Climate change is reshaping the Russian River Watershed, our State, and our planet right before our eyes. Once-predictable patterns of rain and flow are shifting: winters are warmer, storms come harder and faster, and dry periods are longer and more extreme. The once reliable feed of new precipitation to our creeks and groundwater basins is no more, disrupting the balance that has long sustained our communities, farms, and wildlife.
The Russian River has always been a system of extremes — wet winters, dry summers, and cycles of drought and flood. But today, those swings are growing sharper. Long droughts are draining reservoirs and drying shallow wells. Sudden atmospheric rivers bring destructive floods, but little lasting recharge. Our challenge is no longer surviving an occasional drought; it’s learning to live sustainably in a climate where water scarcity is the new normal.
Urban Water Management Plans: Tools in Need of Modernization
Urban Water Management Plans (UWMPs) are the backbone of local water planning. Every five years, cities and water districts — including Sonoma Water and others in our region — are required to show how they will meet demand and prepare for shortages. These plans guide major decisions about growth, conservation, and infrastructure.
However, many UWMPs fail to capture the cumulative impacts of sequential drought years — a growing reality in our changing climate. When droughts occur back-to-back, reservoirs and groundwater basins don’t have enough time to recover, and available water rights can be temporarily or permanently curtailed. Yet many plans still assume full legal access to their historical allocations, even when hydrologic conditions make those rights effectively unusable. This gap between “paper water” and actual water availability has the potential to leave communities overconfident about their long-term supply reliability.
Here in the Russian River Watershed, agencies have long counted on steady inflows to Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma. Recent droughts have shown how quickly those reservoirs can drop when inflows decline, temperatures rise, and demands increase. During extended dry periods, heavier reliance on groundwater can quietly drain aquifers and dewater connected creeks, harming fish and habitat. Because most UWMPs don’t reflect how repeated droughts compound these stresses, they risk masking the long-term harm to both community water security and the river itself.
The Public Trust Doctrine: Protecting Our Shared Waters
Water in the Russian River Watershed is more than a commodity; it’s a shared public trust. Under California law, the Public Trust Doctrine obligates the state to protect rivers, fisheries, and natural resources for the benefit of all people.
Applied locally, this principle reminds us that decisions about diversions, reservoirs, and groundwater use must consider the river’s health as well as human needs. Protecting streamflows for salmon and steelhead, maintaining riparian habitat, and supporting sustainable groundwater use are all part of honoring that trust.
Further, when we protect public trust resources through sustainable management of interconnected surface and groundwater systems, the benefits extend beyond ecosystems. Maintaining baseflows and healthy aquifers also supports rural well users, stabilizes local water supplies, and builds long-term water resilience for communities. Protecting the environment and sustaining community wells are, in reality, two sides of the same goal — keeping our watershed healthy for generations to come.
Building a Resilient Water Future
The Russian River Watershed stands at a turning point. Climate change is forcing us to confront uncomfortable truths about how much water we can depend on — and how we manage it. Strengthening UWMPs, addressing existing inefficiencies, and viewing our watershed as one interconnected system are key steps toward protecting the watershed we all rely on.
True resilience will come from honesty and cooperation. We must plan based on what the river can actually provide, not what we wish it could. By working together — residents, farmers, agencies, and advocates — we can adapt our water use to match the realities of a changing climate.
The Russian River connects us all. It nourishes our vineyards, forests, fisheries, and towns. By managing it wisely and with respect for its limits, we can ensure that this river continues to sustain both people and nature for generations to come.
