Blueprint Releases Unified Water Plan

FRESNO - The Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley and the California Water Institute at Fresno State on Sept. 3 released the Unified Water Plan for the San Joaquin Valley, a congressionally authorized, federally funded report that gives local, state and federal decision-makers a single roadmap for water investment across the eight-county region.

The California Water Institute prepared the plan with the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley and Stantec, and its results will be reported to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee. The plan integrates the adopted Groundwater Sustainability Plans of all 16 San Joaquin Valley subbasins into one regional strategy covering Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare counties.

Funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the plan establishes the first Valley-wide measure of the region's water challenge: an annual supply-demand gap of about 2.5 million acre-feet per year by 2040. Without coordinated action, that gap would take up to one million acres out of irrigated production and cost the region about $7.2 billion in annual farm revenue, 85,000 jobs, and $2.1 billion in annual employee compensation, with losses concentrated in communities already facing economic and drinking water challenges.

The plan responds with three nested investment scenarios, ranging from roughly $18 billion to $33 billion. The scenarios begin with restoring the capacity of subsidence-affected Central Valley Project and State Water Project canals, a foundational investment that protects existing deliveries and enables the local recharge, reuse and storage projects that follow. Throughout, the plan integrates water supply reliability, flood risk reduction and ecosystem enhancement as one strategy. With coordinated investment, the land transition drops from an unmanaged loss of up to one million acres toward a deliberate repurposing of up to 400,000 acres.

"Congress asked for one unified plan built from the Valley's own data, and this report answers that request. It gives federal partners a sequenced, accountable path for protecting infrastructure the nation has already built and the food supply that depends on it," Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley Executive Director Austin Ewell stated in a news release.