“We’re in a good place right now,” said engineer Andy Reising. “We refer to the April 1 metric because it’s typically our peak snowpack, even though the climate is changing that slowly.”

Newsom’s newly released Water Plan Update 2023 is one of several water related policy strategies that he has released in recent years and framed as part of the state’s fight against climate change.

His 2022 California Water Supply Strategy focused on increasing resources for conservation strategies such as water recycling and stormwater capture, as well as infrastructure developments.

The 300-page plan plots a path to prioritize resilience against climate change, manage resources at a watershed level and underscore equity in management of the state’s water.

Those include the Sites Reservoir in Colusa County and the Delta Conveyance Project, which the state has proposed for decades to ship water from the state’s northern regions to Southern California.

California releases a new Water Plan update every five years to guide local agencies’ use and development of water resources. Newsom said it builds on his previous policy strategies.

Water Plan Update 2023, according to a Tuesday news release from the Department of Water Resources, “focuses on three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”

California is home to dozens of watersheds, which mark the area of land where water is naturally channeled as rainfall, snowmelt and runoff into the state’s rivers, bays and ultimately the Pacific Ocean.

Snowpack has historically made up around two-thirds of California’s total water supply. State scientists have surveyed snow since 1941 as a key tool to forecast future supply for farms and cities.

Several times a year, state water officials manually measure the depth and weight of snow at Phillips Station and other sites.

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