National assessment of river protection in the United States

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | January 9th, 2026

To address the enduring and deepening crisis facing fresh waters, many nations have recently set bold targets for freshwater protection. However, the lack of comprehensiv

To address the enduring and deepening crisis facing fresh waters, many nations have recently set bold targets for freshwater protection. However, the lack of comprehensive databases and integrative frameworks hampers a robust evaluation of current freshwater protections and prioritization of future opportunities to meet these goals. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of river protection for the USA by reconciling the disparate array of major federal, state, tribal and private protection mechanisms into a single, multifaceted index. We report that just over one tenth of the river length of the contiguous USA and less than one fifth of rivers nationwide are currently protected at a level deemed viable. Lowland headwater streams and intermittent watercourses are consistently underprotected. Protection is also often spatially misaligned with other conservation objectives, where only a small fraction of watersheds with high biodiversity, habitat intactness and importance to drinking water supply are adequately (30% of river length) protected. Our assessment of river protection highlights the urgency to increase new and fortify existing protections for rivers in the years to come if we are to meet ambitious conservation targets, reverse the curve of biodiversity loss and ensure that healthy rivers benefit everyone.

National Audubon Society v. Superior Court of Alpine County

Supreme Court of California | February 17th, 1983

National Marine Fisheries Service Biological Opinion for the Long-Term Operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) | June 3rd, 2009

The purpose of this document is to present NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) biological and conference opinion (Opinion), about whether the U.S. Burea

The purpose of this document is to present NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) biological and conference opinion (Opinion), about whether the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s (Reclamation) proposed long-term operations of the Central Valley Project (CVP), operated in coordination with the State Water Project (SWP; hereafter referred to as CVP/SWP operations, the proposed action, or the project), is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the following species: Endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, hereafter referred to as winter-run) Threatened Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha, hereafter referred to as spring-run) Threatened Central Valley (CV) steelhead (O. mykiss) Threatened Central California Coast (CCC) steelhead (O. mykiss) Threatened Southern Distinct Population Segment (DPS) of North American green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris, hereafter referred to as Southern DPS of green sturgeon) Endangered Southern Resident killer whales (Orcinus orca, hereafter referred to as Southern Residents) or destroy or adversely modify the designated critical habitat of the above salmon and steelhead species, or proposed critical habitat for Southern DPS of green sturgeon. This Opinion is based on the best scientific and commercial information available.

National Strategy for the Development of Regional Nutrient Criteria

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | June 1st, 1998

In February of this year, President Clinton and Vice President Gore released a comprehensive Clean Water Action Plan. The Action Plan provides a blueprint for Fed

In February of this year, President Clinton and Vice President Gore released a comprehensive Clean Water Action Plan. The Action Plan provides a blueprint for Federal agencies to work with States and others stakeholders in restoring and protecting the Nation’s water resources and addresses three major goals: enhanced protection from public health threats posed by water pollution; more effective control of polluted runoff; and promotion of water quality restoration and protection on a watershed basis. A key part of the Action Plan provides for expanded efforts to reduce nutrient overenrichment of waters. Nutrients, in appropriate amounts, are essential to the health of aquatic systems. Excessive nutrients, however, can result in excessive growth of macrophytes or phytoplankton and potentially harmful algal blooms leading to oxygen declines, imbalance of aquatic species, public health threats, and a general decline in the aquatic resource. Recent reports on water quality conditions provided by States indicate that nutrients are the leading cause of impairment in lakes and coastal waters and the second leading cause of impairment to rivers and streams. Nutrient overenrichment has also been strongly linked to the large hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico and to recent outbreaks of the toxic microorganism Pfiesteria along the Gulf and Mid-Atlantic coasts. The Action Plan calls on EPA to accelerate the development of scientific information concerning the levels of nutrients that cause water quality problems and to organize this information by different types of waterbodies (e.g. streams, lakes, coastal waters, wetlands) and by geographic regions of the country. EPA is also to work with States and Tribes to adopt criteria (i.e. numeric concentration levels) for nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, as part of enforceable State water quality standards under the Clean Water Act.

Native and alien fishes in a California estuarine marsh: twenty-one years of changing assemblages

American Fisheries Society (AFS) | September 30th, 2002

We used monthly otter trawling and beach seining to sample the fishes of Suisun Marsh in the San Francisco Estuary from 1979 to 1999. We collected nearly 173,000 fish, mo

We used monthly otter trawling and beach seining to sample the fishes of Suisun Marsh in the San Francisco Estuary from 1979 to 1999. We collected nearly 173,000 fish, mostly young of the year, representing 28 native species and 25 alien species. Catch data were related to temperature, salinity, water transparency, and several measures of freshwater inflow into the marsh. Species abundance and distribution within the marsh were the product of several interacting factors: (1) the timing and place of reproduction of the abundant resident species, (2) past reproductive success, (3) habitat differences among sloughs, and (4) physiological tolerance. We did not find consistent groups of potentially interacting species, although some native species showed weak concordance in abundance. The lack of persistent fish assemblages is related to the naturally fluctuating environmental conditions of the estuary, the overall decline in fish abundance through time, and the frequent invasions of alien fishes and invertebrates. Our results suggest that the fish assemblages in Suisun Marsh will continue to be unpredictable until estuarine processes approach their historic range of variability and alien invasions are halted.

Natural Resources Defense Council v. Kempthorne, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment

United States District Court, Eastern District of California | May 7th, 2007

This case concerns the effect on a threatened species of fish, the Delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) , of the coordinated operation of the federally managed Central

This case concerns the effect on a threatened species of fish, the Delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) , of the coordinated operation of the federally managed Central Valley Project ("CVP") and the State of California's State Water Project *2 ("SWP"), among the world's largest water diversion projects. Both projects divert large volumes of water from the California Bay (Sacramento - San Joaquin) Delta ("Delta") and use the Delta to store water.

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 Groundwater-Surface Water Interactions under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act

Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment (CLEE) | March 28th, 2018

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed in 2014, recognizes and addresses connections between surface water and groundwater. The st

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed in 2014, recognizes and addresses connections between surface water and groundwater. The statute is California’s first statewide law to explicitly reflect the fact that surface water and groundwater are frequently interconnected and that groundwater management can impact groundwater-dependent ecosystems, surface water flows, and the beneficial uses of those flows. As such, SGMA partially remedies the historically problematic practice of treating groundwater and surface water as legally distinct resources. SGMA requires groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) to manage groundwater to avoid six undesirable results, including significant and unreasonable adverse impacts on beneficial uses of surface water. While this aspect of SGMA is clearly important, significant uncertainties exist regarding how GSAs will actually define and achieve this goal. Addressing SGMA’s requirements for groundwater-surface water interactions will be difficult. Defining the issues at stake in any given basin, let alone successfully balancing the range of uncertainties and potentially conficting interests, will pose challenges for many GSAs. No clear, pre-defned formula exists to guide GSAs in determining what significant and unreasonable depletions of interconnected surface water will be, or whether planned actions will sufficiently avoid them. Yet they are required to do so. Many GSAs will face pressure to aggressively address impacts on surface water in their basin. Many will face equal or greater pressure not to draw the line. Nevertheless, it will fall to the GSAs to make a determination, and to defend it in their groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs). Therefore, GSAs will likely take on some level of risk—of successful political opposition to their GSP, of successful legal challenges to their GSP, of their GSP performing ineffectively, or of all of these outcomes. Given the aggressive timeline inherent to SGMA, addressing this risk early will be crucial for preserving management options. Challenges and risk are not the whole story, however. The process of addressing groundwater-surface water interactions also ofders GSAs an opportunity to help communities and other stakeholders resolve, or avoid, difficult conflicts, and to do so in lasting ways. While California law has only recently begun to seriously address conflicts between surface and groundwater uses, those conflicts have been occurring for decades, and in some places for over a century. SGMA, in other words, did not create conflict between groundwater pumping and beneficial uses of surface water; instead it created an opportunity—as well as an obligation—to respond to those challenges. Embracing that opportunity will not be easy, but GSAs that take SGMA as an opportunity to resolve longstanding issues can do lasting good. The research presented here examines some of the legal and institutional questions that will inevitably arise as GSAs seek to address groundwater-surface water interactions under SGMA. The core goal of this report is to help parties identify and address these questions, and ultimately to let GSAs and stakeholders manage groundwater-surface water interactions proactively and effectively.

NEPA and CEQA: Integrating Federal and State Environmental Reviews

U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) | February 18th, 2014

This handbook provides advisory guidance to Federal, state, and local agencies and others regarding projects that are subject to both the National Environmental Policy Ac

This handbook provides advisory guidance to Federal, state, and local agencies and others regarding projects that are subject to both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Once President Nixon signed NEPA on January 1, 1970, and California Governor Reagan followed suit signing CEQA into law on September 18 of the same year, these laws expressly required the incorporation of environmental values into governmental decision making. Those statutes require Federal, state, and local agencies to analyze and disclose the potential environmental impacts of their decisions, and, in the case of CEQA, to minimize significant adverse environmental effects to the extent feasible. NEPA was codified under Title 42 of the United States Code, in section 4331 et seq. (42 U.S.C. § 4331 et seq.). Under NEPA, Congress established the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to ensure that Federal agencies meet their obligations of the Act. CEQ’s Regulations for Implementing the Procedural Provisions of NEPA (hereinafter CEQ NEPA Regulations) are in Title 40 of Code of Federal Regulations section 1500 et seq. (40 C.F.R. § 1500 et seq.). In California, CEQA was codified under Division 13 of California’s Public Resources Code, in sections 21000 et seq. (Cal. Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq.). The Guidelines for Implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act are in Title 14 of California’s Code of Regulations, section 15000 et seq. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 14, § 15000 et seq.; hereafter CEQA Guidelines). NEPA and CEQA are similar, both in intent and in the review process (the analyses, public engagement, and document preparation) that they dictate. Importantly, both statutes encourage a joint Federal and state review where a project requires both Federal and state approvals. Indeed, in such cases, a joint review process can avoid redundancy, improve efficiency and interagency cooperation, and be easier for applicants and citizens to navigate. Despite the similarities between NEPA and CEQA, there are several differences that require careful coordination between the Federal and state agencies responsible for complying with NEPA and CEQA. Conflict arising from these differences can create unnecessary delay, confusion, and legal vulnerability. Federal, state and local agencies have cooperated in the environmental review of projects ranging from infrastructure to renewable energy permitting. As the state and Federal governments pursue shared goals, there will be a continued need for an efficient, transparent environmental review process that meets the requirements of both NEPA and CEQA. Recognizing the importance of implementing NEPA and CEQA efficiently and effectively, the CEQ and the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) developed this handbook to provide advisory guidance on conducting joint NEPA and CEQA review processes. The CEQ oversees Federal agency implementation of NEPA, which includes writing the CEQ NEPA Regulations1 and preparing guidance and handbooks for Federal agencies. OPR plays several roles in the administration of CEQA, including developing the CEQA Guidelines in coordination with the California Natural Resources Agency, providing technical assistance to state and local agencies, and coordinating state level review of CEQA documents. The purpose of this handbook is to provide practitioners with an overview of the NEPA and CEQA processes, and to provide practical suggestions on developing a single environmental review process that can meet the requirements of both statutes. This handbook contains three main sections. First is a “Question and Answer” section that addresses the key similarities and differences between NEPA and CEQA. This section compares each law’s requirements or common practices, and identifies possible strategies for meeting the requirements of both laws. These strategies are not meant to prescribe methods that agencies must use; rather, this handbook provides suggestions that will help agencies identify and think through potential issues. Indeed, developing a common understanding of the NEPA and CEQA review processes and their differences at the beginning of a joint review process may be among the most important ways to conduct an efficient and effective review process. Second, this handbook provides a framework for a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between two or more agencies entering a joint NEPA/CEQA review process. MOUs can clarify responsibilities and avoid potential conflicts. The MOU framework in this handbook highlights a number of issues that agencies can consider before embarking on their joint effort. This handbook is not intended to replace or replicate any existing MOUs; rather, it raises topics agencies might consider incorporating into their own MOUs. Much like the Q&A document, a key goal of this framework is to encourage state and Federal agencies to consider and resolve potential challenges common to joint NEPA/CEQA review processes in order to avoid complications late in the review process. Finally, the third section addresses the California Energy Commission (CEC) licensing process for decisions on thermal power plants 50 megawatts and larger. This licensing process is a certified regulatory program under CEQA and therefore the process and documents prepared by the CEC serve as the functional equivalent of a CEQA review (CEQA Guidelines, § 15251, subd. (j)). As noted above, this handbook is advisory and does not supplant the administrative regulations set forth in the CEQA Guidelines, or the CEQ NEPA Regulations. Agencies conducting an environmental review must also take into account any additional requirements or time periods established in an individual agency’s administrative regulations or procedures implementing NEPA and CEQA, which could prescribe additional or more stringent requirements than the CEQ NEPA Regulations and the CEQA Guidelines.

New Life for Eroding Shorelines: Beach and Marsh Edge Change in the San Francisco Estuary

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | April 1st, 2020

Wind, waves, storms, and changing water levels have reshaped shorelines for millennia and continue to do so today. The current shape of the San Francisco (SF) Estuary sho

Wind, waves, storms, and changing water levels have reshaped shorelines for millennia and continue to do so today. The current shape of the San Francisco (SF) Estuary shoreline is relatively new; 15,000 years ago, the California shoreline was west of the Farallon Islands and 140 meters below its current level (Cohen and Laws 1992, Malamud-Roam et al. 2007). By approximately 6,000 years ago (the end of the last glacial epoch), the sea had risen to nearly its present level and filled what is now San Francisco Bay, allowing marshes to form and maintain themselves (Atwater 1979). More recently, humans have changed the shape of the shoreline. During the 1850s, many marshes expanded extensively due to increased sediment supply from hydraulic mining in the Sierra Nevada (Gilbert 1917, Goals Project 1999). Diking, dredging, and filling of marshes for agricultural and urban development began in the late 19th century and continued through the first half of the 20th century.  Today, humans continue to reshape the shoreline through continued diking, dredging and filling as well as restoration projects, urbanization of watersheds, ferry wakes, and many other means. The most wide-ranging impact of human activity on the shape of shorelines is global climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which is accelerating the rate of sea level rise worldwide (OPC 2018). Sea level rise is likely to cause much more dramatic changes in the shape of shorelines than have been seen in recent centuries. The magnitude and pace of change will depend on the rate of sea level rise, existing shoreline conditions, and the ability of shorelines to adapt.