The Water Resilience Portfolio: An ambitious blueprint for California water in the face of climate change

Governor Gavin Newsom recently released the final version of his Water Resilience Portfolio, which identifies 142 state actions to be taken in order to ensure California’s long-term water resilience and ecosystem health. The Water Resilience Portfolio is meant to serve as the Newsom administration’s blueprint for helping the state adapt to the impacts of climate change on water, including more extreme droughts and floods, rising temperatures, declining fish populations, over-reliance on groundwater and other challenges.

The Water Resilience Portfolio is the long-awaited result of an intensive effort to articulate and document an expansive list of action items to focus state efforts on climate resilience and water. In Executive Order N-10-19 issued in April 2019, Newsom directed state agencies to develop a “water resilience portfolio,” described as a set of actions to meet California’s water needs through the 21st century. The California Natural Resources Agency, California Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Food and Agriculture worked to release a draft version of the portfolio in January and solicited extensive public input from individuals and organizations that helped shape the final Water Resilience Portfolio issued on July 28.

The Water Resilience Portfolio helps to inform stakeholders and other interested parties of the administration’s current priorities on water issues. Here are some of the highlights and notable takeaways from the Water Resilience Portfolio:

• Implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) — As one of the most significant pieces of legislation concerning California’s water resources, it is no surprise that the Water Resilience Portfolio addresses strategies to help implement SGMA’s objective to bring the state’s groundwater resources into balance. These include efforts to provide funding for water-saving irrigation improvements to socially disadvantaged farmers (Action Item 2.3), actions to support and enforce local implementation of Groundwater Sustainability Plans (Action Item 3.1) and support for local planning efforts for land use changes (Action Item 3.3).

• Reassessing and Improving Permitting Processes — Many of the action items in the Water Resilience Portfolio are aimed at streamlining permitting processes for water storage efforts, as well as for projects that support fish and wildlife. For instance, Action Items 3.8 and 7.1 call for easing permitting requirements for developing certain low-hazard dams and expanding existing reservoirs. Other action items seek to align state and local permitting fees and processes (Action Items 13.5, 25.2), while others call for reevaluating environmental permitting procedures for simplification and incorporating considerations for climate change into permitting requirements (Action Items 13.5, 27.2).

• Supporting Stormwater Recapture and Water Recycling Projects — In line with the Water Resilience Portfolio’s primary goal to expand available water resources, Action Items 5.1-5.4 are aimed at providing support for improving and encouraging the development of stormwater capture projects. Similarly, Action Items 4.1-4.4 are focused on increasing financial support for water recycling projects as well as improving regulations to enable both potable and non-potable reuse of recycled water.

• The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — Certainly, no strategy document on California water would be complete without due consideration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which has long-served an important role in providing water to the State. The Water Resilience Portfolio identifies several Action Items related to the Delta, for example: steps to protect the economic and ecological vitality of the region (Action Items 18.1-18.5), actions to modernize inter-regional conveyance to help regions capture store and move water (Action Items 19.1-19.5) and steps to better coordinate Delta science efforts crucial to water management (Action Items 23.1-23.2).

• Modernizing Water Data — The Water Resilience Portfolio builds upon several existing legislative efforts to modernize and expand the state’s water data collection systems to facilitate and inform real-time water management decisions and long-term planning. The Water Resilience Portfolio references recent bills on this front, including the Open and Transparent Water Data Act of 2016 (Assembly Bill 1755) and Senate Bill 19 (2019), which is focused on improving the use of stream gages across the State.

• Supporting Regional Coordination — A common theme across many of the action items identified by the Water Resilience Portfolio is to improve regional coordination on climate change issues impacting water, with the goal of integrating water resilience strategies. For example, Action Item 20.3 is for the state to “Support the capacity, participation, and full integration of tribal governments and under-represented communities in regional planning processes.”

• Executing the Water Resilience Portfolio — Several of the final action items listed relate to how the administration plans to execute the Water Resilience Portfolio (Action Items 28-32). These particular items can be taken as a list of best practices for agencies and stakeholders working on California water policy issues. Action Items 32.1 and 32.2 indicate that the administration intends to issue an annual status report regarding implementation of the Water Resilience Portfolio and to gather stakeholders to discuss the status of the state’s water efforts.

While some have criticized the Water Resilience Portfolio as being unduly vague, others were pleased to find that the action items called out many important issues with specificity, suggesting that the administration may be planning to take immediate action on these items. As a whole, the Water Resilience Portfolio is an undeniably wide-ranging look into the administration’s priorities on water issues. Both casual observers and key stakeholders on California water policy issues would be wise to review it with a careful eye. 

The views expressed herein represent those of the authors and not necessarily those of Nossaman LLP or its Partners or employees.