Governor Gavin Newsom on February 25, 2026, launched what his administration calls the most ambitious water plan in California history, setting a first-ever statewide target of 9 million acre-feet of additional water supply by 2040. That figure translates to nearly 3 trillion gallons, enough to reshape how the state captures, stores, and distributes water across its farms, cities, and ecosystems. The plan arrives as climate models warn that hotter, drier conditions could cut available supply by up to 10% in coming decades, turning a long-simmering resource challenge into an urgent infrastructure race.
State officials describe the initiative as a pivot from reactive drought management to proactive climate adaptation. The new target is embedded in the broader framework of California’s long-term planning apparatus and sits alongside other priorities like wildfire resilience and clean energy on the state’s central government portal. How quickly the water plan moves from press conference to projects on the ground will depend on a complex mix of legislation, local cooperation, and the ability to maintain public support for expensive, and sometimes controversial, infrastructure.
What 9 Million Acre-Feet Actually Means
The number at the center of the California Water Plan 2028 is not abstract. Nine million acre-feet is roughly equivalent to the annual water use of more than 18 million households, and it represents the gap state planners believe must be closed to keep California’s economy and environment functioning under worsening climate stress. The announcement from the Governor’s Office frames this as an interim statewide planning target, codified through Senate Bill 72, that will guide investment and policy through 2040. No previous California water plan had set a single, quantified supply goal at the state level, making this a test of whether big-picture numbers can drive real-world construction and conservation.
SB 72 requires the Department of Water Resources to quantify supply gaps at both the statewide and watershed level, identify management actions backed by economic analyses, and set measurable targets for each strategy, according to the department’s water plan program. That structure forces a shift from aspirational planning documents to something closer to an accountability framework, with deadlines and volume estimates attached to specific tools such as storage, recycling, and conservation. But the law itself does not appropriate new funding, which means the state must piece together financing from existing bond measures, federal grants, and local agency budgets to hit a target that dwarfs anything California has attempted before.
How Senate Bill 72 Changes the Planning Playbook
Supporters of SB 72 argue that its real innovation lies in tying the California Water Plan more tightly to implementation. A November 2025 explainer from the Department of Water Resources describes how the law “bolsters” the plan by requiring clear links between statewide targets, regional gap analyses, and specific portfolios of projects and programs. That blog on the long-term supply goals notes that agencies will need to show how proposed actions contribute to closing quantified shortages, rather than simply listing them as desirable options.
In practice, this could elevate strategies that produce reliable, trackable volumes, such as groundwater recharge, recycled water, and conservation, because they can be more easily measured against the 9 million acre-foot benchmark. It also raises the stakes for data quality and modeling, since regional decisions will rest on estimates of future demand, climate impacts, and project performance. Local water districts, especially smaller ones, may need technical assistance to participate fully in this more rigorous process, or risk having their needs underrepresented when the state allocates attention and support.
Groundwater Banking and Recent Wins
California has already shown it can capture enormous volumes when storms cooperate. During the historic wet season of 2023, the state achieved 4.1 million acre-feet of managed recharge, with overall groundwater storage increasing by 8.7 million acre-feet. Those numbers demonstrated that directing floodwater underground, instead of letting it rush to the ocean, can meaningfully rebuild depleted aquifers in a single season. The challenge is replicating that success in average or dry years when surplus flows are scarce, and when competition for those flows among farms, cities, and ecosystems is intense.
That same logic underpins a wave of smaller-scale projects aimed at squeezing more usable water out of existing supplies. In December 2025, state officials highlighted that recent investments had added 2.9 billion gallons of treated drinking water to California’s annual supply, enough for roughly 20,000 homes per year. Facilities that recycle wastewater, upgrade aging treatment plants, or blend new sources into existing systems represent the kind of incremental gains that, stacked together, could contribute to the 9 million acre-foot goal. Yet 2.9 billion gallons is only a fraction of a single percent of the target, underscoring how many such projects will be required and how sustained the investment must be over the next decade and a half.
The $20 Billion Delta Tunnel Question
No single project better captures the tension between ambition and execution than the Delta Conveyance Project, a proposed tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta designed to move water from Northern California to farms and cities in the south. The project carries a price tag of $20 billion, according to the Associated Press, and state officials argue the benefits justify the cost because the tunnel would capture more water during storms and protect deliveries against earthquake risk and saltwater intrusion. Opponents counter that the project could damage the Delta ecosystem and that the money would be better spent on local recycling, conservation, and smaller conveyance improvements that do not concentrate so much risk and capital in a single facility.
The tunnel debate exposes a broader fault line in California water politics. The 2022 California Water Supply Strategy, which Newsom announced as a framework for a hotter and drier climate, called for a diversified approach spanning storage, recycling, desalination, and conservation. That strategy warned climate-driven extremes could reduce water supply by up to 10% by 2040 under adverse conditions, and it emphasized the need to capture more water during wet periods to buffer dry spells. The Delta tunnel fits the storage and conveyance piece of that puzzle, but critics argue the plan leans too heavily on large-scale infrastructure rather than demand reduction and distributed local projects that could deliver water faster, with fewer permitting battles, and less ecological risk.
From Planning Targets to Actual Water
The most recent completed update to the California Water Plan, known as Update 2023, established the analytical baseline that SB 72 now builds on. That document operated on a five-year update cadence and cataloged supply and demand scenarios without binding targets, serving more as a reference compendium than an implementation roadmap. The 2028 update, by contrast, will be the first produced under the new law’s requirement to attach numbers, timelines, and cost estimates to every proposed action, effectively turning the plan into a scorecard against the 9 million acre-foot goal.
One critique that deserves attention is that setting a single statewide volume target risks masking deep inequities in how water is distributed. Agricultural users in the Central Valley, urban ratepayers in coastal cities, tribal communities with senior water rights, and environmental flows for endangered fish species all draw from the same finite pool. SB 72 requires watershed-level gap analyses, which should in theory surface these competing demands and highlight where shortages fall hardest. But the law’s lack of dedicated funding means local agencies with fewer resources may struggle to participate meaningfully in the planning process, potentially skewing outcomes toward well-funded urban and agricultural interests and leaving vulnerable communities with less influence over how California’s most ambitious water plan is ultimately realized.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
