Roughly a decade ago the State of California enacted the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Reform Act, committing itself to providing “a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta’s ecosystem while protecting the Delta’s unique and evolving character.” At the same time, the Delta Stewardship Council was established to serve as “an independent voice for science and policy in the Delta.” To support the Council, a Delta Science Program was charged with “providing the best possible scientific information to inform water and environmental management decisions for the Delta.” Three years later a court-ordered Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program engaged a stakeholder process “to address emerging science and information needs regarding water management and species of concern.”

That clear mandate to inform resource management using the best available science should in concept allow federal, state, and local agencies to confront the wicked environmental challenges before them — balancing water supply, water quality, ecosystem protection, species conservation, and other concerns in a dynamic system. But, in reality, the myriad agencies that share responsibility for the Delta’s strained resources have conflicting mandates and are responsive to different policymakers and constituencies. That fact coupled with the absence of a shared vision for the Delta and ongoing scientific uncertainties has contributed a situation where intensified focus and increased expenditures on science and management actions over the past quarter century have yielded unsatisfactory results by almost any measure. Reliable and useful knowledge of the needs of the Delta’s desired species remains limited. The Delta Reform Act’s goals remain elusive.

Generating science in support of resource management in the Delta is not a simple exercise in data collection, analysis, and reporting findings. Rather the necessary science must address management hypotheses, inform analyses of the effects of alternative management actions on available water and imperiled species, quantify benefits-and-costs to inform risk assessments, and target the uncertainties that vex decision-makers. The Center for California Water Resources Management and Policy is committed to collaborating with resource managers in the Delta and policymakers in Sacramento and Washington DC, to identify, generate, and interpret the scientific information that can directly and immediately contribute to a new and impactful resource management agenda in the Delta.

The Center promotes and engages in investigations and directed studies with the purpose of delivering findings with direct application in conservation planning for the Delta’s imperiled species, the ecological communities to which they contribute, and the ecosystems that sustain them. Center-affiliated experts contribute to a new, more-effective collaborative science endeavor that is hungry for reliable and relevant scientific information fed into transparent structured decision-making. Research funded by the Center offers salient information into the Delta conversation, engaging applied research using publicly available data on the Delta’s fishes to make population projections, to explore fish-habitat relationships, and to guide the state and federal resource agencies toward long-promised adaptive management. Prior published analyses from the Center have described the role of effects analysis in structured decision making, the essential analytical steps in adaptive management, the necessary elements in independent scientific review, and the means of differentiating the best available scientific information from information of lesser value.

Frequent Contributors to the Center:

Brad Cavallo

Brad Cavallo has been studying juvenile salmonids in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta since 1997, work that has included field studies, data analyses, and development of biological models that are used to evaluate water project operations and other management actions. Brad began his career as a professional biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, transitioning to the California Department of Water Resources, and then to Cramer Fish Sciences in 2006. He now is a Principal and Vice-President at Cramer Fish Sciences and is a recent Past-President of the California-Nevada Chapter of the American Fisheries Society. Brad’s research interests focus on improving the scientific understanding of salmonids for improved management and recover their Central Valley populations. His publications and studies have addressed factors influencing survival, behavior, and entrainment of juvenile salmonids, salmon life-cycle modeling, Chinook salmon egg incubation survival, use of conservation hatcheries, and demographics of steelhead. Brad has developed a broad, evidence-based understanding of how water project operations can influence the fate of juvenile salmonids in the Delta. He has provided scientific leadership on multiagency and stakeholder-involved investigations, and contributed to several independent science-review efforts, most recently, co-leading a Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program review and synthesis of acoustic tagging studies for juvenile salmon and steelhead approaching the Delta from the San Joaquin River basin. Brad completed his BS in Fisheries Biology at University of California at Davis and has a MS in Aquatic Ecology from the University of Montana.

Scott Hamilton

Scott Hamilton’s career began with Northwest Economics Associates, a consulting firm retained to assess the ability of farmers to pay for water from the State Water Project.  He then joined Paramount Farming Company where he was instrumental in establishing the Kern Water Bank and managing its substantial water resources. He served on the Board of the Cawelo Water District, initiating and directing the implementation of water banking programs, as well as financing and expanding distribution and recharge systems. In 2015 he contributed to forming the South Valley Water Resources Authority, dedicated to bringing more water into the southern San Joaquin Valley. In 2017, as an independent consultant he became involved with the development of the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley, where he now serves as Chairman of its Technical Committee, working to reduce water shortages in the San Joaquin Valley and improving communities, ecosystems, and economies in the south valley.  Over the past decade, Scott has worked to bring better science to agency regulatory decisions that affect water supplies, publishing in academic journals on the relevant ecology of delta smelt and its impact on California’s water supply.  He currently serves as the co-chair of the delta smelt technical team under the Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program, assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of management actions intended to protect endangered species. Scott’s technical expertise includes linear and mathematical programming, risk and strategic decision analysis, statistical and econometric analysis, project feasibility analysis, and computer-aided modeling, including investment analysis, limiting-factor modeling, and life-cycle modeling. Scott has a BA in Agricultural Economics and MS in Economics from the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia, and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Oregon State University.

Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy is a conservation biologist having served over the past forty years as Director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, then as Director of the Graduate Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno,. He has produced more than 240 peer-viewed scientific journal articles and book chapters in ecology, conservation biology, and science policy. Dennis is Past-President of the international Society for Conservation Biology, has received industry’s oldest and most respected prize in conservation, the Chevron Conservation Award, was named a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, and received the California Governor’s Leadership Award in Economics and the Environment. He has served on multiple National Academies committees, including the Committee on Science and the Endangered Species Act, and on the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Water, Science, and Technology Board. Among professional activities outside of academia, Dennis served on the Interagency Spotted Owl Scientific Advisory Committee, empaneled by Congress, chaired the Scientific Review Panel to California’s first Natural Community Conservation Planning effort in the state’s coastal sage scrub ecosystem, served as team leader for the committee of scientists that carried out the Lake Tahoe Watershed Assessment, a Presidential deliverable to the Clinton Administration, and for the past decade served as chair and co-chair of the Independent Science Advisory Panel to the nine-state Missouri River Restoration Program. Dr. Murphy has testified ten times before Senate and House committees and subcommittees mostly on issues pertaining to implementation of the federal Endangered Species Act. He has a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD from Stanford University.

Paul Weiland

Paul Weiland is Assistant Managing Partner and a member of the Environment & Land Use Group at Nossaman LLP. He represents clients – including public agencies, publicly regulated utilities, corporations, trade associations and non-profits – in environmental permitting, regulatory and litigation matters throughout California and across the nation. Paul has published dozens of peer-reviewed publications on environmental law, policy, and science in journals including BioScience, Conservation Biology, Environmental Law Reporter, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Natural Resources Journal, Public Administration Review, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is widely recognized for his expertise in wildlife permitting and litigation, having worked on noteworthy matters involving delta smelt, Bone Cave harvestman, Hawaiian hoary bat, Mexican wolf, North Atlantic right whale and many other species. He has received numerous accolades from prominent legal publications and ranking bodies, including being named Energy and Environmental Trailblazer by the National Law Journal, Top 100 Lawyer in California by the Daily Journal, Environmental MVP by Law360, and Top Lawyer in the US Environmental Practice arena by both Chambers & Partners and the Legal 500. Paul has a BA from the University of Southern California, PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a JD from Harvard Law School.