Delta Adapts: Creating a Climate Resilient Future

Latest Developments

Adaptation Strategy

Now, through 2023, Delta Stewardship Council staff will work with a diverse group of interests (including community-based organizations, environmental groups, and reclamation districts, as well as local and State partners) to prepare a draft Adaptation Strategy based on the recently completed Vulnerability Assessment.

To do this, staff has convened a cross-sector Stakeholder Workgroup and four technical focus groups associated with ecosystems, agricultural resources, water supply reliability, and flooding. Through these engagements, which began in Fall of 2021, staff will gather diverse input on a variety of adaptation approaches to consider for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and evaluate the impacts of these approaches.

Throughout 2022, staff will use this input received to develop adaptation scenarios and identify the corresponding tradeoffs of the scenarios. Staff will also work to identify the costs of adaptation and how it will be funded, who will implement it, and a general timeframe for implementation. In early 2023, the draft Adaptation Strategy is expected to be released for public review, after which comments will be addressed and the Adaptation Strategy will be finalized.

Final Vulnerability Assessment

In 2021, the Council published the final Vulnerability Assessment. The first of its kind Vulnerability Assessment evaluates the vulnerability of the Delta and Suisun Marsh to climate impacts through the end of the century. It addresses comments received on the public review draft received in early 2021.

For a summary of the Delta Adapts Initiative and its Vulnerability Assessment, read the interactive story map and watch the introductory YouTube video.

To learn more about Delta Adapts, contact climatechange@deltacouncil.ca.gov.

Background

California relies on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in many ways. It supplies a portion of the drinking water for 27 million Californians, fuels California’s $3 trillion economy, and is a biodiversity hotspot for more than 750 plant and animal species. It is also home to more than 627,000 people spread across rural agricultural communities, legacy communities, and urban areas including Sacramento, West Sacramento, Stockton, Lathrop, Manteca, and the eastern Bay Area. Changes in climate put the state’s water supply, economy, and biodiversity at risk—decreasing water quality and increasing stress on levees that protect residents, farmland, and the state’s network of public utilities from mass flooding, and the species who thrive in the region’s ecosystems.

As the world continues to feel the pressures of climate change and experience hotter temperatures, regional adaptation rooted in science-based decision-making is more critical than ever. We must move quickly, and we must move together to both plan and respond.

The Delta Stewardship Council decided to take action in the Delta and Suisun Marsh in response to climate change at its May 2018 meeting, directing staff to begin a two-phase effort:

1. a vulnerability assessment, completed in 2021, that improved understanding of regional vulnerabilities in order to protect the vital resources the Delta provides to California and beyond with state interests and investments top of mind, followed by
2. an adaptation plan detailing strategies and tools that state, regional, and local governments can use to help communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems thrive in the face of climate change.

Together, these two phases form the Delta Adapts: Creating a Climate Resilient Future initiative, a comprehensive, regional approach to climate resiliency that cuts across regional boundaries and commits to collaboration across state, local, and regional levels.

Goals and Process

The goals of Delta Adapts are to:

• Inform future work at the Council
• Provide a toolkit of information for others to use
• Integrate climate change into the state’s prioritization of future Delta actions and investments
• Serve as a framework to be built upon by the Council and others in years to come

Council staff are pursuing these goals across the two phases, while following the statutory requirements outlined in the Delta Reform Act of 2009. Delta Adapts will consider climate change impacts that are expected to occur and amend the Delta Plan, where applicable.

Phase One: Vulnerability Assessment

The first phase is a vulnerability assessment characterizing climate change stressors as well as potential physical hazards posed by these stressors.

The vulnerability assessment assesses risks posed by these hazards to Delta communities (including vulnerable communities) and a variety of regional assets, including agriculture, community facilities and services, water management and flood control infrastructure, parks and recreation, transportation, water supply, and ecosystems. The first phase of the Delta Adapts initiative has been completed.

Phase Two: Adaptation Strategy

The second phase is the development of an adaptation strategy identifying a range of policy and management actions that could be taken, both by the Council and others, that would improve regional resilience to climate change. Relative costs of implementation and prioritization of actions will also be included in the development of the adaptation strategy.

This adaptation strategy will identify how we can respond to the climate vulnerabilities consistent with the following resilience goals.

Engagement

While the Council is leading these two phases, both phases are being developed in partnership with technical experts, state and local governments, and community representatives to ensure the use of best available science, to allow for broad engagement in the planning of the initiative, and to reflect the broad range of stakeholder interests in the Delta. To promote the exchange of information between these groups, Council staff established a Stakeholder Work Group (SWG).

In addition to the SWG, a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) provided expert knowledge, review, and guidance throughout the development of the Vulnerability Assessment. The TAC included experts from public agencies, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, the private sector, and individuals with knowledge of climate change, the Delta, and its resources. Many of the TAC members are now participating in the development of the Adaptation Strategy through technical focus groups associated with flooding, ecosystems, agriculture, and water supply reliability.