Delta Plan Success Metrics Inform Council Priorities for the Next Five Years
February 25, 2025
By Martina Koller and Jeff Henderson
How do we know if we are successfully managing the Delta’s complex ecosystem?
How can we adapt management practices to account for a constantly changing environment?
What is a reasonable timeframe for seeing the impacts of our actions on the ecosystem?
The Delta Plan Five-Year Review seeks to answer these questions to provide insights into how we collectively make a difference approximately ten years after the Delta Stewardship Council adopted the Delta Plan in 2013.
Every five years, the Council evaluates progress by examining key accomplishments and deficiencies in Delta Plan implementation. Each Delta Plan review informs the Council’s priorities in the following five years to better achieve the coequal goals. The review is also required by the Delta Reform Act.
The Council completed the first Five-Year Review in 2019.
In the following years, the Council worked toward implementing the included priority actions, such as advancing planning for climate change risks and addressing environmental justice in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Other significant recommended actions included amending the Delta Plan to provide a framework for protecting and restoring ecosystems, completing prioritization of levee improvements, and advancing interagency coordination through the Delta Plan Interagency Implementation Committee. To advance the best available science to support decision-making, the past five years included the release of the 2022-2026 Science Action Agenda and the 2022 State of the Bay-Delta Science synthesis focused on ecosystem services and disservices of primary producers. The Delta Science Tracker was also launched, and $20 million was allocated to fund critical research projects addressing key knowledge gaps. These important actions demonstrate the Council’s dedication and commitment to meet the remaining challenges.
The latest Five-Year Review was completed in 2024.
New to this report are ‘report cards’ to rate ten-year progress toward the established performance measure objectives. Like an academic report card, these at-a-glance infographics offer a quick look at how well we accomplish these objectives and offer a big-picture view of what is happening in the Delta. The 2024 Review also identifies ways to improve the performance measures and develop additional science to expand our understanding of the effectiveness of Delta Plan implementation.
The Council, together with state, federal and local partners, implements the Delta Plan, a long-term, comprehensive plan for managing the Delta and Suisun Marsh to achieve a reliable statewide water supply and healthy Delta ecosystem while preserving and enhancing Delta’s unique cultural, recreational, and agricultural values.
In addition to evaluating performance measures, the 2024 Review is informed by an analysis of the Council’s regulatory and appellate functions to ensure they remain effective and relevant.
Key findings from the 2024 Review include:
- Improved water conservation and urban water use efficiency have contributed to reduced demand for Delta water relative to baseline conditions. Over the past ten years, Californians reduced their urban water use by 20% and used 50 gallons per capita per day less on average compared to 2010 conditions.
- Despite success in implementing restoration projects, progress has not been at a scale sufficient to slow or reverse overall ecosystem decline. Restoration projects added over 8,000 acres of tidal and non-tidal wetlands and riparian and floodplain habitat, making some progress toward the Delta Plan target of restoring 60,000 to 80,000 acres of natural habitat.
- Priority focus areas toward meeting Delta as an Evolving Place objectives include accelerating subsidence reversal efforts and encouraging tourism within the Delta. Projects implemented in the Delta for subsidence reversal and carbon sequestration added a total area of about 3,300 out of the desired 30,000 target acres. Over 58,000 acres of land are publicly accessible for recreation and tourism; however, this amount of land has not increased during the past ten years.
- Improvements to urban and rural levees continue to reduce flood risks. However, only about one-third of Delta islands and tracts are fully protected.
- New tools and data sources are available to support the creation of new performance measures.
Environmental conditions in the Delta are affected by hydroclimatic variables that can magnify, diminish, and obscure the effects of management actions, underscoring this data's importance. As climate change intensifies, performance-based evaluations provide a regular pulse check on the state of Delta Plan implementation. As more data is collected, the performance measure report cards can provide structured, consistent feedback on the hydrological, ecological, and human characteristics that define the Delta as a unique and evolving place. The Council uses such feedback to inform adaptive management of Delta Plan recommendations to improve the trajectory toward desired targets.
Going forward, the Council will focus, with urgency in mind, to:
- Reduce reliance on Delta water by establishing routine and consistent accounting. This will enable the Council and others to monitor trends in water use.
- Accelerate ecosystem restoration by redoubling Council efforts to advance restoration projects and leading agency and partner coordination to expand opportunities to restore the ecosystem.
- Accelerate subsidence reversal efforts by advancing incentives and protocols to support carbon markets for rice and wetland conversion. Incentives to transition lands using sustainable management practices will play an important role in making large-scale transitions economically viable.
- Promote recreation and tourism as important drivers of the Delta economy. Improving roadways and marinas to withstand climate change and other stressors will improve recreation and tourism opportunities and benefit the economy.
- Improve state and federal assurances for levees by advocating for sustainable state levee funding and redoubling efforts to renew federal commitments for post-disaster response. Updated economic valuation of reliable water supply and transportation services protected by levees will inform recovery assistance.
- Implement the Delta Levees Investment Strategy (DLIS), which informs investments in levees and considers changing risk, economic, and engineering factors to achieve greater risk reduction benefits.
- Consider the impacts and benefits of capturing and storing carbon on water supply reliability, ecosystem restoration, and the Delta as a place, including environmental justice considerations, given the Delta’s high geological potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.
The Delta Plan is implemented through partnerships. The Council leads agencies, academia, and organizations alike to achieve Delta Plan goals collaboratively. This latest review and its thirteen recommendations present a framework of near-term priorities for the Council and its present and future partners. For a full list of the recommended actions set forth in the five-year review, please read the 2024 Report (linked above).
As we work toward these priorities, we invite you to keep track of our collective progress! We invite you to use our online dashboard to view annual changes in performance measures that track progress toward the Delta Plan targets.
About the Authors
Martina Koller is a Program Manager at the Council. Martina has led the Performance Management Team since 2017 and works to integrate science and monitoring results into decision-making. Previously, she worked on adaptive management and science communication with the Delta Science Program and on fish habitat connectivity restoration at the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Jeff Henderson is the Deputy Executive Officer for Planning & Performance at the Council. Jeff is an urban and environmental planner with 25 years of experience in the public and private sectors specializing in land use and conservation planning, flood hazard management, climate change, hazard mitigation, and the implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Prior to joining the Council, he worked for multiple private firms as an urban and environmental planning consultant to local jurisdictions throughout California.