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State Water Board unveils $15 million supply-and-demand modeling program to inform drought and allocation decisions
Summary
The State Water Resources Control Board described a $15 million, one-time modeling contract to build hydrologic supply-and-demand models and a public dashboard across roughly 17—18 watersheds. Officials said the tools are primarily informational for now but aim to support local water-sharing and better-targeted regulatory action in shortages.
Philip Dutton, an engineer and program manager in the State Water Resources Control Board's Division of Water Rights, outlined a new supply-and-demand assessment program that will deliver watershed-scale hydrologic models and a public dashboard to guide decisions during water shortages.
The board has contracted Paradigm Environmental for about $15 million to develop watershed models, refine an allocation tool that matches supply to surface-water demand, and, where appropriate, couple groundwater and surface-water models. "We have a $15 million modeling contract with Paradigm Environmental," Dutton said, describing the purpose as providing "new data and tools to provide informed decision-making and planning during times of water shortage." The contract is a one-time award that runs through March 2028.
Why it matters: the models are intended to give state and local managers finer-scale information than previously available, dividing watersheds into subunits (the Russian River work used 28 subwatersheds) and enabling month-by-month assessments of availability and potential shortfalls. That data supported a voluntary water-sharing program in the Russian River during the 2021—22 drought, Dutton said, and the board hopes to enable similar local responses before emergency curtailments are required.
How it works: the Division is using a physics-based hydrologic framework built on the Loading Simulation Program C++ (LSPC) model to simulate runoff and other hydrologic fluxes. Muhammad Sorabi, senior water-resource-control engineer, described required inputs as meteorological data (precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and, where relevant, variables for snow), streamflow and reservoir stage data, and geospatial datasets for soils, land cover and topography. Staff will also QA/QC annual self-reported water-use and diversion data before use: the team flagged duplicate reporting and unit-conversion errors as common problems and has written algorithms to detect and correct many of those issues.
A public dashboard will display demand, available supply, and historical estimates of met and unmet demand; finalized model files and a 45-day public-comment window will follow each model's completion. "Once the model for a watershed is calibrated and validated, the contractor starts drafting a model development report and then we will put it online for public feedback," Sorabi said.
Limits and next steps: presenters emphasized the program's current informational role. "There's no regulatory effort behind this at this point," Dutton said when asked about enforcement. Formal curtailment actions historically have required emergency regulatory steps or executive action; the new tools are intended to inform both board decision-making and local stewardship to reduce the need for formal curtailments. Presenters also said the modeling framework can be used for climate scenarios and, in watersheds where groundwater strongly affects surface flows, paired with groundwater models to improve accuracy.
The board is piloting the approach in multiple basins (including the Russian River, Napa River and Navarro River) and plans monthly model runs to refresh the dashboard once models are finalized. The contract expires in March 2028.
