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Achieving State Goals for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
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Achieving State Goals for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
Legislative Analyst's Office | January 15, 2015...
Summary
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) is a biodiverse ecosystem that covers about 1,150 square miles and supports over 700 species of fish and...
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) is a biodiverse ecosystem that covers about 1,150 square miles and supports over 700 species of fish and wildlife. The Delta is an important source of water for the state and is used to convey water from Northern California to Southern California. The Delta faces several significant problems, including: (1) a decline in key native fish species, (2) reductions in the amount of Delta water available for use elsewhere, (3) water pollutants that cause harm to species and increase treatment costs, and (4) levees at significant risk of failure. The state has engaged in numerous efforts to address these problems and achieve its "coequal goals" for the Delta: water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration. There are many opportunities for the Legislature to improve the success of these efforts. We identified several issues for its consideration, including (1) demands for Delta water, (2) uncertain funding sources and slow implementation of some key activities, (3) limits on the effectiveness of governance in the Delta, and (4) challenges to restoring the Delta ecosystem. By addressing some of these issues, the Legislature can improve the likelihood that its goals and objectives for the Delta will be realized.

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Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming

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Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming
Climactic Change, Springer | November 27, 2007...
Summary
Economically optimal operational changes and adaptations for California’s water supply system are examined for a dry form of climate warming (GFDL CM2.1 A2)...
Economically optimal operational changes and adaptations for California’s water supply system are examined for a dry form of climate warming (GFDL CM2.1 A2) with year 2050 water demands and land use. Economically adaptive water management for this climate scenario is compared to a similar scenario with the historical climate. The effects of population growth and land use alone are developed for comparison. Compared with the historic hydrology, optimized operations for the dry climate warming scenario raise water scarcity and total operation costs by $490 million/year with year 2050 demands. Actual costs might be somewhat higher where non-economic objectives prevail in water management. The paper examines the economical mix of adaptation, technologies, policies, and operational changes available to keep water supply impacts to such modest levels. Results from this screening model suggest promising alternatives and likely responses and impacts. Optimized operations of ground and surface water storage change significantly with climate. Dry-warm climate change increases the seasonal storage range of surface reservoirs and aquifers. Surface reservoir peak storage usually occurs about a month earlier under dry-warm climate change.

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Advancing Hydro-Economic Optimization to Identify Vulnerabilities and Adaptation Opportunities in California’s Water System

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Advancing Hydro-Economic Optimization to Identify Vulnerabilities and Adaptation Opportunities in California’s Water System
California Natural Resources Agency | August 27, 2018...
Summary
Long-term shifts in the timing and magnitude of reservoir inflows will affect water supply reliability in California. Hydro-economic models can help explore climate...
Long-term shifts in the timing and magnitude of reservoir inflows will affect water supply reliability in California. Hydro-economic models can help explore climate change concerns by identifying system vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies for statewide water operations. This work contributes a new open-source limited foresight implementation of the CALVIN model, a hydro-economic model including roughly 90% of California’s urban and agricultural water demands. The model includes the ability to determine water allocations on an annual basis without knowledge of future availability, and to efficiently evaluate ensembles of streamflow projections representing a range of possible future climates. We then assess the vulnerability of the statewide system to changes in total annual runoff and the fraction of runoff occurring during winter, which primarily depends on temperature. Results are analyzed with a focus on adaptation strategies, aided by the economic representation of water demand in the model. These strategies include changes to reservoir operating policies, and conveyance and storage expansion. As water availability decreases, model results show quadratic increases in shortage cost, and corresponding increases in the marginal costs of adaptation strategies and environmental flow constraints. Reservoirs adapt to warmer climates by increasing average storage levels in winter and routing excess runoff to downstream reservoirs with available capacity. Both small and large changes to reservoir operations were observed compared to historical hydrology, showing that no single operating strategy achieves optimality for all reservoirs. Increasing the fraction of winter flow causes small increases in total shortage cost, indicating the ability to manage a changing hydrologic regime with adaptive reservoir operations. The results of this project improve estimates of the cost of climate change to California’s water system under a range of future conditions and highlight adaptation strategies that minimize costs of increased hydrologic variability.

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Approaches for groundwater management in times of depletion and regulatory change

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Approaches for groundwater management in times of depletion and regulatory change
University of California, Davis (UC Davis) | June 1, 2018...
Summary
New legislation and related regulations in California mandate groundwater management to avoid undesirable results from excessive groundwater pumping and other human activities. Required...
New legislation and related regulations in California mandate groundwater management to avoid undesirable results from excessive groundwater pumping and other human activities. Required aspects of management planning that will occur in well over 100 alluvial groundwater sub-basins across the state include scientific foundation and public transparency. While the details of individual groundwater management approaches will be particular to conditions in each management area, there will be common elements based on similar aspects of many groundwater systems in the state.

The process of beginning to implement groundwater management for a large part of the state poses challenges. Use of scientific knowledge and methods of analysis developed in academia and industry will be helpful to the overall effort. This dissertation considers aspects of groundwater management that are expected to be common among many planning efforts.

Inactive water supply wells acting as conduits for contaminant migration is considered through field examples and use of recently available databases regarding existing well constructions and water quality. Nonpoint source pollution effects on groundwater quality from conduit wells are investigated and selective regulatory action is explored as an option for addressing an issue that is too large for complete solution with available resources.

Options for managed aquifer recharge are explored for a combined urban-agricultural area through use of a recently released land use database. A hydro-economic analysis is performed using linear programming to evaluate the efficacy of an on-farm recharge approach.

Future work may include development of additional insights within the context of the study areas presented as well as extensions that consider new geographic areas and additional related considerations.
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Atmospheric rivers drive flood damages in the western United States

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Atmospheric rivers drive flood damages in the western United States
Science Advances, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | December 4, 2019...
Summary
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are extratropical storms that produce extreme precipitation on the west coasts of the world’s major landmasses. In the United States, ARs...
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are extratropical storms that produce extreme precipitation on the west coasts of the world’s major landmasses. In the United States, ARs cause significant flooding, yet their economic impacts have not been quantified. Here, using 40 years of data from the National Flood Insurance Program, we show that ARs are the primary drivers of flood damages in the western United States. Using a recently developed AR scale, which varies from category 1 to 5, we find that flood damages increase exponentially with AR intensity and duration:

Each increase in category corresponds to a roughly 10-fold increase in damages. Category 4 and 5 ARs cause median damages in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, respectively. Rising population, increased development, and climate change are expected to worsen the risk of AR-driven flood damage in future decades.

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Benefit-Cost Analysis of The California WaterFix
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Benefit-Cost Analysis of The California WaterFix
University of the Pacific, Center for Business and Policy Research | August 17, 2016...
Summary
This benefit - cost analysis of the California Water Fix was prepared by Dr. Jeffrey Micheal with the University of the Pacific Center...
This benefit - cost analysis of the California Water Fix was prepared by Dr. Jeffrey Micheal with the University of the Pacific Center for Business and Policy Research; Dr. Michael is an opponent of the project.

He writes, "This analysis is based on data and assumptions in the revised environmental documents produced by DWR to support the proposal’s environmental review. The results show the WaterFix costs are four times larger than its benefits, and thus the project is not is not economically justified."

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Bulletin No. 13, South Coastal Basin Investigation, Value and Cost of Water for Irrigation in Coastal Plain of Southern California

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Bulletin No. 13, South Coastal Basin Investigation, Value and Cost of Water for Irrigation in Coastal Plain of Southern California
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | June 1, 1933...
Summary

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Bulletin No. 8 Cost of Water to Irrigators in California

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Bulletin No. 8 Cost of Water to Irrigators in California
State of California (California) | January 1, 1925...
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Cal Water Fix Economic Analysis (Draft)
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Cal Water Fix Economic Analysis (Draft)
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | August 22, 2016...
Summary
This benefit - cost analysis of the California Water Fix project was produced by Dr. David Sunding with the Brattle Group and a...
This benefit - cost analysis of the California Water Fix project was produced by Dr. David Sunding with the Brattle Group and a consultant to the Natural Resources Agency, a proponent of the project.

There are two basic questions with respect to the economics of the Cal Water Fix. First, is the project affordable? That is, do the water users who would pay for the construction and operation of the tunnels have the ability to repay the associated debt and operating costs? Second, does investment in the Cal Water Fix generate benefits to water users that are greater than the costs? This is the classic benefit-cost question, and it is often a more exacting test than ability to pay.

The purpose of this report is to examine the relative direct benefits and costs of the Water Fix, and to outline some of the major indirect economic effects of implementing the program. The benefits of the tunnel are analyzed with respect to a no-tunnel baseline with the same operating criteria as the Water Fix.

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California State Auditor report on California Water Fix planning efforts
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California State Auditor report on California Water Fix planning efforts
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | October 4, 2017...
Summary
As requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the California State Auditor presents this audit report concerning the Department of Water Resources’ (DWR)...
As requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the California State Auditor presents this audit report concerning the Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) management of the planning efforts for the California WaterFix Project (WaterFix). WaterFix is intended to address environmental and water supply reliability issues related to pumping water from the Sacramento?San Joaquin Delta (the Delta). Planning began in 2006 on the development of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), which consisted of several measures or activities for restoring the Delta and improving water reliability. Subsequently, in 2008 DWR initiated the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (conservation and conveyance program) to evaluate how to implement the BDCP and alternatives to it, including evaluating the environmental impacts and completing preliminary engineering work. Through the evaluation effort, DWR identified one of the alternatives—WaterFix—as its preferred approach. This report concludes that the planning phase experienced significant cost increases and schedule delays because of the scale and unexpected complexity of the project. For example, costs of the conservation and conveyance program’s efforts to evaluate and plan for the potential implementation of the BDCP and its alternatives, which eventually included WaterFix, increased significantly. As of June 2017, the planning costs had reached $280 million.

We also found that DWR did not follow state law when it replaced the program manager for the conservation and conveyance program. Specifically, DWR selected the Hallmark Group (Hallmark) to provide program management services without advertising a request for qualifications, and DWR could not demonstrate that it ever evaluated Hallmark’s qualifications for this role. The cost of DWR’s current contract with Hallmark has tripled from $4.1 million to $13.8 million. Additionally, DWR has not completed either an economic or financial analysis to demonstrate the financial viability of WaterFix. Finally, it has not fully implemented a governance structure for the design and construction phase, and has not maintained important program management documents for WaterFix.

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