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Adapting California’s water management to climate change

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Abstract

California faces significant water management challenges from climate change, affecting water supply, aquatic ecosystems, and flood risks. Fortunately, the state also possesses adaptation tools and institutional capabilities that can limit vulnerability to changing conditions. Water supply managers have begun using underground storage, water transfers, conservation, recycling, and desalination to meet changing demands. These same tools are promising options for responding to a wide range of climate changes. Likewise, many staples of flood management—including reservoir operations, levees, bypasses, insurance, and land-use regulation—are available for the challenges of increased floods. Yet actions are also needed to improve response capacity. For water supply, a central issue is the management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where new conveyance, habitat investments, and regulations are needed to sustain water supplies and protect endangered fish species. For flood management, among the least-examined aspects of water management with climate change, needed reforms include forward-looking reservoir operation planning and floodplain mapping, less restrictive rules for raising local funds, and improved public information on flood risks. For water quality, an urgent priority is better science. Although local agencies are central players, adaptation will require strong-willed state leadership to shape institutions, incentives, and regulations capable of responding to change. Federal cooperation often will be essential.

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Notes

  1. The California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program and the California Department of Water Resources have sponsored or conducted much pioneering research on climate change impacts and adaptation for California, particularly in the water sector.

  2. Many of the topics presented here are assessed in greater depth in Hanak et al. 2011.

  3. This range was recently recommended for use for planning purposes by the California Ocean Protection Council (2011), based on projections by Vermeer and Rahmstorf (2009).

  4. In Phoenix, almost half of homes use evaporative cooling, which accounts for almost 15 percent of summer water use (Phoenix 2007). Such cooling systems are also in use in rapidly growing southern California desert areas, such as the Coachella Valley.

  5. See also www.safca.org/floodRisk/index.html, for a discussion of this issue in the Sacramento area.

  6. Recent water use estimates exclude conveyance losses. See California Department of Water Resources, 2009. With the recent passage of SBX7-7 (2009), California’s urban water utilities are expected to reduce per capita use by 20% below 2005 levels by 2020.

  7. Some simulation and optimization studies have made modest attempts to adapt system operating rules to a changed climate (Yao and Georgakakos 2001; VanRheenen et al. 2004; Vicuna 2007; Medellin-Azuara et al. 2008).

  8. Some preliminary local studies also have been done for the Inland Empire Utilities Agency (Groves, et al. 2008), East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California using simulation models.

  9. Because these results are obtained using an optimization model, this figure probably represents the minimum cost for optimal water supply adaptation.

  10. See http://www.energy.ca.gov/publications/searchReports.php?pier1=climate%20change

  11. Water Utility Climate Change Summit, San Francisco, Jan. 31–Feb. 1, 2007 (sponsored by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission), Water Policy Through a Carbon Lens, Sacramento, Aug. 23, 2007 (sponsored by the State Water Resources Control Board and the Department of Water Resources), California Climate Change and Water Summit, Santa Monica, Oct. 3, 2007 (sponsored by the Dept. of Water Resources and the Water Education Foundation), and the California Water Policy Conference 17, Los Angeles, Nov 14–15, 2007.

  12. http://resources.ca.gov/bdcp/

  13. Technically, properties in this category are susceptible to being flooded by a flood event large enough that it is only likely to occur once in a century, often called a “100-year flood.”

  14. The map updating exercise is focusing on digitizing existing flood insurance maps, many of which are twenty years old. In some targeted areas, FEMA is also working to develop more detailed flood hazard maps, but it does not have funds to do this on a broader scale.

  15. Current methods rely heavily on the historical record, which makes it difficult to assess the distribution of low probability of events, particularly if the patterns are changing over time. Alternative methods, incorporating synthetic measures of hydrologic distributions, may need to be developed to give a better sense of changing risk with a changing climate.

  16. See Debo and Reese (2003) for examples of best management practices.

  17. TMDLs are a mechanism for setting quantitative limits on pollutants including chemicals, temperature, trash, and sediment.

  18. See National Research Council (2007).

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Acknowledgments

This work has benefitted from long-term discussions and interactions with many in California’s diverse water community. In particular, we thank Tam Doduc, Eric Simmons, and Edwin S. Townsley for helpful discussions on flood and water quality management, and John Andrew, Anthony Brunello, Guido Franco, David Groves, Susi Moser, Jeffrey Mount, Michael Teitz, Edwin S. Townsley, Lynette Ubois, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful reviews of an earlier draft. Funding for this work was provided by Next Ten, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and The Nature Conservancy. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Directors of the Public Policy Institute of California.

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  1. Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Ellen Hanak

  2. Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Jay R. Lund

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Correspondence to Ellen Hanak.

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Hanak, E., Lund, J.R. Adapting California’s water management to climate change. Climatic Change 111, 17–44 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0241-3

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