California Water Protection Project

Safeguarding a Public Resource

Safeguarding California’s future means protecting the health of the state’s waterways. Rivers, creeks, lakes, wetlands, and riparian ecosystems play a critical role in combatting the extinction and climate crises while providing safe drinking water for people. Natural waterways also have important cultural and recreational values that are often overlooked.

Water resources across California are constantly under threat. Large-scale water infrastructure projects can cause tremendous harm to ecosystems and sensitive wildlife like steelhead and salmon, who depend on free-flowing rivers. Poorly planned development degrades nearby streams and strains diminishing aquifers, putting local water supplies at risk. Meanwhile excessive water diversions give away a public resource to corporate agriculture, leaving communities parched. All this takes place as President Donald Trump continues to intervene in state water-management matters, further threatening local water supplies and sensitive species.

The California Water Protection Project is an initiative by a team of Center for Biological Diversity scientists, attorneys, and policy specialists committed to defending the Golden State’s precious resource.

Challenging Destructive Infrastructure

Policymakers have recently touted big infrastructure projects to solve the water-management challenges that come with climate change. Unfortunately reservoirs, dams, and other water-conveyance projects can wreak environmental havoc and aren’t very effective in a rapidly warming climate.

The Center’s California Water Protection Project is fighting against boondoggles like the Delta Conveyance Project and Sites Reservoir and forcing decisionmakers to consider and mitigate the ecological harms before approving these massive and expensive projects. Our yearslong battle against Cadiz Inc. has prevented a massive water grab that would drain a Mojave Desert aquifer.

Fighting Poorly Planned Development

Our work to push back against development that harms riparian habitats and local water supplies benefits people and wildlife alike. We use California’s strong environmental protection laws to make sure the water supply is adequate and hydrological analyses are conducted before a development is approved.

• In Lake County, courts repeatedly rejected the environmental review of the Guenoc project, a proposed luxury resort and housing development that includes polo fields, golf courses, and other high-end amenities. The county had approved the development without considering water supply, wildfire risk, and other environmental harms — so the Center and allies sued.

• In Los Angeles County, the Center successfully challenged the 1,300-acre Northlake development, which would have buried parts of Grasshopper Creek, a pristine stream that flows into the Santa Clara River.

• In Napa County 2,300 acres of intact wildlife habitat in California wine country were permanently protected after the Center challenged the Walt Ranch vineyard development, which was proposed to heavily draw from local groundwater aquifers and threaten local streams with pesticide use.

Protecting Imperiled Wildlife

Safeguarding natural waterways is essential to combating the extinction crisis.

Through our legal challenges, we’ve secured protection plans for rivers like Piru Creek so that water flows can be managed to help the struggling arroyo toad population. And in San Diego County we helped secure permanent conservation for 1,300 acres of natural habitat, including vernal pools home to San Diego fairy shrimp.  

Court victories and successful petitions have helped garner protections for many other wildlife depending on healthy rivers and streams, including Southern California steelhead, unarmored threespine sticklebacks, Santa Ana suckers, coho and chinook salmon, and foothill yellow-legged frogs.

Our Campaign

Through scientific research, advocacy, media communications and strategic litigation, the California Water Protection Project works to protect watersheds, push for better planning, and permanently conserve open space. As federal safeguards diminish, our work focuses on strengthening California’s protections for our public trust resources, including wetlands and waters of the state. State environmental laws allow us to fight the destruction of important waterways like Strawberry Creek, where companies have been siphoning millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling (also increasing plastic waste).  

We work to protect all aspects of the state’s watershed as a whole, including rivers and waterways, the lands surrounding them, and the biodiversity they support. This holistic approach has garnered increased protections across the state, including for the Kern River, Eel River, Napa River, Santa Ana River, and Utom, the largest Southern California watershed that’s still in a relatively natural state.    

California can meet its water needs without sacrificing the natural waterways still flowing through our communities. By fighting poor water management and ill-conceived projects, we can ensure that water remains a public resource — not a commodity.