The region the plan covers
The eight-county San Joaquin Valley includes seven of the nation’s top 10 agricultural producing counties and grows more than 250 crops with an annual value of about $24 billion, with almost $10 billion more in annual dairy and beef revenues. More than 300 disadvantaged communities in the study area draw on the same groundwater that supplies those acres. The Valley is also an important link in the Pacific Flyway and provides habitat for salmon and other anadromous fish. The plan treats water supply, flood management, and ecosystem condition as one regional system.
The gap the plan measures
The plan’s central finding is a water supply-demand gap of about 2.4 million acre-feet per year by 2040. It is built from overdraft reported in the Groundwater Sustainability Plans that local agencies wrote under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a provision for replenishing groundwater beyond the elimination of overdraft, contributions from the San Joaquin River Restoration Program and the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program, and projected reductions in Delta imports. Increased demand under a hotter and drier climate is included. The figure excludes supply reductions that have already occurred under existing regulatory requirements, and it does not assume future constraints that are not yet known.
Sixteen subbasins are implementing groundwater sustainability requirements at the same time, and the gap is not distributed evenly among them. Areas with access to local surface water have more ability to close their own shortfall through increased management of what they have. Areas with limited local supply will rely more on imports from the Delta.
The cost of inaction
Without action, about 20 percent of the Valley’s cultivated area could be retired over the next 20 to 30 years, up to one million acres. The plan puts the annual consequence at $7.2 billion in farm revenue, $2.1 billion in wages, and 85,000 jobs, including 42,000 agricultural and service sector jobs. Those effects would carry into the local, regional, and state services that depend on public revenues, and they would fall disproportionately on the lowest-income communities. In one of the most productive farming regions in the United States, the national food supply is part of what is at stake.
What the plan contains
The plan opens with the case for a unified regional approach, then quantifies the supply-demand gap subbasin by subbasin and describes the problems, needs, and opportunities behind it.
It examines flood management facilities, operations, and the federal, state, and local agencies responsible for them, and it summarizes the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan and related regional plans. It then shows where flood investment can serve more than one purpose: upper watershed projects, diversion of high flows for groundwater recharge, revised reservoir flood operations, increased floodway conveyance capacity, and additional surface storage all reduce flood risk while improving supply reliability and supporting habitat.
It reviews historic and current ecosystem conditions in the Valley and compiles restoration objectives already developed by entities across the region. Strategic land repurposing appears here as a regional tool for converting agricultural land to habitat, recharge, energy production, and other uses in ways that hold both environmental and economic value. Ecosystem enhancement is treated as an integral part of coordinated long-term land and water management.
The inventory of projects and actions
The plan compiles an expansive inventory of potential water supply and flood risk reduction projects, drawing on the Groundwater Sustainability Plans, state and federal plans, Blueprint technical studies, and other public sources. It spans groundwater recharge, conveyance improvements, surface and groundwater storage, recycled and reclaimed water, surface water treatment and delivery, upper watershed projects, and demand management actions. Well over 300 recharge projects are described in the Groundwater Sustainability Plans alone. Each entry carries what is known about project type, estimated yield, cost, implementation considerations, and potential to produce multiple benefits.
The plan states the conclusion plainly: the Valley does not lack possible solutions. The work ahead is to prioritize, fund, permit, and implement them in a coordinated way that produces regional benefit.
What the evaluations show
Three investment scenarios were evaluated, each building on the one before it.
The first restores the capacity of subsidence-impacted Central Valley Project and State Water Project canals and improves south Delta channel operations. These projects produce no new supply. They keep the gap from growing and make many other projects possible. The Friant-Kern Canal shows what is at stake: its most affected reach carried about 1,600 cubic feet per second against a design capacity of 4,000 before Phase 1 of the middle reach project was completed in 2024.
The second adds non-structural actions and local water supply projects: reoperating Valley reservoirs with improved forecasting, non-structural actions in the Delta informed by real-time science, and projects across the region that increase reuse, recharge, and local storage.
The third adds large infrastructure: new and expanded storage north and south of the Delta, modified Delta conveyance and diversion facilities, and enlarged conveyance within the Valley.
Total implementation costs range from approximately $18 billion to $33 billion. The plan is candid about what that investment buys. A significant gap remains under the most optimistic performance assumptions, and the costs will exceed affordability thresholds for many agricultural water users, which is why federal and state funding programs are central to the recommendations. Land repurposing still occurs. Full implementation reduces it from up to one million acres to a range of 120,000 to 400,000 acres, planned rather than unplanned.
What the plan recommends
For local and regional entities, the plan recommends restoring and maintaining the delivery capability of subsidence-impacted canals and improving south Delta channel operations; partnering with state and federal agencies to determine water available for diversion to recharge and to advance non-structural actions; developing the conveyance, recharge, and storage projects identified in Groundwater Sustainability Plans with an emphasis on shovel-readiness; pursuing large regional and statewide projects; partnering with urban water users outside the Valley on jointly beneficial banking, recharge, and conveyance projects; establishing a regionally coordinated approach to agricultural land repurposing; and participating in California Water Plan updates.
For state and federal entities, the plan recommends:
- A new San Joaquin Valley Water Supply Security program and non-traditional federal funding mechanisms. The Reclamation extraordinary maintenance program was designed to rehabilitate aged infrastructure with full reimbursement by beneficiaries, and regional subsidence has created conditions in the Valley that the program fits poorly.
- A long-term, sustainable state funding mechanism dedicated to Valley water resources projects. The plan cites the 2025 Texas measure dedicating up to $1 billion a year from existing sales tax revenue as a current example of dedicated state investment.
- Streamlined permitting, with coordination across agencies, integrated requirements, clear criteria, and accountable timelines.
- A review of whether institutional requirements, such as authorized places of use for project supplies, would impede implementation.
- A broader definition of benefits in financial feasibility analysis, including societal benefits such as reliable domestic food production.
- Continued state and federal work on groundwater recharge, Delta non-structural actions, adaptive reservoir operations, and California Water Plan preparation under SB 659 and SB 72.
For implementation, the plan recommends a structured approach to regional agreement on project recommendations, continued regional and statewide partnerships, regular updates that measure progress toward closing the gap, an updated regional economic impact study, and continued engagement with the Department of Water Resources on California Water Plan updates.
What the plan doesn’t do
The plan maintains existing water rights and contractual priorities, and none of its analyses assume actions that would violate or supersede those frameworks. It does not replace or supersede any Groundwater Sustainability Plan. It was built from the plans local agencies have already written, not over them. It does not select projects.
Next Step
The next step? The plan calls for structured, transparent, and adaptable process to evaluate and select the projects.
