Moving Forward Effort: Phase 1 Report

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) | May 1st, 2015

In 2012, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), in partnership with the seven Colorado River Basin States (Basin States) and in collaboration with a wide spectrum of

In 2012, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), in partnership with the seven Colorado River Basin States (Basin States) and in collaboration with a wide spectrum of Colorado River Basin (Basin) stakeholders, published the most comprehensive study of future Basin supply and demand ever undertaken. The Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study (Basin Study) confirmed that, in the absence of timely action, there are likely to be significant shortfalls between projected water supplies and demands in coming decades. The Basin Study also confirmed that a wide range of solutions are needed to mitigate and adapt to such shortfalls, which are likely to affect each sector (agricultural, municipal, energy, and environmental, for example) dependent on the Colorado River and its tributaries. In response to the findings of the Basin Study, in May 2013, Reclamation and the Basin States, in collaboration with the Ten Tribes Partnership and conservation organizations, initiated the Moving Forward effort to build on future considerations and next steps identified in the Basin Study. The Moving Forward effort builds upon and enhances the broad, inclusive stakeholder process demonstrated in the Basin Study with an ultimate goal of identifying actionable steps to address projected water supply and demand imbalances that have broad-based support and provide a wide-range of benefits. The Moving Forward effort is being conducted in a phased approach. Phase 1, which was funded by Reclamation and the Basin States, began with the formation of a Coordination Team and three multi-stakeholder workgroups that focus on water conservation, reuse, and environmental and recreational flows. The Phase 1 Report documents the activities and outcomes of the workgroups during this phase. Commenting on the information provided in the Phase 1 Report is encouraged. Written comments should be submitted within 90 days following the release of this report. The comments will be summarized and posted to the Moving Forward website and will be considered in future Moving Forward phases. Instructions for submitting comments are provided at [this link].

Multi-sensor remote sensing captures geometry and slow-to-fast sliding transition of the 2017 Mud Creek landslide

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | August 14th, 2025

Click here for the USGS California Science Center page about the Mud Creek landslide

Click here for the USGS California Science Center page about the Mud Creek landslide

Multiobjective Water Resource Planning

American Geophysical Union (AGU) | January 1st, 1977

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water Resources Monograph Series, Volume 4. This volume, the fourth in the American Geophysical Union's Wate

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water Resources Monograph Series, Volume 4. This volume, the fourth in the American Geophysical Union's Water Resources Monograph Series, is an exposition of multiobjective water resource planning. The multiobjective approach is, I believe, an approach that will enable water resource planners to improve substantially the social value of the projects that they build or, in the case of management plans, implement. As a not unwelcome side effect the multiobjective approach should provide a more satisfying professional life to planners and engineers. It requires more effort in the early stages of planning than simpler criteria such as the traditional benefit-cost analysis that it replaces, but at the same time, multiobjective analysis frees the planner from the burden of designing projects that are not fully representative of the social, economic, environmental, and other objectives that govern public investment in water resources.

Multiscale drivers of extreme southern California flooding: ENSO, MJO, North Pacific jet, and atmospheric rivers

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | November 20th, 2025

Extreme rainfall and flooding, driven by a powerful atmospheric river (AR) and a persistent Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), hit Southern California in February 2024 duri

Extreme rainfall and flooding, driven by a powerful atmospheric river (AR) and a persistent Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), hit Southern California in February 2024 during the 2023–2024 El Niño, affecting over 10 million people. ARs are key contributors to extreme rainfall and flooding along the U.S. West Coast. Although the AR-MJO link has been documented, its spatio-temporal variability remains a major forecasting and risk-management challenge. Combining precipitation, stream gauge and demographic data, we quantify the physical drivers and population exposure to this extreme event. Leveraging a Lagrangian MJO precipitation tracking algorithm, we unravel the multiscale interactions responsible for the AR’s development. El Niño favored a large, long-lived MJO that interacted with the North Pacific Jet (NPJ) over more than three weeks. The MJO convective outflow modulated the NPJ by inducing negative potential vorticity advection along the tropopause. The ensuing NPJ extension and acceleration induced explosive cyclogenesis, whose AR-driven moisture transport resulted in extreme rainfall.

Municipal Service Review and Sphere of Influence Update for the Orange County Water District Including a Feasibility Analysis of the Potential Consolidation of Orange County Water District and Municipal Water District of Orange County

Local Agency Formation Commission of Orange County | November 15th, 2024

Municipal Stormwater Management Spending in California: Data Extraction, Compilation, and Analysis

Environmental Management (Springer) | March 23rd, 2022

Communities in the U.S. fund stormwater management programs to reduce flooding and improve and protect water quality. Few studies have attempted to quantify municipal sto

Communities in the U.S. fund stormwater management programs to reduce flooding and improve and protect water quality. Few studies have attempted to quantify municipal storwmater management expenditures. This task is important given efforts to meet increasing water quality standards and develop new revenue sources. The purpose of this study was to evaluate trends in municipal stormwater management expenditures across the state of California. The study identified and compiled publicly-available data on reported stormwater expenditures (spending) and budgets for local governments in California. Data were extracted from annual reports for over 160 public agencies. A standardized rubric of activities was developed and used to create a first-of-its-kind database of municipal stormwater budgets and expenditures. The results indicated that there is over $700 million in annual municipal stormwater spending, but this total does not represent all spending due to gaps in publicly-available data. Counties and flood control districts often have the largest total expenditures in a region, but in aggregate cities reported more spending statewide. Available data are not sufficient to adequately evaluate whether current spending meets regulatory requirements. Additionally, publicly-available data are inconsistent across geographic regions regulated by different agencies. The analysis offers a template for improved cost reporting of stormwater programs in U.S. municipalities, which can help answer key questions such as the sufficiency of current funding. Future research can use the method to evaluate spending in other states and regions, evaluate trends over time to improve outcomes, and refine the spending categories based on examples from other states. Click here for related post at UC Davis site California WaterBlog

Natural Resources Policy: Management, Institutions, and Issues

Congressional Research Service (CRS) | January 17th, 2007

Natural resources management remains a significant issue for the federal government. Growing demands on the nation’s resources and interest in their protection and allo

Natural resources management remains a significant issue for the federal government. Growing demands on the nation’s resources and interest in their protection and allocation among multiple uses have increased the complexity of management. The federal role in defining policy and institutional context shapes the combination of supported uses and protection measures. Certain themes are common to federal resource issues. Many conflicts center on balancing traditional versus alternative uses and protection programs, managing to produce national or local benefits, and supporting current or future resource consumption. Other challenges involve the effect of federal resource management on private lands, fees for using federal resources, and financing of management efforts. Interagency conflicts and overlaps and the coordination of federal, state, and local efforts also are common implementation problems. For many reasons, Congress often confronts resource issues based on the natural resource in question—lands and related resources, oceans and coasts, species and ecosystems, or water. Federal land issues include land ownership and management, prioritization of uses, designation of special areas, and fee collection and disbursement. Energy production and recreation on federal lands remain controversial. Indian land issues include energy rights-of-way across tribal lands and treaty rights. Ocean topics encompass broad policy questions, such as whether to respond to recommendations by two commissions for more coordinated ocean policies and institutions. More specific multi-use management challenges range from fisheries, marine mammal, and coastal zone management, to adherence to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Species management and ecosystem protection topics include federal protection and habitat designations for threatened and endangered species, prevention and response to invasive species, protection of international species, wetlands protection, and large-scale ecosystem restoration. Increased competition for water has fostered interest in the federal role in water resources, particularly in relation to water supply in western states and multi-use river management. Other water topics are dam and levee safety and security, and transboundary water resources management. Natural resource science and management contributes to understanding and mitigating the nation’s natural hazard risks. Science also is instrumental in defining the uncertainty and potential extent and impact of climate change and weather on resource conditions. Often natural resource management is intertwined with other topics of broad public concern, such as environmental protection, energy, and agricultural policy. The 110th Congress may pursue natural resources topics in the context of these other policy areas as well as through authorizations, appropriations, and oversight related to specific natural resources issues.

Navigating a Flood of Information Evaluating and Integrating Climate Science into Groundwater Planning in California

Union of Concerned Scientists | November 1st, 2017

In early 2017, northern California experienced record-setting levels of precipitation. The amount of rain and snow from October 2016 through February 2017 was the greates

In early 2017, northern California experienced record-setting levels of precipitation. The amount of rain and snow from October 2016 through February 2017 was the greatest in the 122 years of California record-keeping. As the reservoir behind Oroville Dam quickly filled to capacity, a torrent of excess water was let out through the main spillway. Shortly thereafter the spillway began to collapse, leading to massive soil erosion and concerns that the erosion could undermine the dam itself. Fears of a catastrophic dam breach led to the evacuation of around 180,000 residents downstream from the dam. While we do not know how much climate change contributed to this particular event, we do know that climate change is making extreme events more common (Black et al. 2016; Mote et al. 2016; Otto 2016). While reports indicate that management failures may have played in an important role in the Oroville disaster, it is also true that this event took place in the context of extreme weather, and that climate change is increasing pressure on structures and communities. This finding is not limited to highprofile infrastructure such as the Oroville Dam. Much of our water infrastructure, management tools, institutions, and planning mechanisms are not designed for the increased magnitude and frequency of such extremes—making the state, its environment, and its water resources vulnerable to the changes we are likely to see in the coming decades. In California, groundwater contributes more than half of the state’s water supply during dry years (DWR 2009). Therefore, understanding the impacts that climate change will have on this critical resource will be of particular importance for the state’s water and food security over the long term. To that end, Governor Jerry Brown issued Executive Order B-30-15 that, along with setting ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, requires state agencies take climate change into account in their planning and investment decisions. In addition, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed by the legislature in 2014, requires that Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) explicitly assess the impacts of climate change and incorporate these assessments into their Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs). Under the legislation, GSAs must develop and implement GSPs to achieve sustainable groundwater management in all high- and medium-priority groundwater basins in the state. Within these plans, GSAs are required to provide “[p]rojected water budget information for population, population growth, climate change, and sea level rise” (CWR 354.18(d)(3)). Additionally, projected water budgets must “identify the uncertainties of these projected water budget components,” including uncertainties in projected hydrology, water demand, and surface water supply resulting from sea level rise, land use changes, population growth, and climate change (CWR 354.18(c)(3)). To meet these regulatory requirements, plans must “rely on the best available information and best available science to quantify the water budget for the basin” (CWR 354.18(e)). Yet, it can be difficult to identify the best approach to incorporating climate change into local plans. The purpose of this white paper is to assist in that challenging task. The consequences of not incorporating climate change into water planning can be severe, leading to unforeseen costs and even threatening lives. It is therefore the intention of this white paper to: • provide water managers and other decision-makers across the state with an overview of climate models, their component parts, and key terminology • provide a framework for evaluating and comparing the various approaches currently employed by the state and federal agencies to incorporating climate change into state-level water planning documents • recommend a four-step process to incorporate future climate projections into local GSPs Recognizing the importance of climate change impacts on the state’s water supply, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has devoted a significant amount of time and expertise to integrating climate change into water planning. In 2012, DWR convened the Climate Change Technical Advisory Group (DWR CCTAG) to advise DWR on the scientific aspects of climate change, the impact of climate change on water resources, the use and creation of planning approaches and analytical tools, and the development of adaptation responses. The DWR CCTAG released a report in 2015, Perspectives and Guidance for Climate Change Analysis, which makes several recommendations for future work. One central theme is the need to develop guidance and support for water managers and planners. Factoring climate change into water management decisions requires future projections of how climate change will impact water-relevant factors such as temperature and precipitation—projections that are generally derived from global climate models. However, incorporating climate change into water planning for any given community or groundwater basin can be difficult, not only because of the technical expertise required to do so, but also because the effects of climate change are spatially and temporally variable. Although the scientific community has high confidence in a key set of variables for the planet as a whole, translating global estimates of climate change to specific geographical areas creates uncertainty. Fortunately, there are tools and methods to address uncertainty. As is the case for other natural phenomena that are difficult to predict with precision, such as earthquakes, uncertainty cannot be an excuse for inaction. Scientific and technical tools can substantially assist in creating plans that cope with an uncertain future. This white paper does not directly address the role of hydrologic models themselves, but rather addresses how climate change information can be incorporated into hydrologic models as water managers seek to comply with the requirements of SGMA. The process of incorporating climate change into water management decisions has several steps, starting with running global climate models to produce future climate projections, which are then used as inputs to hydrologic models (Figure 1). We recognize that GSAs are likely to engage at different levels of technical sophistication with climate data and that the majority will seek out the services of technical experts. Ultimately, it is our intent that this white paper equip water managers with sufficient knowledge about climate change projections to understand, evaluate, and direct the work of the technical experts and consultants. Using appropriate climate change information is vital to ensuring that water managers capture potential future water resource conditions. This white paper is organized into three main sections. The first section provides a general overview of climate models, including their strengths and limitations and the type of information they can provide, and describes a framework for incorporating their output into management decisions. The second section addresses how to incorporate climate change into planning involving imported water supplies. The third section turns to planning for local water supplies and proposes a process for incorporating appropriate climate change data into GSPs.

Navigating the Growing Prospects and Growing Pains of Managed Aquifer Recharge

National Ground Water Association (NGWA) | November 7th, 2025

Increasing water demands and declining groundwater levels have led to rising interest in managed aquifer recharge. That interest is growing in the United States—the foc

Increasing water demands and declining groundwater levels have led to rising interest in managed aquifer recharge. That interest is growing in the United States—the focus of this article—and elsewhere. Increasing interest makes sense; managed aquifer recharge can reduce water-supply challenges and provide environmental benefits, sometimes with lower costs than alternative water-management approaches. But managed aquifer recharge also faces growing pains, which will make it difficult for projects to scale up and may limit the benefits provided by those projects that do go forward. Some of the problems arise from the challenges of finding physically suitable locations for managed aquifer recharge; many derive from economics, public policy, and law; and some derive from ways in which managed aquifer recharge could exacerbate traditional equity challenges of water management. But as we explain, there also are potential solutions to these challenges, and the future success of managed aquifer recharge will likely depend on the extent to which these solutions are adopted

Nitrogen Fertilizer Loading to Groundwater in the Central Valley

University of California, Davis (UC Davis) | October 31st, 2017

Nitrate‐nitrogen is the most common pollutant found in the Central Valley aquifer system of California. This project provides a long‐term assessment of past and curr

Nitrate‐nitrogen is the most common pollutant found in the Central Valley aquifer system of California. This project provides a long‐term assessment of past and current potential nitrogen loading to groundwater on irrigated and natural lands across the entire Central Valley of California using a nitrogen mass balance approach; assesses the long‐term implications for groundwater quality in the Central Valley (Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and Tulare Lake Basin); evaluates potential best management practices to reduce groundwater nitrogen loading from irrigated lands; and provides a planning tool to better understand local and regional groundwater quality response to specific best management practices and policy/regulatory actions. The project complements other work to assess the vulnerability of Central Valley groundwater to nitrate contamination, sources of nitrate in groundwater, and how to reduce source loading.