Building Resilience Together: The Future of the RWA Watersheds

(American, Cosumnes, and Bear Rivers)

Welcome to the RWA Watersheds Resilience site — your hub for collaboration, innovation, and action. Here, we’re working together to address climate challenges, protect vital water resources, and create a sustainable future for our communities and ecosystems.

Watershed Resilience Program

To help California better handle climate change, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) launched the Watershed Resilience Program as part of the 2023 California Water Plan. This plan emphasizes the importance of studying climate risks in specific watersheds and creating strategies to adapt to these challenges. It also encourages investments in teamwork and solutions that address multiple sectors within each watershed. The Watershed Resilience Program is an evolution of the Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) Program that builds on local relationships, trust, and collaborative regional planning while placing a stronger emphasis on climate vulnerability assessment, adaptation planning, watershed-scale collaboration, and equity and inclusiveness. Increased collaboration across water-related sectors- water supply, flood, groundwater, water quality, forest/fire, ecosystem, and land use sectors- is also a priority. The Budget Acts of 2021 and 2022 provided initial funding for DWR to begin implementing the Watershed Resilience Program. A set of five 2-year pilot planning projects have been awarded and are underway to apply and test the watershed resilience approach in representative regional watersheds across California and lay the foundation for future efforts.

Pilot Watersheds Include

Pilot watersheds receive funding and guidance from DWR to convene broad, inclusive watershed networks of local agencies, Tribal governments, community leaders, non-profit organizations and other partners. DWR envisions equity and inclusion as being a critical focus for watershed networks. These locally-led networks collaborate across their watershed to quantify their greatest climate vulnerabilities, and develop multi-benefit adaptation strategies and projects to increase climate change resilience. Lessons learned from these pilots will inform future State funding programs. If additional funding becomes available, DWR intends to incentivize this watershed resilience approach in other watersheds throughout the State.

Managing water

Managing water from headwaters to outflow across entire watersheds.

equity

Centering equity and inclusiveness in all water decisions.

Analyzing climate

Assessing climate risks and watershed adaptation strategies effectively.

Collaborating

Collaborating across water, land, fire, and ecosystem-related sectors.

metrics

Developing outcome metrics for regional and statewide tracking.

Pilot Overview

Pilot watersheds receive funding and guidance from DWR to convene broad, inclusive watershed networks of local agencies, Tribal governments, community leaders, non-profit organizations and other partners. DWR envisions equity and inclusion as being a critical focus for watershed networks. These locally-led networks collaborate across their watershed to quantify their greatest climate vulnerabilities, and develop multi-benefit adaptation strategies and projects to increase climate change resilience. Lessons learned from these pilots will inform future State funding programs. If additional funding becomes available, DWR intends to incentivize this watershed resilience approach in other watersheds throughout the State.

  • Incorporating equity and inclusiveness into the decision-making process.
  • Assessing current water conditions and identifying gaps in existing climate vulnerability studies.
  • Carrying out quantitative evaluation of climate risks, such as water supply, groundwater, drought, flood management, wildfire, ecosystems, and water quality.
  • Developing adaptation strategies to improve integrated water management, such as groundwater recharge, reservoir reoperation, floodplain management, infrastructure improvements, and ecosystem-based solutions.
American-river-map

Study Area

The study area boundary includes the entire American River, Cosumnes River, and Bear River watersheds, eastside tributaries of the Feather River and Sacramento River between the Bear River mouth and Mokelumne River mouth, and the City of West Sacramento.

RWA_River_map

Resilience Planning Process

The pilot applies a five-step adaptive framework with cross-cutting elements including networks, equity, and performance tracking which span the length of the RWA Watersheds Resilience Pilot and beyond with the establishment of the Watershed Network.

1. Set The Stage
2. Explore Hazards
3. Assess Vulnerabilities
4. Develop Strategies
5. Implement and Monitor

Participate
Resilience Planning Process Figure