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IN THIS ISSUE – “A Huge State With a Limited Attention Span”
Veteran campaign manager on why California produced no Dem presidential nominees, ever
POLICY & POLITICS
- State Spending Depends on the Fortunes of <1%
- Voters’ Focus on Housing, Crime & Gas…COVID is Yesterday’s Worry
- Outnumbered 2-1, Optimistic CA GOP Convenes
- What is it With California and Homegrown Dem Presidential Candidates?
- CA Employment Grows, But Warning Signs Abound
WATER
- State Senate OKs Lower Residential Water Use Standard
- Forest Fires Burn the Water Supply, Too
- California Leads US in Floodplain Restoration
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 22, 2022
State Spending Depends on the Fortunes of <1%
LA Times California Political Playbook
When Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers settle on details of a new California budget in June to provide another year of government services for almost 40 million people, they will do so largely by tapping the fortunes of one of the most exclusive groups of taxpayers in the nation.
The group includes almost 100,000 taxpayers with incomes above $1 million — residents who represent only about one-half of 1% of all tax returns filed in the state but collectively pay about 40% of all California personal income taxes.
As tax day approaches, it’s this small subset of people who will likely again provide an outsize amount of government cash, a reminder of how dependent the state is on their fortunes.
State officials compile a robust amount of information about tax collections and the Californians who pay, delineated into categories such as adjusted gross income, taxable income and tax liability. But it’s a snapshot of what’s in the rearview mirror: the state Franchise Tax Board’s most recent report is from 2019 and agency officials didn’t respond to a Times request for any partial data sets that might have been compiled from 2020 or 2021.
Even so, the fundamentals are unlikely to change.
California’s progressive income tax policy, by which those who earn more are expected to pay more, has always been intended to skew collection toward a relatively small number of taxpayers. That group of high-income earners has grown in recent years, as has their total tax liability.
State data show that of the more than 17.5 million personal income tax filings in 2019, there were 96,322 tax forms with an adjusted gross income of at least $1 million. These taxpayers had a collective tax liability of $35.3 billion — the single biggest share of the state’s $90 billion in personal income taxes.
So what else does the most recent state tax data tell us about California’s millionaires?
We know this small group of taxpayers reported about $300 billion in taxable income, more than one-fifth of the state’s total. And we know they reported about 9% of the state’s wage and salary earnings but 42% of taxable income earned from interest payments and almost 45% of taxable income earned from stock dividends — a reflection of how investments, not paychecks, drive the income of the most wealthy.
But millionaires are hardly the only story worth telling about California’s progressive income tax system.
Widen the lens to include all California income tax returns with an adjusted gross income of $500,000 a year or more — a view that takes in about 17% of all tax filings in 2019 — and you end up with a group of taxpayers who owed $46.4 billion, more than half of the statewide total.
Or narrow the lens and examine the wealthiest Californians, those earning at least $5 million a year. State tax data show these residents owed $19 billion in taxes in 2019 — one-fifth of the state’s total and paid from only 10,344 tax returns.
Most California taxpayers live far more modest lives. The data show they don’t collect the kind of paycheck that would make them affluent, especially given the relatively high cost of living in the Golden State.
The state Franchise Tax Board reports that 77% of all income tax returns filed in 2019 (13.6 million in all) reported an adjusted gross income of less than $100,000. And more than half of the returns reported income of less than $50,000. An important caveat to these numbers is that they capture all personal income tax returns, including those from people whose earnings were so low that no taxes were triggered. But even among those who owed taxes, two-thirds of all personal income tax filings were from people whose annual income was below $100,000.
In other words, the divide between the haves and have-nots in California is easy to see in who pays taxes. And it’s important to remember that more than 6 million Californians lived in poverty in 2019, according to researchers at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
Expectations are that this year’s tax day — moved to April 18 to accommodate a local holiday in the District of Columbia — will again see tax revenues above projections made earlier this year by state government budget analysts.
The biggest days for income tax payments are expected early next week. But in just the first seven months of California’s fiscal year, personal income tax receipts were $10 billion above estimates. The numbers, though, are hard to quickly put into context, especially after tax law changes might have skewed the timing of some payments.
Even so, it’s safe to say Newsom and lawmakers will again have a surplus of tax revenue to divvy up once they begin negotiations on a new state budget in late May, one that could be as large as $30 billion.
Voters’ Focus on Housing, Crime & Gas…COVID is Yesterday’s Worry
CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters
Californians are undergoing a great reawakening.
After two years of having their lives dominated, and perhaps permanently altered, by COVID-19, they are putting the pandemic behind them and shifting their attention to other concerns old and new.
Predictably, the state’s political atmosphere is making the same transition.
While COVID-19 remains a threat — and could re-emerge as an existential concern — a new poll by UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies finds it occupying a very low place on Californians’ list of issues demanding attention.
Only 4% of voters, the poll found, now consider COVID-19 an important issue — 13th on a list of 15. The list is dominated by housing affordability (31%), homelessness (29%), crime (23%) and gasoline prices (21%).
Housing and homelessness obviously predate the pandemic and have now returned as major concerns, while crime and gas prices are newcomers — or throwbacks, in an historic sense, to the late 1970s, when they dominated the state’s public consciousness and political discourse.
The shrinkage of COVID-19 is obvious not only in the Berkeley-IGS poll, but in the recent actions of the state’s politicians.
Only weeks ago, the Capitol was fiercely debating legislation about mandatory vaccinations, but the bills have now been put on hold.
Last October, Gov. Gavin Newsom trumpeted that California was the first state to announce plans to make vaccinations mandatory for public school students.
Last week, very quietly, the state postponed the mandate until the 2023-24 school year, citing a lag in the full federal approval of shots for younger students.
Newsom’s announcement was just a stunt, reflecting his penchant for wanting to be the nation’s first in everything. Without a postponement, there would have been chaos when classes resumed in September because so few children would have been vaccinated.
The emergence of crime and gas prices as major voter concerns in an election year is compelling politicians to respond. For instance, Newsom and legislators are negotiating some kind of direct payments to Californians to offset spikes in gas prices and other costs of living.
Crime is a trickier issue because for the last decade, California has been softening its treatment of offenders. However, Californians are increasingly worried about becoming crime victims as their worries about being pandemic victims recedes.
A sharp uptick in homicides, an epidemic of car burglaries and smash-and-grab robberies in San Francisco, organized “follow home” robberies in Los Angeles and a gang shootout in downtown Sacramento that left six persons dead are among the incidents that are fueling the increased fear.
Crime could have direct effects on this year’s elections. The district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles face potential recalls because of their less punitive policies. Their kindred soul, Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was appointed by Newsom, could have a tough time winning a full term on his own.
One bellwether of Californians’ changing priorities will be who becomes the next mayor of Los Angeles. Congresswoman Karen Bass had seemed to be cruising to victory but a new Berkeley-IGS poll taken for the Los Angeles Times found that businessman Rick Caruso has zoomed into a virtual tie after spending millions of dollars on ads highlighting the crime issue.
“The poll asked voters to pick two issues that were key to how they will vote,” the Times reported. “Homelessness was by far the top issue, cited by 61% of likely voters. No candidate has established an advantage on that topic, the poll showed.
“By contrast, among the 38% of likely voters who said crime and public safety were top of mind, Caruso had a 4-1 lead over Bass.”
Outnumbered 2-1, Optimistic CA GOP Convenes
Politico California Playbook
California may not be the happiest place on earth for conservatives, but California Republicans gathering in Anaheim this weekend nevertheless have reasons for optimism.
The CAGOP faithful will gather for a pre-midterm planning session and pep rally in Orange County for the next few days. They’ll hear from the man who is a political minority in his home state but poised to lead the House: current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been piling up cash to convert his speakership dreams into reality. The Bakersfield Republican was in the news on Thursday because of a report that he’d disavowed former President Donald Trump, to which McCarthy replied by eagerly embracing the former president.
Upcoming elections offer a mixed bag for California Republicans.Targeted House seats offer some pickup potential, but frontline Republicans like Reps. David Valadao and Mike Garcia have been redistricted into seats that will be challenging to defend despite the anti-Democratic headwinds. The GOP will not be breaking Democrats’ two-thirds majorities in the state Legislature.
But Republicans could benefit as California voters express disillusionment with their leaders and concern about crime, homelessness and inflation. Some statewide races could open pathways to GOP power.
Endorsements are on the agenda, although there’s relatively little drama there. State Sen. Brian Dahle is the prohibitive favorite to win the gubernatorial blessing in a race no one expects Gov. Gavin Newsom to lose. Republican Controller candidate Lanhee Chen’s bid for the party nod is uncontested, which means he’ll add the California Republican Party’s support to Thursday’s surprise embrace from the LA Times editorial board.
The party also won’t be making picks in some crowded and competitive multi-Republican legislator contests, like House races for CA-9 (where Republicans are challenging Rep. Josh Harder) and the open CA-13; for the open state Senate District 4; or for Assembly District 34, in which GOP Assemblymember Tom Lackey has been drawn in with Assembly GOP colleague Thurston Smith; the competitive and open AD-70; or between two GOP challengers to Assemblymember Brian Maienschein in AD-76. The party may or may not take positions on ballot initiatives, the full lineup of which is still in flux, with more measures on the signature-gathering bubble than over the hump.
But the attorney general endorsement fight could be one to watch. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert is not eligible because she’s unaffiliated, which means it’s between Republicans Nathan Hochman and Eric Early. But while Hochman has outpaced Early in major GOP endorsements, they come into this weekend with roughly the same number of CAGOP nominations — demonstrating that Early commands some support among the base, like another conservative radio host you may remember.
Still, the CAGOP was eager last cycle to trumpet its success rate in endorsing for or against measures dealing with taxation, labor laws and affirmative action. And the party hopes to again lay claim to having its fingers on the electorate’s pulse.
What is it With California and Homegrown Dem Presidential Candidates?
The Hill, commentary from Garry South
It has been the most populous state for 60 years, having displaced New York clear back in 1962. It has more people than Canada or Australia. There are more than 20 million registered voters in the state — more voters than there are people living in 47 of the other 49 states. It sends by far the largest delegation to the quadrennial Democratic national nominating conventions. The state offers 55 electoral votes — fully one-fifth of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Yet it has never produced a Democratic president of the United States.
Even harder to fathom, until Kamala Harris’s nomination for vice president in 2020, there had never even been a California Democratic nominee for either president or vice president in the history of the Republic. And it can’t be chalked up to a lack of trying.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown contested for the Democratic nomination in both 1976 and 1980, then tried it again after coming out of political hibernation in 1992. California Sen. Alan Cranston was the first Democrat to launch a bid for the nomination in 1984. And of course, the Democratic primary process in 2020 saw both Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the Democrats’ most public faces in the Russia probe, actively running. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made exploratory trips to Iowa and other states before announcing he would forego a run.
A gaggle of other Democratic California elected officials also took quixotic stabs at running for the White House, including Irvine Mayor Larry Agran in 1992 and Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in 1972.
So why has this behemoth of a nation-state, with its deep-blue politics (a Republican hasn’t won statewide office since 2006, hasn’t won a U.S Senate seat since 1988), been so impotent in producing one of its own to run for president as the Democratic nominee?
As someone who has lived and voted in California for more than 30 years and run multiple statewide campaigns here, I would posit a couple of reasons for this failure. First, as a huge state with a limited political attention span, Californians simply don’t fall in love with their politicians. I was born and raised in Montana, where Sen. Mike Mansfield was considered almost a demigod. Or consider Massachusetts and its love affair — over nearly 70 years — with the Kennedys. That doesn’t happen in California. Thus, California presidential candidates don’t automatically enjoy a home-field advantage. That old biblical saying is perhaps apt: “A prophet is without honor in his own country.”
In my experience, another part of this is because residents of this mega-state tend to believe that someone elected governor or senator ought to first and foremost do their day job and be satisfied that they represent the largest state with one of the world’s biggest economies.
Most recently, of course, after an auspicious launch and attention-getting performances in the early debates, then-Sen. Harris pulled the plug on her bid for the nomination before a single vote was cast. One of the primary reasons was polls showed she would have been creamed in her home state. A survey released by the Los Angeles Times in December 2019 revealed just a paltry 7 percent of California Democrats supporting her candidacy. What’s worse, the same poll showed 61 percent of Democrats wanted her to drop out of the race. How’s that for a big middle finger from your own constituents? Even as vice president, Harris’s job approval in California is in the tank (only 38 percent).
It’s also instructive to recall Jerry Brown’s performance in his own state during his runs for the White House. When he launched a last-minute campaign in 1976, less than two years into his first term and — at just 38 years old — considered a sort of political phenomenon, he did win California handily over Jimmy Carter in the June primary. But in 1980, after Brown had won his 1978 re-election by 20 percent, he garnered only 10 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, essentially abandoned his campaign, and as sitting governor received an embarrassingly meager 4 percent of the vote in his home state.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Brown’s third run for president in 1992, which was definitely not a charm. In the Democratic primary that year, Bill Clinton handily beat Brown 47-40 in Brown’s own home state — where the latter had been on statewide ballots a total of eight times before and had served as governor for eight years.
Another reason California candidates have not done well nationally is because of California’s image in much of the rest of country. Although lots of out-of-staters like to vacation in the state — and send their kids to Stanford or UCLA — we are the big kid on the block everyone loves to hate. California is “La La Land,” the “Left Coast,” and “The Land of Fruits and Nuts” to much of the rest of America. Brown was known as “Governor Moonbeam.” In many of the Western states in close proximity to California, it is common to see bumper stickers that say “Don’t Californicate ____” (fill in the other state’s name). California is very liberal; its political standard deviation from much of the rest of the country is a large one.
All of this matters because in 2024 we could see an incumbent Democratic vice president from California running for president if Pres. Joe Biden changes his mind and decides not to run. And even if Harris were to run, she likely wouldn’t get the nomination uncontested. A possible opponent? Rep. Ro Khanna, a fellow Californian and unabashed progressive being touted by the Berniecrat wing of the party as a potential candidate to replace Biden.
Now that the Golden State finally has a Democrat in the White House — albeit down the hall from the Oval Office — will its fortunes change with regard to electing a home state Democrat as president? It remains to be seen. But given the history, don’t bet your nest egg on it at one of the state’s Indian casinos.
Garry South, a California-based veteran Democratic political strategist, has managed four gubernatorial campaigns in California, including Gray Davis’s wins in 1998 and 2002, and played a key role in Al Gore’s 2000 winning presidential primary and general election campaigns in the state.
CA Employment Grows, But Warning Signs Abound
Associated Press & CalMatters
California employers added 60,200 jobs in March as the number of unemployed people in the nation’s most populous state dipped below 1 million for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
March 2020 was the start of unprecedented job losses in California, when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order. The state lost 2,758,900 jobs in just two months. It has taken two years for the state to get most of them back.
New numbers released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the California Employment Development Department show the state has recovered 2,463,400 of those jobs lost during the pandemic, or 89.2%. California accounted for 14% of job growth nationally in March as the state has posted gains in 13 out of the past 14 months.
Although the jobless rate is improving, new federal data reveals some warning signs: The Golden State accounted for more than 25% of the nation’s ongoing unemployment claims for the week ending April 16. And it had nearly 1.3 million job openings at the end of February, up 158,000 from the previous month.
The state’s job growth has been driven by increased demand from consumers, who have more money to spend thanks to billions of dollars in state and federal government spending during the pandemic. Much of that government support has ended, which could signal a tightening in the job market in the coming months.
“Everyone else is going to say this is a great job report, and it is strong. But I think it’s important to recognize in part what it’s built on, and that bill is going to come due,” said Michael Bernick, a former director of the Employment Development Department who closely monitors California’s labor market as an attorney with the law firm Duane Morris.
Business owners have consistently reported difficulty hiring workers to keep up with demand. The shortage has driven up wages for workers, gains that have been offset by rising inflation that have increased costs for food, gasoline and other products.
California’s labor force — defined as the number of people who either have a job or are looking for work — has grown by nearly 350,000 people in the past year, typically a strong sign of economic recovery. But the state’s labor force is still nearly 400,000 people short of the pre-pandemic high, Bernick said.
“Despite the healthy March report, the main problem remains labor shortages. Some workers are in no hurry to return to work,” Sung Won Sohn, a professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, wrote in an email analyzing the new jobs numbers. “The pandemic has also caused a Great Migration from metro areas to the suburbs and the countryside. In the process, the link between jobs and where they live have weakened contributing to the relatively low labor participation rate.”
State Senate OKs Lower Residential Water Use Standard
Associated Press
Mired in an extreme drought, California lawmakers on Thursday took the first step toward lowering the standard for how much water people use in their homes — a move that won’t be enforced on individual customers but could lead to higher rates even as consumption declines.
California’s current standard for residential indoor water use is 55 gallons (208 liters) per person per day. The rule doesn’t apply to customers, meaning regulators don’t write tickets to people for using more water than they are allowed. Instead, the state requires water agencies to meet that standard across all of its customers.
Last year, a study by state regulators found the median indoor residential water use in California was 48 gallons (181 liters) per person per day, or well below the current standard. They recommended state lawmakers lower the standard to encourage more conservation as droughts become more frequent and more severe because of climate change.
The state Senate voted 28-9 on Thursday to lower the standard to 47 gallons (178 liters) per person per day starting in 2025; and 42 gallons (159 liters) per person per day beginning in 2030. The bill has not yet passed the Assembly, meaning it is still likely months away from becoming law. But Thursday’s vote by a comfortable margin is a sign the proposal has the support necessary to pass.
“This really is about the next generation. This really is about your grandchildren,” said Sen. Robert Hertzberg, a Democrat who authored the bill.
The U.S. West is in the middle of a severe drought just a few years after record rain and snowfall filled reservoirs to capacity. Scientists say this boom and bust cycle is driven by climate change that will be marked by longer, more severe droughts. A study from earlier this year found the U.S. West was in the middle of a megadrought that is now the driest in at least 1,200 years.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked people to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 15%, but so far residents have been slow to meet that goal.
The new standards for indoor water use, should they become law, would be just one part of the state’s strategy to conserve more water. They would be combined with other new rules still under development for things like outdoor water use.
How the new standards could impact customers will vary. Indoor water use will decrease gradually as state building codes require more efficient appliances in new and renovated homes. Some water agencies could choose to charge higher rates for people who use too much water. But most agencies will likely focus on replacing aging pipes that leak less.
That won’t be cheap. Agencies will pay for those changes by increasing rates, said Julia Hall, senior legislative advocate for the Association of California Water Agencies.
“What may happen is people will reduce their water use and ultimately see their bill go up over time,” she said.
Hall says the proposed standards are based on a flawed study by state regulators that did not take into account the long-term impacts of the pandemic, which include more people working from home instead of an office. They have asked the state to put off these new standards until the state can conduct a more detailed study.
Forest Fires Burn the Water Supply, Too
Associated Press
TWIN BRIDGES — In a California forest torched by wildfire last summer, researcher Anne Nolin examines a handful of the season’s remaining snow, now darkened by black specks from the burned trees above.
Spring heat waves had already melted much of the year’s limited snowfall across California and parts of the West when Nolin visited in early April. But she and her colleague are studying another factor that might’ve made the snow vanish faster in the central Sierra Nevada — the scorched trees, which no longer provide much shade and are shedding flecks of carbon.
The darkened snow is “primed to absorb all that sunlight” and melt faster, said Nolin, who researches snow at the University of Nevada, Reno.
As climate change fuels the spread of wildfires across the West, researchers want to know how the dual effect might disrupt water supplies. Communities often rely on melting snow in the spring to replenish reservoirs during dryer months. If snow melts earlier than normal, that would likely leave less water flowing in the summer when it’s most needed, Nolin said.
Multiple studies indicate that snow in a burned forest disappears up to several weeks sooner than snow in a healthy forest because of the lack of a shade canopy and carbon shedding from trees that intensifies the absorption of sunlight.
Water forecasting factors in variables including snow density, soil moisture and air temperature. Although dark accumulation on snow isn’t widely measured, Tim Bardsley, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service, said it is a contributing factor to the timing of snowmelt and is worth considering incorporating into supply forecasting.
Dust, ash and soot similarly affect snow by causing it to absorb more light in what’s known as the “albedo effect.” But California officials are increasingly worried about carbon, which absorbs even more.
“It was like, OK, we really need to understand this. This is the new norm,” said David Rizzardo of the California Department of Water Resources.
In some fire-damaged areas, state officials are beginning to map snow from planes with cameras that measure albedo and have plans to upgrade remote sensing stations as well.
Already, a warming climate is leading to earlier snowmelt and leaving places more vulnerable to wildfire, said Noah Molotch, who researches water and snow cycles at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A burned area “exacerbates the impact of drought” by leading to even dryer conditions in hotter months, he said.
Nolin and graduate student Arielle Koshkin hiked into the El Dorado National Forest for one of their final measuring trips earlier this month when the region typically has the most snow accumulation. Little remained when they arrived in part because of unusually hot temperatures this spring and a long streak of cloudless days.
Late-season storms have since blanketed the carbon-coated snow with several inches of fresh powder, which Nolin said could help slow the melt.
Meanwhile, the Caldor Fire that burned the area and more than 200,000 acres last year has left nearby communities scrambling over more immediate water worries.
About 40 miles southwest from where Nolin surveyed the snow, the town of Grizzly Flats is working to fix a water pipeline damaged in the fire. The pipeline diverts snowmelt into a reservoir but burned trees keep falling and puncturing it.
It’s not yet clear exactly how the charred trees might disrupt their future water supply. So far this year, water managers said runoff from snowmelt appears normal. But officials don’t know for sure since the gauges in the stream melted in the fire.
Jodi Lauther, general manager of the local water agency, said she’s concerned about the fire’s lasting effects. For now, she said, “we are in survival mode.”
California Leads US in Floodplain Restoration
Associated Press
MODESTO — Between vast almond orchards and dairy pastures in the heart of California’s farm country sits a property being redesigned to look like it did 150 years ago, before levees restricted the flow of rivers that weave across the landscape.
The 2,100 acres (1,100 hectares) at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers in the state’s Central Valley are being reverted to a floodplain. That means when heavy rains cause the rivers to go over their banks, water will run onto the land, allowing traditional ecosystems to flourish and lowering flood risk downstream.
The Dos Rios Ranch Preserve is California’s largest single floodplain restoration project, part of the nation’s broadest effort to rethink how rivers flow as climate change alters the environment. The land it covers used to be a farm, but the owners sold it to the nonprofit River Partners to use for restoring wildlife habitat.
The state wants to fund and prioritize similar projects that lower risks to homes and property while providing other benefits, like boosting habitats, improving water quality and potentially recharging depleted groundwater supplies. By notching or removing levees, swelling rivers can flow onto land that no longer needs to be kept dry.
“It’s giving new life ecologically but in a way that’s consistent with, complementary to, the human systems that have developed over the 150 years since the Gold Rush,” said Julie Rentner, president of Rivers Partners.
The Central Valley covers about 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) and is an agricultural powerhouse — more than 250 crops are grown there. The region constitutes about 1% of U.S. farmland but produces 25% of the nation’s food while accounting for one-fifth of all groundwater pumping in the U.S.
A flood in the 1860s demonstrates the potential for disaster; up to 6,000 square miles (15,500 square kilometers) of the valley were submerged. As the state’s population rapidly expanded and farming boomed through the 20th century, the government engineered vast systems to move water around to supply people and farms, and erected levees to protect cities and crops.
Some of those levees cut off rivers from their natural floodplains. As climate change causes temperatures to warm, mountain snow that typically trickles into the state’s watershed may fill rivers much faster, increasing the flows beyond what levees can take.
Floodplain restoration can help. For projects like Dos Rios, land that farmers no longer want to manage is being turned into space where rivers can breathe. Farther north, barriers on the Feather River have been altered to allow more water to flow into an existing wildlife area. In West Sacramento, 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) of levee along the Sacramento River is being set back.
California officials began centralizing valley flood planning a decade ago. Though some of the worst and most notable floods in recent decades have occurred in places like Houston and New Orleans, parts of California are at serious risk that’s only expected to increase due to climate change. In 1997, major storms caused levees to break throughout the valley, including on the Tuolumne River, causing nearly $2 billion in damage and destroying more than 20,000 homes. Nine people died.
An update to the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan is set for release this week. It will detail ways to lower flood risk and protect the roughly 1.3 million people who live on floodplains, along with key infrastructure, agricultural lands and ecosystems.
In the last update five years ago, the state put a premium on flood plain restoration projects. Dos Rios is one of 17 identified by the state. Four have been completed since 2013, three are under construction, and 10 are proposed. They’ve cost $300 million so far, with money coming from bond funds and local and federal dollars.
“Dos Rios is an amazing example, but we need like 30 more of those,” said Jane Dolan, chair of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board.
Floodplain restoration isn’t unique to California. Washington state launched a program in 2013 called Floodplains by Design, and projects are popping up along the Mississippi River. But experts say California stands out for its emphasis on projects that provide ecological support.
“There’s tremendous potential for this kind of work, and I’m quite impressed by how deliberate and thoughtful California is being in this space,” said Todd Bridges, head of the Army Corps’ Engineering with Nature program, which takes a similar approach.
The Biden administration set aside at least $1.75 billion in the infrastructure bill for multipurpose projects aimed at reducing flood risk.
Just as climate change is making California’s dry periods drier, it’s expected to make the wet periods wetter. The state experienced an atmospheric river in October and major rain and snowfall in December, followed by its driest January through Marchon record.
“One of the things that drives me crazy about California water is that decision makers want to talk about floods in flood years and droughts in drought years,” said Barry Nelson, a water consultant who worked on the Dos Rios project. “The weather whiplash we’re seeing this year is really teaching us we need to break out of that pattern.”
Since the 1850s, 95% of the historical wetlands and river habitats in the Central Valley have been eliminated, according to state flood planners. It would be impossible to restore all of that in a state of 40 million people, where major cities like the capital of Sacramento and Stockton have been built in floodplains.
But the valley’s vast open spaces offer opportunities, such as on farmland that’s no longer in use. The property Dos Rios sits on was most recently a dairy, and the owners approach River Partners about selling the land for conservation in the mid-2000s.
River Partners has notched berms to allow river water to flow onto 1,000 acres (400 hectares). The nonprofit is going through government hurdles to breach a federal levee keeping the Tuolumne River at bay. Eventually Dos Rios could hold up to 10,000 acre-feet of flood water, keeping it from flowing toward cities like Stockton. An acre-foot is about 325,850 gallons (about 1.23 million liters).
Fourteen kinds of woody trees and shrubs are planted in a way that’s designed to attract native species. The riparian brush rabbit, chinook salmon, steelhead trout, the yellow warbler, and the sandhill crane are among the species that call Dos Rios home. The habitat there also supports the Aleutian cackling goose, which used to be listed as an endangered species.
Advocates for such projects would like to see them built faster in California and beyond. Rentner, of River Partners, said while there’s broad agreement on the value of restoring floodplains, concerns about the impact of land conversion on local tax bases and debates about how broadly to expand public access can slow things down.
But in the messy world of California water, floodplain restoration stands out, said Nelson, the water consultant.
“In this sort of ocean of disagreements about water policy, about all these other issues, flood management is this place where enormous change has happened in the last decade in a way that is incredibly broadly supported,” he said.