AB 1367 adds Section 10014 to the California Water Code and instructs the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to amend The California Water Plan so that it explicitly states water storage is the preferred method for increasing the amount of water available in future years to meet increased demands from urban, agricultural, and environmental users. The change is a directional policy statement rather than an authorization for specific projects or funding.
The provision matters because The California Water Plan is the state's principal guidance document on water strategy; labeling storage as “preferred” can influence grant criteria, project prioritization, and agency recommendations across a wide range of state programs. The bill is short on definitions, timelines, and safeguards, leaving key implementation questions about what counts as storage, how trade-offs with ecosystems and tribal interests will be handled, and whether alternative approaches (conservation, recycling, groundwater recharge) retain equal standing.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires DWR to amend The California Water Plan to state that water storage is the preferred method to increase future water availability to meet urban, agricultural, and environmental demands. It creates a declaratory preference but does not appropriate funds, define storage, or set a timeline for the amendment.
Who It Affects
State water planners, agencies that administer water infrastructure grants and bonds, water districts, irrigation districts, reservoir operators, construction and engineering firms, and environmental managers responsible for flows and habitat. Tribes and communities potentially impacted by storage projects would see indirect effects through planning and permitting decisions.
Why It Matters
By changing the Plan’s language, the bill shifts the state’s policy stance in favor of storage solutions—potentially shaping how projects are scored, what kinds of projects receive technical and financial support, and how agencies evaluate trade-offs between infrastructure and non‑infrastructural approaches to supply reliability.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 1367 does one thing: it adds a single section to the Water Code ordering the Department of Water Resources to amend The California Water Plan so that water storage is stated as the preferred way to increase water available in future years for urban, agricultural, and environmental uses. The bill does not provide funding, specify storage types, or create new permitting authority; it is a directional instruction to the state’s planning document.
Practically, the California Water Plan serves as a frame for state grant programs, technical guidance, and interagency coordination. If DWR follows the bill literally, future iterations of the Plan would foreground storage projects—surface reservoirs, offstream storage, groundwater banking and managed aquifer recharge, or a combination—as priority responses to projected demand increases.
That framing can influence how state agencies evaluate projects and how bond or grant programs craft eligibility and scoring criteria.Crucially, the bill leaves open what “water storage” means and how to balance storage projects against other resilience strategies such as conservation, water reuse, demand management, and environmental flow protections. It also does not include implementation details—no definitions, no timeline for the Plan amendment, no environmental safeguards, and no funding directives—so much of the actual effect will depend on how DWR translates “preferred” into plan language and guidance documents.Finally, the directive will interact with other California laws and plans—SGMA groundwater sustainability frameworks, the Delta Plan, and CEQA processes.
Those interactions, rather than the statutory sentence itself, are where the practical consequences will emerge: which projects advance, how environmental review is sequenced, and whether state funding and technical assistance steer local and regional choices toward storage-heavy solutions.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill inserts a new Section 10014 into the Water Code directing DWR to amend The California Water Plan to declare water storage the preferred method for increasing future supplies.
AB 1367 names urban, agricultural, and environmental demands as the target uses but does not specify what forms of storage (surface reservoirs, offstream, groundwater recharge, water banking) qualify.
The statute is a policy statement only: it contains no appropriation, no permitting authority, no deadlines, and no metrics for measuring when or how the preference must appear in the Plan.
Because the California Water Plan informs grant and bond program guidance, the change could shift scoring and prioritization in state funding programs even without new money.
The bill does not require environmental, tribal, or equity safeguards; its ambiguity creates room for legal challenges over interpretation and for agency discretion in implementation.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Declare water storage the preferred method in The California Water Plan
This single provision directs the Department of Water Resources to amend The California Water Plan so that it states water storage is the preferred method to increase water available in future years to meet rising urban, agricultural, and environmental demands. Mechanically the section is brief: it imposes a mandatory amendment to the Plan's text but does not include accompanying definitions, standards, or procedural requirements. That means DWR must change the Plan’s language, but the agency retains discretion over the scope, supporting analysis, and any implementing guidance. The practical import lies in how DWR translates the preference into the Plan’s recommendations, which in turn shape grant criteria, technical assistance, and interagency coordination.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Irrigation and municipal water districts—gain clearer policy backing for storage projects that increase deliverable supplies and could improve competitiveness for state grants and bond dollars.
- Reservoir operators, engineering and construction firms—benefit from a policy environment that prioritizes infrastructure projects, likely increasing demand for project development, design, and construction contracts.
- Regional water authorities and proponents of large-scale storage—see strengthened justification when seeking permits, financing, or political support for new or expanded storage capacity.
- State grant applicants with storage projects—may receive favorable consideration if agencies align program guidance with the Plan’s stated preference.
Who Bears the Cost
- Environmental and river restoration organizations—face higher hurdles if agency guidance shifts resources toward new or expanded reservoirs that can harm habitat, impede fish passage, or alter flows.
- Tribes and communities at risk of inundation or cultural-resource impacts—could bear direct social, cultural, and environmental costs from storage projects without additional statutory protections in the bill.
- State agencies and DWR—must produce a compliant amendment and may see increased administrative and technical workload to justify a preference without statutory definitions or criteria.
- Taxpayers and bond funders—could shoulder the financial costs of prioritizing large infrastructure projects if legislatures or agencies choose to fund new storage in response to the Plan’s revised stance.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill forces a choice between privileging large-scale storage infrastructure as the primary tool to increase future supply and maintaining a more pluralistic approach that treats conservation, reuse, groundwater recharge, and environmental flow protections as equally legitimate responses; the choice favors near-term project development and supply certainty but risks sidelining ecological protections, tribal interests, and alternative resilience strategies whose benefits are less immediately visible.
The bill’s brevity is both its strength and its weakness. A short, declaratory preference is easy to enact but difficult to operationalize: DWR will need to decide whether “preferred” is aspirational language, a directive to favor storage in Plan analyses, or a binding signal to other agencies and funding programs.
Because the statute provides no definitions, agencies and courts will likely debate whether managed aquifer recharge or conservation counts as “storage” for the purposes of the Plan. That ambiguity amplifies litigation risk and creates opportunities for administrative discretion.
There is a substantive policy tension between the promise of storage as a buffer against drought and climate-driven runoff changes, and the ecological, cultural, and social costs of traditional storage projects. Snowpack decline and more variable runoff patterns reduce the reliability of large surface reservoirs in some basins, making groundwater-focused or distributed recharge approaches potentially more effective.
At the same time, prioritizing storage in the Plan could reallocate scarce technical and financial assistance away from non‑infrastructure measures such as efficiency, reuse, and ecosystem restoration—solutions that many water managers and environmental scientists argue are central to long-term resilience.
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