Independent research and analysis of California's developed water systems
Jay Lund published a clever satire of California water rhetoric today, and he's right that policy-based evidence-making occurs in our water debates. I worked with Jay and other Delta Independent Science Board members in 2021 to save the Delta Independent Science Board from defunding, and I value his truthtelling. But Jay's framing misses something critical … Continue reading Response to Jay Lund’s “Nine California Water Rites”
Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Deirdre Des Jardins. I’m a consultant to the Institute for Fisheries Resources and the Pacific Coast Federations of Fishermen’s Associations on climate change and modeling, as well as the Director of California Water Research. My research background is in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems theory. I did research … Continue reading Comments to the NAS Panel on Review of the Long-Term Operations of the CVP and SWP
The Governor Newsom's May Revise Budget provides an additional $115 million in investments in flood risk reduction, including: $75 million to support local flood control projects $40 million for the San Joaquin Floodplain restoration This is in addition to the $202 million proposed by the Governor in January to reduce flood risk in urban areas, … Continue reading Analysis: Proposed state investments inadequate to address increase in catastrophic flood risk
This blog post analyzes long term changes in the Sacramento Four River runoff using a 10 year and 30 year running mean. Sacramento River runoff was lower during the Dust Bowl era drought of 1928-34, and the current 30 year mean runoff is close to the mean for the historic record. However, the current 10 … Continue reading Water Board’s Decision 1641 adopted in wetter period
The problem is not growing water-intensive crops in California, but growing them in the driest areas in the state. The arid scrubland on the southern floor of the San Joaquin Valley gets about 7-8 inches of rain a year.
The Delta tunnel Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) has a new Sea Level Rise Study in Technical Appendix 5A-F. The study was done with Bay-Delta SCHISM, a 3-D hydrodynamic model of the San Francisco Bay and Delta. The new SCHISM study has limitations, in that it assumes that Delta levees are raised to keep up … Continue reading Delta tunnel — Inconvenient truths about sea level rise and salinity intrusion
The State Water Resources Control Board’s Climate Change Mitigation Strategist, Max Gomberg, just retired, and sent an incendiary parting letter to his colleagues, stating, Witnessing the agency’s ability to tackle big challenges nearly eviscerated by this Administration has been gut wrenching. The way some of you have simply rolled over and accepted this has also … Continue reading The eye of the storm and the State Water Resources Control Board
Modeling by the Department of Water Resources for the 2022 Central Valley Flood Protection Plan Update shows that peak flood flows on the San Joaquin River could more than double with climate change, and peak flows on the Sacramento could increase by 40%. In 2018, Daniel Swain, Baird Langenbrunner, and David Neelin found that there … Continue reading Budget negotiations could determine the future of California’s Central Valley
On June 7, 2022, Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, issued the following statement: We are in an unprecedented situation, where our water supplies from the State Water Project are so limited by drought and climate change that they do not meet demands. Southern Californians must decrease their water … Continue reading The State Water Project Delivery Reliability Report may have created systemic drought vulnerability
This Water and Drought package of the California Senate's Climate Budget Plan proposes major investment in water management science. One of the goals is to: Strengthen water rights quantification and enforcement at SWRCB. Currently the state does not have a reliable quantification of water rights or the ability to effectively enforce. The budget plan includes … Continue reading Senate Climate Budget Plan proposals on water management science