Economics of a State Water Resources Program

Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) | July 9th, 1957

Economies of Scale and Scope in River Basin Management

Pacific Institute | November 15th, 2004

New approaches to water planning, like Integrated Water Resources Management, are growing in popularity, but have often gotten bogged down, or even been abandoned, becaus

New approaches to water planning, like Integrated Water Resources Management, are growing in popularity, but have often gotten bogged down, or even been abandoned, because stakeholders don’t feel they are getting enough out of these efforts. Economies of scale and scope are the payoff for the tedious, time-consuming work of multi-stakeholder processes and our new report, “Economies of Scale and Scope in River Basin Management,” provides pragmatic guidance for more effective water management. It argues that the river basin management component of an effective management system should identify specifically how and when collaboration between specialized organizations will be socially beneficial, and then mobilize sufficient political will to ensure specialized organizations collaborate when they should. The economic insight this paper offers is that collaboration between specialized agencies is socially desirable when economies of scale or scope exist that cannot be captured by any one specialized organization. Successful integration occurs when these economies are identified and captured, and when more specialized organizations are allowed to manage projects that do not involve such economies. This paper defines economies of scale and scope, describes economies of scope in more detail since this is a phrase that non-economists are unfamiliar with, provides a few examples of each in the US setting, and provides some concluding remarks on implementation challenges.

Ecosystem Restoration (Resource Management Strategy)

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | July 29th, 2016

Ecosystem restoration improves the condition of California’s modified natural landscapes and biological communities to provide for their sustainability and for their us

Ecosystem restoration improves the condition of California’s modified natural landscapes and biological communities to provide for their sustainability and for their use and enjoyment by current and future generations. Few, if any, of California’s ecosystems can be fully restored to their pre-development condition.  Instead, efforts focus on rehabilitation of important elements of ecosystem structure and function. Successful restoration increases the diversity of native species and biological communities and the abundance of habitats and connections between them. This can include reproducing natural flows in streams and rivers, curtailing the discharge of waste and toxic contaminants into water bodies, controlling non-native invasive plant and animal species, removing barriers to fish migration in rivers and streams, and recovering wetlands so that they can store floodwater, recharge aquifers, filter pollutants, and provide habitat.

Ecosystem variability along the estuarine salinity gradient: Examples from long-term study of San Francisco Bay

Limnology and Oceanography (Wiley) | March 25th, 2017

The salinity gradient of estuaries plays a unique and fundamental role in structuring spatial patterns of physical properties, biota, and biogeochemical processes. We use

The salinity gradient of estuaries plays a unique and fundamental role in structuring spatial patterns of physical properties, biota, and biogeochemical processes. We use variability along the salinity gradient of San Francisco Bay to illustrate some lessons about the diversity of spatial structures in estuaries and their variability over time. Spatial patterns of dissolved constituents (e.g., silicate) can be linear or nonlinear, depending on the relative importance of river-ocean mixing and internal sinks (diatom uptake). Particles have different spatial patterns because they accumulate in estuarine turbidity maxima formed by the combination of sinking and estuarine circulation. Some constituents have weak or no mean spatial structure along the salinity gradient, reflecting spatially distributed sources along the estuary (nitrate) or atmospheric exchanges that buffer spatial variability of ecosystem metabolism (dissolved oxygen). The density difference between freshwater and seawater establishes stratification in estuaries stronger than the thermal stratification of lakes and oceans. Stratification is strongest around the center of the salinity gradient and when river discharge is high. Spatial distributions of motile organisms are shaped by species-specific adaptations to different salinity ranges (shrimp) and by behavioral responses to environmental variability (northern anchovy). Estuarine spatial patterns change over time scales of events (intrusions of upwelled ocean water), seasons (river inflow), years (annual weather anomalies), and between eras separated by ecosystem disturbances (a species introduction). Each of these lessons is a piece in the puzzle of how estuarine ecosystems are structured and how they differ from the river and ocean ecosystems they bridge.

Eel River Groundwater Sustainability Plan

Humboldt County Groundwater Sustainability Agency | January 29th, 2022

In 2015, Humboldt County received a planning grant from DWR for technical studies and planning which led to the submission in December 2016 of a Groundwater Sustainabili

In 2015, Humboldt County received a planning grant from DWR for technical studies and planning which led to the submission in December 2016 of a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) Alternative, a streamlined version of a GSP. The GSP Alternative was disapproved by DWR in 2019 primarily because objective management criteria had not been established for 10 years; a quantitative estimate of sustainable yield was not developed; and the GSP Alternative did not quantify the impacts of groundwater use on surface water systems and determine at what point they are significant and unreasonable. As a result of the GSP Alternative being disapproved, formation of a Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) was required and development of a full GSP was required by January 31, 2022. This is that document. Due to file size, this document has been divided into sections. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 Click here for the Eel River Valley GSP page at the California Department of Water Resources

Eel River Restoration and Conservation Plan

California Trout | June 30th, 2024

This Eel River Restoration and Conservation Plan (Plan) will build on ... opportunities to guide substantial, collaborative, and long-term restoration and conservation ac

This Eel River Restoration and Conservation Plan (Plan) will build on ... opportunities to guide substantial, collaborative, and long-term restoration and conservation actions to revitalize the Eel River and restore its fisheries. In addition, the Plan has been prepared to expand and coordinate efforts among those who are working on restoration and conservation efforts in the basin to have the greatest effect toward recovery of native anadromous fish populations.

Effect of passive integrated transponder tag size on survival, tag loss, and growth of Santa Ana Sucker

American Fisheries Society (AFS) | December 30th, 2025

The Santa Ana Sucker Pantosteus santaanae is endemic to southern California and is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Seasonal limitations on con

The Santa Ana Sucker Pantosteus santaanae is endemic to southern California and is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Seasonal limitations on conventional sampling and inconsistencies in survey methodologies have led to an incomplete understanding of population dynamics. Alternative sampling methods have the potential to fill important knowledge gaps in biology and life history. One option is to use passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to identify individuals and track their movements. The objective of this study was to test the effect of PIT tag size on survival, tag loss, and growth of Santa Ana Suckers.

Effect of the South Delta Agricultural Barriers on Emigrating Juvenile Salmonids

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | November 15th, 2018

The California Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) Temporary Barriers Project (TBP) is an ongoing project that installs, operates, and monitors up to four temporary ro

The California Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) Temporary Barriers Project (TBP) is an ongoing project that installs, operates, and monitors up to four temporary rock-fill barriers constructed in waterways located in the southern portion of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) near the cities of Tracy and Lathrop in San Joaquin County, California (Figure 1-1). Three of the temporary barriers—Old River at Tracy (ORTB), Middle River (MRB), and Grant Line Canal (GLCB), collectively, the south Delta agricultural barriers (SDABs)—are constructed and operated during the agricultural irrigation season, usually April through November. The SDABs are designed to act as flow control structures, retaining tidal fresh water behind each barrier following a flood tide. The fourth barrier, Head of Old River Barrier (HORB), is installed during the spring and fall as a fish guidance barrier. The HORB is normally installed in the spring to prevent juvenile fall-run San Joaquin River Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and juvenile Central Valley steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) 2 from emigrating through Old River toward the south Delta water export facilities at the intakes of the State Water Project (SWP) and federal Central Valley Project (CVP). In the fall, the HORB helps to guide adult San Joaquin River Chinook Salmon to spawning locations in the upper watershed. Installation, operation, and removal of the SDABs has the potential to harm, harass, or cause mortality to fish species of management concern to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), specifically, juvenile fall-run Chinook Salmon which are NMFS Species of Concern (NMFS 2010), juvenile Central Valley steelhead which is a threatened species, an Endangered Species Act (ESA) Section 10j experimental population (63 Federal Register [FR] 13347), and juvenile Green Sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris), also a federally listed threatened species (71 FR 17757). The TBP is implemented in compliance with the terms and conditions of two NMFS Biological Opinions (BiOp) (NMFS 2008, 2009).

Effective at Any Scale: Watershed-based Decision Support Tools

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | July 1st, 2016

EcoAtlas  tools apply the USEPA’s three-level wetland monitoring and assessment framework for wetland and stream protection in a variety of California watersheds, an

EcoAtlas  tools apply the USEPA’s three-level wetland monitoring and assessment framework for wetland and stream protection in a variety of California watersheds, and it can be adjusted to more generally support natural resource planning, assessment, monitoring, and reporting. EcoAtlas operationalizes the Wetland and Riparian Area Monitoring Plan (WRAMP) by enabling users to assess the abundance, distribution, diversity, and condition of wetlands in the landscape or watershed context.

Effective Implementation of the Public Trust Doctrine in California Water Resources Decision-Making: A View From the Bench

University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) | April 12th, 2012

Forty years ago, in his seminal law review article on the public trust doctrine, Professor Joseph L. Sax suggested that “citizens seeking to develop a comprehen

Forty years ago, in his seminal law review article on the public trust doctrine, Professor Joseph L. Sax suggested that “citizens seeking to develop a comprehensive legal approach to resource management problems” could use the public trust doctrine to obtain “effective judicial intervention” where “legislative response and administrative action” had been inconsistent. Of course, water is one of the natural resources to which the public trust doctrine is, and always has been, particularly applicable. And yet, it was not until ten years after Professor Sax published his article that Professor Ralph W. Johnson first predicted an impending “collision” between “[t]he public trust doctrine and the appropriative water rights system . . . in the West.” The imminence of that collision — in California at least — was due in no small part to the National Audubon Society’s then-pending suit against the Department of Water and Power of the City of Los Angeles (“L.A. Water and Power”) to limit diversions from the streams feeding Mono Lake.  That suit, which was a prime example of the sort of public interest litigation Professor Sax had advocated in his article, led to the California Supreme Court’s seminal decision in National Audubon, in which the court announced that “[t]he state has an affirmative duty to take the public trust into account in the planning and allocation of water resources, and to protect the public trust uses whenever feasible.” Today, twenty-eight years after the decision in National Audubon and more than forty years after Professor Sax’s article, what have we learned about the use of the public trust doctrine in water resources decision-making in California? Has it been an effective tool for obtaining judicial intervention in the decision-making process, as Professor Sax suggested it could be? And, more importantly, is judicial intervention the best way to effectuate and protect public trust values in the state’s water resources? Those are some of the questions I seek to answer in this Article.