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Fresno, CA - The Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley and the California Water Institute at Fresno State today 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 at Fresno State prepared the plan with the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley and Stantec, and its results will be reported to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House Committee on Natural Resources. The plan integrates the adopted Groundwater Sustainability Plans of all sixteen Valley subbasins into one regional strategy covering Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tulare counties. Congress directed the study in Public Law 111-11, the 2009 San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation funded it.
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, that sequence the region’s response. 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,” said Austin Ewell, Executive Director, Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley.
“Every community in this Valley has a stake in water, and every community’s plan is in this document. For the first time we can show state and federal partners exactly what the Valley needs, in one voice,” said Eddie Ocampo, Chairman, Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley.
The stakes reach well beyond the region. The eight-county Valley includes seven of the nation’s ten highest-producing agricultural counties, grows more than 250 crops, and produces about $24 billion in farm value each year. The plan also addresses reliable drinking water for more than 300 disadvantaged communities, flood protection for roughly one million residents and $112 billion in structures within FEMA flood zones, and water for wetlands and river habitat.
The plan is candid that even the full range of investments will not entirely close the gap, and it calls for a structured, transparent process to evaluate and select projects as the next step. It is designed for regular updates and feeds directly into the California Water Plan, giving federal, state, and local partners one shared reference for Valley water decisions.
Stay tuned for opportunities to participate in upcoming briefings on the plan from authors and Valley experts.
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