Outreach and engagement for water management in California is use of tools and practices by water agencies to facilitate contributions by public individuals and groups toward good water management outcomes. These contributions include:

• Providing insight to decision-makers on the best approaches for water management.
• Adopting water-wise practices.
• Supporting activities that result in beneficial water management outcomes.
• Promoting collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches to solving problems, as well as resolving conflicts and addressing multiple interests and needs.
• Ensuring access to water management information and decision-making.

For more than a century, California has benefitted from the exceptional technical knowledge used to select and build California’s significant water infrastructure. Water managers have relied on engineering expertise to achieve positive water outcomes and resolve problems. This approach worked well for meeting single-purpose engineering goals, which have supported a growing economy.

Even so, some unintended consequences have been revealed. Over time, some water management projects have altered and degraded ecosystems and/or created social injustices as unintended byproducts. Because the water management profession remains primarily a technical discipline, and many agency staff are educated in engineering, economics, or law, these staff see their primary task as managing the physical system. Only later do they engage the public as a way of solving problems or developing policies and programs.

As the demands on water management systems have increased and understanding of the complexity of the water systems has grown, the need for engineers and technical experts to engage others in achieving optimum results has become more apparent. Water managers’ new respect for the complexity of the ecosystems from which water projects draw has made them realize the need to access a broader range of expertise. Potential sources of expertise range from the close local knowledge of long-time residents of the area being altered by a water project (such as oral histories from local farms or recollections of historic streams, springs, and wells) to university scientists in disciplines (such as ecology) that have not always participated in water development and management.

In addition, water managers are now developing new sophistication about the ways they can serve their communities. This goes beyond the traditional engineering approaches by bringing in expertise from other disciplines, such as economics, public health, and land use planning.