Coming Clean: State Water Resources Control Board Finally Acknowledges "Paper Water"

Figures in the Agency’s New Bay-Delta Plan Update Confirm What Water Reform Advocates Have Long Maintained: California Water Rights Claims Exceed the Actual Supply of Water by Five Times

In a proposed update to a management plan for the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their shared Delta, the State Water Resources Control Board has finally acknowledged California’s water supplies are oversubscribed by 500%.

Aimed at protecting water quality and fisheries, the Board’s Phase II Flow Update stipulates flow volume and temperature targets for the Bay-Delta. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the export point for both the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, the massive water conveyance systems that send water to South State agribusiness operations and cities.

“This update differs from past plans and policy revisions in one very important way,” says Carolee Krieger, the executive director of the California Water Impact Network, an organization that litigates for equitable water distribution.

“For the first time, the Board explicitly acknowledges what we’ve been saying for more than two decades,” Krieger continues. “Our work is predicated on the fact that California water rights claims exponentially outstrip supplies. That makes it impossible to craft and enforce workable water policy, ultimately leading to overcharged and underserved ratepayers, a devastated environment, and collapsing fisheries.”

In its proposed update, the Board notes total appropriative water rights amount to five times the “average unimpaired outflow for the entire Bay-Delta watershed…”

In other words, says Krieger, “There is a 500% disparity between the water that is claimed and the water that exists. In a 1994 report on the financing of the State Water Project for the California State Library, researcher Dennis O’Connor coined the term ‘paper water’ to describe this phantom water that is found in legal and government documents but not in our reservoirs and rivers. It’s fantasy water – a complete fabrication. And yet, it’s foundational to the catastrophic policies of both state and federal water project managers.”

Among other misguided applications, says Krieger, paper water has been used to justify expansion of the State Water Project to the so-called coastal branch, an aqueduct that was completed in 1997 to service South Coast ratepayers in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties.

“Since its completion, the Coastal Branch has never provided its target supplies,” says Krieger. “Ratepayers have seen their water bills skyrocket because they have to service the debt incurred to build the project, but they’ve never seen full deliveries of their promised water. They’ve been left high and dry both literally and economically. We need to establish “safe yield” policies that recognize the limits of water supply, the rights of all stakeholders – including ratepayers – and the necessity for environmental protection.”

Now that the State Water Board has finally recognized the profound disparity that exists between water claims and actual water supplies, says Krieger, the agency has a legal and civic obligation to pursue policies in line with that reality.

“For decades, SWRCB has functioned as an enabler of unsustainable water consumption by corporate agriculture rather than a regulator of a finite and essential public trust resource,” she says. “We all know that water tends to flow toward political influence — but it’s the job of the Board to resist that dynamic. It must stop ‘distributing’ water that doesn’t exist simply because such a policy favors the powerful and politically connected. We applaud the Board’s acknowledgement of the problem. Now it needs to do something about it. Viable and equitable solutions exist, including conservation, stormwater capture, groundwater recharge, the development of local sources, and limited desalination. They must be implemented.”