeline Eugenia Fallowfield— or Madge, says she’s studying the “power of positive thinking” to improve the success of aquatic restoration projects.
“Well researched work plans and highly detailed designs that include the input of many stakeholders isn’t enough anymore. We need positive thoughts and wishful thinking.” Madge says. “It’s really upsetting to sit in on a restoration planning meeting and not see a single vision board.” But that’s something Madge is hoping to change with her dissertation based on novel approaches to aquatic restoration.
Madge first became interested in the “power of positive thinking” after watching daytime television. “I was 10 years old and thought it was the greatest discovery ever,” Madge reminisces. Since then, Madge has been using the “power of positive thinking” to navigate life. “There can be a lot of pessimism around the state of our environment and ongoing efforts to restore habitat, and that’s when it occurred to me that I should bring the “power of positive thinking” to my graduate studies on restoration efforts,” she states.
Part of Madge’s study is to compare restoration projects that utilize the “power of positive thinking” against those that don’t. She expects to see very clear results between the two groups. Restoration designs that harness this power will employ several tactics to manifest success. Madge states the first step is to start each planning meeting with thirty minutes of thought work. “We’ll all sit in the room, or over video call, together and think really, really hard about how much we want this to work.” Madge goes on to explain that a main tenet of the “power of positive thinking” is that our thoughts create real energy and that energy travels out into the universe and collects and eventually manifests into reality. Madge states that each session should focus on a different aspect of the restoration that needs to be successful.
Another important aspect is the use of vision boards to think about what needs to be manifested. “Take my delta smelt vision board for the Lookout Slough Restoration in the Delta for example.” Madge explains, “I’m putting all the things delta smelt would need to be successful in hopes of manifesting it. It’s got pictures of ice for cool water, some pictures of dirty water for increased turbidity, and lots of pictures of zooplankton so they have plenty of food. It’s like fifty-percent zooplankton on that board, I’m serious about that part.” Madge recommends vision boards with rushing water, gravel, and the molecule thiamine for restoration designed for Chinook salmon. For sturgeon restoration, Madge says images of dam removal and cool water are ideal.
Madge wants to take things even further with the next chapter of her study. “We also need to work on the fish,” she says. “They also have to believe that things are going to be okay.” Madge recommends that fish in the restorations be spoken words of affirmation by biologists but adds that motivational podcasts on loop can work if people aren’t around all the time. Madge explains that just like our thoughts, our words create energy, and we can pass that energy onto the fish. Madge expects increased growth rates and reduced mortality for fish in treated restorations. “We supplement vital nutrients to fish with deficiencies, I don’t see how this is any different,” Madge says.
While she has a positive outlook on her studies, not everyone is receptive of Madge’s manifestation work. She claims people accuse of her peddling pseudoscience and wasting precious resources like grant funding, but Madge counters that at least she’s trying everything possible to improve restoration efforts. “Sometimes I’ll just sit at restoration sites and spend hours working to manifest successful restoration. It can be really hard sitting in the sun for all day, but that’s how dedicated I am.”
Figure 2 – Ph.D. student Madge in the field manifesting.
March is usually the last month in California’s mostly unpredictable wet season. A dry March can make a promising water year disappointing. A very wet March can make a potentially critically dry year be only mildly dry, like the “Miracle March” of 1991 (with three times average March precipitation).
Unlike basketball, nobody prevails in California’s annual March Water Madness. The outcome is usually a combination, rather than unmitigated win or loss. Below is a bracket for March 2024, where the outcome for the water year consolidates with time, with diminishing room for surprises.
Marches past and present
The distribution of March precipitation for northern California appears below. It averages about 6 inches per year and ranges from 0.5 inches (1923) to 23 inches (1995), big enough for floods. The “Miracle March” of 1991, the 4th year of drought, was only 18 inches, but three times average March precipitation. Last year (2023), was drier in northern California than in the San Joaquin Valley, but had 17 inches in March. 2017, the wettest water year on record for norther California, had only 17 inches precipitation in March.
Historically, there is only a 5% correlation between February and March precipitation, so we go into March as the last wet month hoping for the best, but not very confident of any predictions. Beware the guides of March.
March this year
We are long enough into March to see that this March’s precipitation is unusually average, about 6 inches. And for northern California, water year precipitation is also about average, with a little better than average snowpack. The San Joaquin Valley is about 80% of average precipitation, with snowpack doing a little better, but slightly less than average, so far. Southern California has had a wet water year, with floods. California is too big and diverse to usually experience the same water year.
For 2024, no outcome has prevailed statewide. We have outcomes that are average, a bit wetter than average, and a bit drier than average. This is the hand we have been delt, which fortunately also included excellent reservoir storage left over from last year.
The major state and federal water projects announced an increase in allocations this week, doubtlessly satisfying to those with higher-priority contracts and disappointing those with lower-priority contracts.
“Some people say Alpaugh is the stepchild of Tulare County; I say we’re the forgotten ones. Rural families are an endangered species.” – Sandra Meraz, Dec 2014 in the LA Times
Sandra (bottom right) at a community march for safe water marking the visit of the UN special rapporteur on the human right to water to Tulare County. Photo Credit: Bear Guerra, Community Water Center
When Alexandrina “Sandra” Meraz arrived in Alpaugh in the Spring of 1963 at the age of 22, one of the first things she noticed was the water. It didn’t smell right. Sandra was a self-professed reluctant “pioneer” [1]. As a young mom, living in the tiny unincorporated community in Southeast Tulare County far from the Cabezon Reservation where she was born and raised wasn’t easy. In time, however, leaving would become out of the question. Over the next 60 years Sandra gave everything she had to Alpaugh, transforming the small, out of the way forgotten place as it did her. Along the way, she changed California.
In 1998, with grown kids and time on her hands Sandra landed on the Tulare County Waterworks District #1, one of three locally elected boards that controlled drinking water provision in the town at the time. She didn’t know anything about water, but she asked questions and she learned. Four years later in 2002, Alpaugh’s only drinking water well failed, forcing the town into a crisis that would take years to resolve. Not only did the town have no water, but Sandra discovered that the water they had been relying on was heavily contaminated with arsenic with levels far above the federal MCL of 50 parts per billion. Lobbying local politicians and leveraging the media, Sandra helped secure corporate donations to set up and fill a 5,000-gallon community water tank from which Sandra and other volunteers rationed 25 gallons per household per week. Then she and others turned her sights on securing the emergency grants needed to replace and upgrade Alpaugh’s infrastructure. In January 2004 at a ceremony in Visalia, Sandra signed the check for a $1.5 million grant for Alpaugh’s water system.
For a few years residents enjoyed reliable water that met state and federal standards, but this victory was fleeting and the safety of the water far from clear. After years of research and rulemaking, in 2001 the federal Environmental Protection Agency had announced that the arsenic standard for drinking water would be lowered to 10 parts per billion. Water systems had until 2006 to comply. Alpaugh’s new well did not meet that standard. Despite this fact, around the same time a proposal was circulated to raise monthly water rates by $20. Working with the Committee for a Better Alpaugh, the community-based organization that Sandra co-founded in 2000 in part to engage Spanish-speaking and low-income residents in the local decision-making, Sandra fought the rate increase on the board and as a community member. Ultimately a compromise $10 increase was approved, but their water was still not drinkable.
In a town where “everything is political” [2], Sandra was adamant about being a different type of leader. In 2021 she told me “I have a voice. If I choose to use it, I have to use it in the right way. I don’t just go in there and throw my weight around because I speak English” [3]. This is exactly the leadership style she brought to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board when she was appointed to her first term by then Governor Schwarzenegger in 2007. Sandra was the first Disadvantaged Community resident, first low-income woman, and first Native American woman to serve on the board in any capacity. She never forgot the weight of that responsibility.
Between 2008 and 2012 Sandra, a long-time member and founder of the AGUA (Asociación de Gente Unida por el Agua) coalition, played a key role in the historic campaign to pass California’s Human Right to Water law, AB 685. Sandra made trips up and down Highway 99 between Sacramento and Alpaugh to speak at legislative committees, attend rallies and talk to the media. And like all the organizers behind that push, she knew AB 685 was a beginning rather than an end. Sandra continued to make trips to Sacramento into her late 70s to support critical follow-up legislation, most notably what became SB 200 or the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Program passed in 2019 (you can read an op-ed published in the Hanford Sentinel by Sandra in September 2017 about these needed investments here).
Sandra (foreground with walker) and other Central Valley residents meet with SB 200 author Monning at the State Capitol in April 2017. Photo credit: Kristin Dobbin
In a true testament to her efforts, when Sandra died on January 20, 2023, Alpaugh finally had safe water. Just over a year prior, the town’s newly constructed arsenic treatment plant was brought online, delivering safe drinking water to residents for the first time. She had followed the project’s progress religiously, attending multiple meetings per month and advising other residents to support the rate increases they needed to operate it [4]. But Sandra would be the first to tell us her work is not done. The re-emergence of Tulare Lake brought with it a swarm of mosquitos that terrorized the region all summer. Groundwater levels continue to decline threatening drinking water supplies. And most people’s water bills are far higher than they can afford. Sandra never stopped imploring us to love Alpaugh like she did, and it is past time to listen. We still have a lot of work to do.
And in many ways, Sandra is still very present in that work. Even with all her experience, Sandra always said she didn’t speak well. That isn’t true but I know what she meant, she didn’t have the education she badly wanted, she didn’t have the resources or opportunities she should have had to thrive in place. But changing that for the next generation, not just for Alpaugh’s kids, but also several generations of organizers and community leaders from throughout the San Joaquin Valley, drove her fight until she died. Sandra’s commitment and lessons live on in me and so many others she mentored over her many decades of service and advocacy including Martha Guzman Aceves, regional administrator for EPA region 9, Laurel Firestone, member of the State Water Resources Control Board, Susana De Anda, Executive Director of Community Water Center and Denise Kadara, her successor on the Regional Water Quality Control Board from the town of Allensworth. Afterall, as Sandra told me the summer before she died, “sometimes a voice carries” [5].
Sandra Meraz (center) with her letter of appointment to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board with Community Water Center co-founders Laurel Firestone (left) and Susana De Anda (right). Photo credit: Community Water Center
AUTHOR
Kristin Dobbin is an assistant professor of cooperative extension in water justice policy and planning at UC Berkeley. She is always looking for ways to make Sandra proud.
[4] It’s worth noting that Sandra saw the arsenic treatment plant as a necessity and supported the rate increases to ensure that the community would be able to operate it but was adamant that rates were already too high for many in the community and vowed to fight future increases proposed by the Board she retired from in 2012.
by Sarah Yarnell, Diego Rivera Salazar, Camila Boettiger, and Jay Lund
Countries, regions, and river basins globally are struggling to provide and manage flows in rivers for ecosystems. One approach, of many, is a Functional Flows approach, because it seeks to provide a range of streamflows over the year and between years to support fundamental functions of river ecosystems and the ecosystem services for society. These streamflows include seasonal base flows that vary from wet to dry seasons and interannually across wet to dry years as well as short-term flood flows that mobilize and scour bed sediments, recreate aquatic, riparian, and floodplain habitat, and support seasonal wetlands. The approach also involves a process for balancing multiple human and ecological objectives for river systems through broad engagement of multiple interests. In their challenge to maintain riverine ecosystem services, Chile and California can benefit from this dynamic approach to managing instream flows.
Similar geography and activities
Figure 1. Rio Claro, Chile
Chile is in the Southern hemisphere on the Pacific Ocean west of the Andes mountains. Chile’s geography, climate, and ecology are similar to California. The most populous areas in both regions span latitudes from 32 – 38 degrees dominated by a strongly seasonal Mediterranean climate with cool wet winters and warm dry summers, as well strong interannual and decadal variability. Both regions are on the west coast of the Americas, with the Pacific Ocean to the west and large high-elevation mountains running north-south inland to the east. Both regions have smaller coastal mountains paralleling the ocean’s edge, with a ‘Central Valley’ between these mountain ranges. These Central Valleys have rich productive agricultural lands, including some of the finest vineyards exporting wines globally, within which large populations and communities are economically sustained. The geographic diversity of each region supports a rich and vulnerable biodiversity of native and endemic species, many of which rely on healthy freshwater ecosystems. Major geographic differences are the mirrored effect of being either north or south of the equator: Chile’s summer peaks in January-February and its most arid regions are to the north, while California’s summer temperatures are highest in July-August and aridity increases to the south (Figures 2 and 3).
With such similarities, it is not surprising that in both Chile and California, like most populous regions globally, the increased harnessing of river flows for agriculture, hydropower, industry, and urban water supply has led to economic growth and prosperity. However, human development sustained by surface water sources has drastically reduced freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services, risking the sustainability of fresh water supplies.
A functional flows approach for instream flows
Environmental flows allocate some water for instream ecological purposes, supporting freshwater dependent ecosystems and improving river health (Horne et al., 2017). Implementing environmental flows has direct positive effects for biota in the river and can also improve water quality for recreation, drinking, and municipal uses. Instream flows do not attempt to restore the full “natural” or unimpaired flow of the river, rather they aim to support and maintain desired ecological conditions in regulated and diverted watercourses. Over time, the philosophy and practice of defining an environmental flow regime has advanced from static minimum instream flows protecting selected life history stages of specified aquatic species (e.g., Bovee, 1982) to environmental flow determinations that consider the natural variability of streamflows into which native species and ecosystems have evolved (e.g., Poff et al., 2010) and support river ecosystem functions (Palmer and Ruhi, 2019). In short, healthy river ecosystems provide a broad range of benefits to society, and environmental flows seek to maintain and support healthy streams.
One avenue for improving the ecosystem functionality of regulated rivers is a Functional Flows approach to river management (Yarnell et al., 2015; Stein et al., 2021). This approach focuses on identifying functional flow components, discrete aspects of the flow regime with documented importance for ecological, geomorphic or biogeochemical processes in riverine systems (Yarnell et al., 2015). Environmental flow management in regulated rivers then seeks to retain these key flow components, such as flooding overbank flows and spawning migration pulse flows to support biophysical processes needed to maintain a river’s ecological structure and function upon which native biological communities depend (Bestgen et al., 2020; Yarnell et al., 2020).
Figure 2. Functional flow components of a seasonal hydrograph for California. Blue line is median (50th percentile) daily discharge. Gray shading represents 90th to 10th percentiles of daily discharge over the period of record (modified from Yarnell et al., 2020).Figure 3. Mean monthly streamflow for different latitudes in Chile and comparison against minimum and maximum values. Figure 2.2 from Atlas del Agua, Chile https://snia.mop.gob.cl/repositoriodga/handle/20.500.13000/4371
In California, five functional flow components have been identified that support critical physical, biogeochemical, and biological functions that maintain river ecosystem health and satisfy life history requirements of native species (Figure 2):
Fall pulse flow: Following first major storm event at the end of dry season
Wet-season peak flow: Coincides with the largest storms in winter
Wet-season baseflow: Sustained by overland and shallow subsurface flows in the periods between winter storms
Spring recession flow: Represents the transition from the wet to dry season and is characterized by a steady decline of flows over a period of weeks to months
Dry-season baseflow: Sustained by groundwater inputs to rivers
Managing for these functional flow components preserves ecologically essential patterns of flow variability within and across seasons, but it does not require either full restoration of natural flows or maintenance of historical ecosystem conditions. These functional flow components can be quantified by a suite of functional flow metrics—statistical measures of the flow characteristics of each of the five functional flow components—that reflect the natural diversity in flow characteristics seasonally and across years.
In the long and narrow country of Chile (mean width of 180 km and a length of 4270 km (from 18 ° to 56°S), rivers are short. Most start at the Andes flowing westward over steep slopes, across the flat lower gradient Central Valley, and finally through the Coastal Range to reach the Pacific Ocean. Agriculture, cities, and industries are mainly located in the Central Valley, accounting for 88% of the extracted water. From North to South, climate and landscapes change from arid to semi-arid Mediterranean to wet. Changes in precipitation patterns shape the streamflow regimes. Rivers in Central Chile (32-36°S) reach minimum flows from January to May, with winter peaks from rainfall and spring peaks from snow and glacier melt from June to September. The relative magnitude of the spring snowmelt decreases southward, as the Southern region (36 – 44 °S) receives more rainfall but less snow as the altitude of The Andes decreases.
In both Chile and California, the geography, climate, and landscape shape the streamflow regimes, such that an understanding of these interacting factors is necessary to determine how the river ecosystem functions. Retaining key seasonal flow signatures, both baseflows and peak flows, along with space for the river to move and create riparian habitat, is necessary to support river functioning and ecosystem health.
A Functional Flows approach does not require the high density and range of data needed to develop flow ecology relationships as in more mechanistic methods (e.g., Poff et al., 2010) but rather considers how the natural flow regime interacts with basic physical channel conditions, floodplains, sediment regimes, thermal regimes and biologic and biogeochemical processes to support critical ecosystem functions. By protecting underlying functions and variability patterns that sustain river ecosystems, this approach is likely to deliver broad benefits for freshwater biota, including threatened fish species and their supporting ecosystem, as well as valued ecosystem services, such as clean water, fisheries, and recreation.
A traditional focus on single species (even single life history stages of single species) has tended to favor static environmental flow requirements that vary little within seasons and across years. However, native freshwater biota in Mediterranean climates, such as California and Chile, are adapted to the high natural seasonal and interannual variability in river flows. A Functional Flows approach preserves particular elements of natural flow variations upon which native species depend. Natural fluctuations in flows across time and space interact with the surrounding landscape to drive ecosystem processes, such as movement of organic matter and nutrients, scour and erosion of sediment, and hydrological connectivity enabling vegetation growth or fish migration (Palmer & Ruhi, 2019; Yarnell et al., 2015). Disrupting ecological functions from stabilization of flow regimes and fragmentation of habitat in time and space, reduces long-term resiliency and biodiversity of river systems.
Using a Functional Flows approach, environmental flow allocations can be targeted to components of the flow regime that most directly support ecological functions, while allowing diversions for human uses during other times (e.g., most winter high flow periods) (Stein et al. 2022). Over longer timescales, the approach also provides flexibility to adjust environmental water allocations in different water year types, maximizing allocations in wet years to enhance ecosystem conditions and limiting allocations in drought years to those needed to avoid catastrophic ecosystem impacts. This provides the ability to ‘design’ or tailor implementation to local conditions and needs. Flexible approaches that aim to maximize ecosystem functionality, especially during wetter years, will help build the resiliency of ecosystems to future droughts. Such proactive, long-term approaches are becoming more important as global temperatures rise and the intensity and spatial extent of drought increases in much of the western hemisphere.
3. Flowing forward
Current regulation related to minimum flows in Chile relies on streamflow data provided from government agencies and should consider the local characteristics and conditions of the watercourse. Discussion often focuses on the feasibility of applying certain methods to determine a fixed minimum flow, instead of discussing a more holistic approach that considers interactions with other variables and the expected environmental outcomes of such flows. The Functional Flows approach is promising for Chile’s water management, as it requires a focus on functionality and outcomes rather than extensive detailed parametrization.
In California, technical guidance for implementing a Functional Flows approach is provided in the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF), developed by a broad range of academic, agency, and non-governmental researchers (ceff.ucdavis.edu). CEFF provides a way to holistically incorporate functional flows, ecosystem goals, local requirements, and regulation. It provides guidance on balancing multiple management objectives via a stakeholder or community-driven process and advocates for monitoring and adaptive management programs. In the third blog of this series, we will discuss lessons from the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF) that might guide development of a Chilean Environmental Flows Framework, (ChEFF).
Arismendi I & B Penaluna. 2009. Peces nativos en aguas continentales del Sur de Chile / Native inland fishes of Southern Chile, funded by the Millenium Scienti!c Initiate through the FORECOS Nucleus Millenium P04-065-F of Mideplan.
Bovee, K. D. (1982). A Guide to Stream Habitat Analysis Using the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Report no. Instream Flow Inf. Pap. 12.
Sarah Yarnell is a Senior Research Hydrologist at the Center for Watershed Sciences. Diego Rivera Salazar is a Professor in the School of Engineering & Center for Resources Management, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile, Centro de Recursos Hídricos para la Agricultura y la Minería (ANID/FONDAP) (PI).
This blog post is the second of three posts resulting from an international collaboration on environmental flows between Chile’s Universidad del Desarrollo and Universidad de Talca, and the University of California, Davis (ANID Project FOVI 220188) law, engineering, economics, hydrology, and ecology researchers. The first post explained a bit about minimum flow regulations in California and Chile. This post provides an overview of functional flows for implementing environmental flows in Chile. The third post will look at lessons from the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF) that might guide development of a Chilean Environmental Flows Framework, (ChEFF). Project FOVI 220188 “Minimum flows and information of water uses in surface waters: experiences and challenges in Chile and California” is funded by Chile’s National Agency of Research and Development (ANID).
Chicken photo courtesy of Jose Maria Plazaola, Wikimedia Commons user.
*This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2012.
Water management is often very different from what we think intuitively, or what we have been taught. Here are some examples.
1. Most water decisions are local. Water policy and management discussions often seem to assume that state and federal government decisions and funding are the most important aspects of water management. This is not nearly true. Historically, culturally, and practically, most water management in California and the U.S. is local. There might be a dozen or more state and federal agencies, but there are thousands of local water, drainage, sanitation, and irrigation districts and millions of households and businesses. Local demand, supply, and operating decisions are the most important parts of water management, and where most innovations in water management originate. Due to the substantial build-out of large water projects, lack of water policy consensus, and debilitating state and federal budget deficits, local decisions, funding, innovations, and leadership are likely to become still more important in California and the U.S. Table 1 below illustrates this situation well.
Table 1: Estimated Annual Water Spending by Governments in California (c. 2008, Delta Stewardship Council Plan draft #5, August 2011)
2. Changes in technology change optimal management institutions. In early times, it became clear that local institutions were needed to construct and maintain local water management systems (Pisani 1984; Kelley 1989). In the late 1800s, irrigation districts, reclamation districts, and local water utilities emerged to fill these functions more efficiently than individuals or private firms. When larger regional and statewide water systems involving major reservoirs and conveyance systems spanning the state became needed (or at least desired) in the early 1900s, state and federal agencies were developed to manage the planning, construction, and operation of such systems. Today, major storage and conveyance systems are largely built, and innovative water management is dominated by, water conservation, water markets, conjunctive use, water recycling, and other techniques where local agencies have comparative advantages, and state and federal agencies have different and largely diminished roles (Hanak et al. 2011). Institutions should change to make best use of the most economical and appropriate mix of technologies for managing a system. In California, this means that local agency efforts need incentives to be better coordinated and better serve some regional and statewide objectives. Outside of this, state and federal agencies have diminishing roles following the age of large-scale infrastructure construction.
3. Studies forever, are sometimes cheaper and more politically convenient than action or technically serious work. For example, there is a common and political perception that new reservoirs are needed. Most elected and business officials grew up in an era when if you needed more water, you went to the nearest watershed, built a dam, and diverted water to where you wanted it. Today, most of the technical community is lukewarm on the idea of expanding reservoirs, for economic, technical, and environmental reasons. Constructing new reservoirs also taps an immense reserve of controversy. So consider the choices:
A) Build a reservoir costing $2 billion, or $100 million/year for a long time at 5% annual interest
B) Study building a reservoir, costing $1 million/year, perhaps for a very long time
The least controversial and most politic and economical choice here is to study the problem for a long time and rarely release substantial reports on the subject. This neatly dampens most of the controversy, while keeping agencies and consultants well funded and out of trouble. However, studying the problem forever has a financial cost, and arguably greater costs from dissipating analytical expertise, avoiding more serious discussions, and loss of technical integrity in government agencies.
4. Self-optimizing systems. Water users adapt to long-term management, and tend to make optimal any given long-term infrastructure and operations. Controlling floods with reservoirs and levees for some years leads people to settle more in floodplains (White 1945). Such encroachment sometimes can make it more difficult to use the official flood channel capacity and can further constrain water system operations. Outside of California, another example is the tendency of inland thermal power plants to build cooling water intakes at the lowest historical regulated water level. During a drought, this inflexible high-value demand for water elevation now requires awkward releases of scarce water from upstream. The power plants don’t need the water, just the water elevation. A similar effect occurs with boat ramps on reservoirs during droughts. The recreational drought is often not so much a lack of water or lake surface area, but insufficiently long boat ramps for drought conditions. Smart water users adapt to any operations, and force us to retain long-standing operations, which might not have been optimal initially. This implies costs for making transitions and responding to unusual drought or flood conditions. Water management is not just on the supply side; the reactions and long-term decisions of water users are just as important.
5. Small shortages sometimes create disproportionately large costs, with disturbing implications. Usually we assume, and it is often the case, that larger shortages lead to ever-increasing water shortage costs. Doubling a shortage more than doubles shortage costs. This is true for most water demands that are well-managed and experienced with shortages, since only a fool would short higher valued crops or functions first.
However, for urban and small commercial water users, even small shortages impose a significant “hassle cost”, requiring the users to figure out how to deal with the shortage, and distracting them from other valued activities. In economic theory terms, this means the first units of shortage are more expensive than the later ones (non-convex shortage costs). You can see glimmers of this behavior in some attempted contingent valuation studies of urban water shortages (Barakat & Chamberblin 1994).
If shortage costs begin small and gradually increase for everyone (convex shortage costs), as is commonly-assumed, then it is optimal (and fair) to spread the shortage across all customers. However, if there is a high initial hassle cost for dealing with a shortage (making shortage costs non-convex, Figure 1), then the economically optimal allocation of shortages is very different. Given a high initial cost for shortage and a slower increase in shortage costs afterwards, the best way to minimize overall shortage costs to all customers overall is to concentrate shortages with as few customers as possible. This allocates as much shortage as possible to the fewest number of people, minimizing hassle overall, but concentrating it among a few. For small shortages, this saves the society a lot of cost. Those shorted could be selected randomly, or to those with the least hassle. Sometimes economically optimal is not fair. (Seen another way, fairness sometimes has a cost – which hardly seems fair.)
Ideally, those shorted would be compensated by others who are spared the shortage and hassle costs (but when did you last see this happen?)
Figure 1: Hypothetical shortage costs with and without initial hassle
6. Chicken and cooperation in regional water management. We like to think that if everyone can be shown a win-win alternative, that all stakeholders will jump on board in support. But frequently this does not happen. Why?
Often, one or more stakeholders will stall such an agreement to improve their share of win-win benefits. The strategy here is to deny they would be better off with the win-win solution and then ask for more. When enough stakeholders have incentive for this behavior, a “chicken game” results where everyone is getting worse off while bargaining to do better for themselves (Madani and Lund, 2012).
7. How to manage and plan with fading federal and state presence and initiative? We often assume that federal and state leadership can help solve problems, and this was quite true during the era of water infrastructure development. However, federal and state agencies are fading as: most innovations (water conservation, water markets, conjunctive use, and reuse) are led and implemented locally; federal and state funding is in sharp decline; state and federal policy consensus is lacking; and many state and federal agencies suffer from bureaucratic sclerosis. How can regional collaboration be stimulated without state and federal funds or political support? How can regional collaborations make best use of the remaining advantages of state and federal governments? Will regional chicken games worsen? This is perhaps our greatest challenge for water management and policy. (Hanak et al. 2011)
Acknowledgements
This essay is adapted from part of the acceptance speech for the American Society of Civil Engineer’s 2011 Julian Hinds Award.
Lund, J.R., “Most Excellent Integrated Water Management from California,” Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Operations Management, ASCE, Reston, VA, August 2006.
Lund, J.R., “Self-Optimization in Water Resource Systems,” in M. Domenica (ed.) Proceedings of the 1995 Water Resources Planning and Management Division Conference, ASCE, N.Y., pp. 820-823, May 1995.
