This story is part of our October 2025 issue. To read the print version, click here.

Water policy in California is defined by fighting. Water agencies, farmers, cities and environmentalists argue over every last drop available in the state’s overdrawn water system. Plans to fix the system languish for decades, and if they’re implemented, they end up in court for many more years. The Floodplain Forward Coalition has broken out of that paradigm.

Floodplain Forward brings together conservation groups such as Audubon, California Trout and Ducks Unlimited, agricultural interests such as the California Rice Commission, water providers and other interest groups to work on some of the state’s biggest water problems. Members of Floodplain Forward say the stakes are high in the effort to address issues such as habitat loss for fish and waterbirds.

To take one high-profile example, the endangered status of the Chinook salmon has led state officials to consider reducing agricultural and municipal water use on the Sacramento River watershed to provide more water for fish.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has advocated greater cooperation generally and the work of Floodplain Forward specifically as he pushes his water agenda. The State Water Resources Control Board in July made his proposal, called the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program, a centerpiece of the draft Sacramento River watershed plan. The program builds heavily on the work done by Floodplain Forward.

Related: Delta Blues: The battle over water has been fought to a standstill, but there’s hope that science and technology will make voluntary agreements by all sides possible

“I am proud to see the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program represented in this plan update — it’s a testament to California’s commitment to a collaborative, science-driven approach to managing our water for the benefit of our communities, economy, and fish and wildlife, ” Newsom said in a July news release.

Floodplain Forward uses a spirit of cooperation and cutting-edge science to improve the health of salmon, other fish and waterbirds. Farmers need better environmental outcomes to keep the water flowing to their fields. They also benefit by receiving payments for use of their land.

Guy points to the work of Peter B. Moyle, professor emeritus at the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, for providing the research that helped stakeholders understand the impacts. The Center for Watershed Sciences is part of the Floodplain Forward Coalition. One of Moyle’s previous students, Jacob Katz, is now senior scientist at California Trout and putting those ideas to use.

The Sacramento and other rivers once flooded a much greater area, providing fish with more nutrients, Katz says. “The food used to be on the landscape,” he adds. Now, restricted to narrow river channels, fish are deprived of essential nutrients.

California Trout has teamed with rice farmers to put water back on the floodplains. The fields are flooded after harvest, attracting bugs. The fields are drained, with the bug-rich water going through channels and into the Sacramento River, where they provide nutrients for salmon and other fish.

“The magic of Floodplain Forward is the collaboration. You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem, and rice farmers want to be part of the solution.”

Tim Johnson, president and CEO, California Rice Commission

Once they understand the ecology, farmers and other stakeholders embrace the idea of putting water back on floodplains, Katz said. The alliances created by Floodplain Forward have surprised some political insiders. “We went to Washington, D.C., a fish guy, a water guy, a farmer and a bird guy. These congressional staffers, their eyes just bugged out, like, ‘What is going on here?’” says Katz.

“The magic of Floodplain Forward is the collaboration,” says Tim Johnson, president and CEO of the California Rice Commission. “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem, and rice farmers want to be part of the solution.”

Related: Perspective: California’s Long and Complicated History With Water

Young salmon are very small when they leave their nesting areas on tributaries of the Sacramento River. Many of them don’t make it through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta because of problems with the troubled estuary, including water diversions, pollution and rising temperatures. Katz and others hope that fattening up the fish will make them better prepared to handle the threats of the Delta and make it into the ocean before returning to their birthplace in the natural life cycle of salmon.

Another way to better feed the fish is to direct them to flooded floodplains where they can take advantage of the additional food and grow before resuming their journey to the sea. Katz and others conducted a study on a rice farm on the Yolo Bypass to determine the effectiveness of the strategy. Young salmon were placed on a flooded rice farm after the autumn harvest. They were marked and measured during a six-week period before being released.

“The overall rapid growth and robust body condition of the salmon in this study demonstrates that winter flooding of rice fields during the agricultural non-growing season can provide high quality habitat for rearing juvenile Chinook salmon,” the authors wrote in the 2017 peer-reviewed study.

The flooding often put fish on the land, but there was no effective way for them to get back in the river. After purchasing the property, River Partners enlisted Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to design a “fish gate” that allows fish to move on and off the preserve when it floods, says Alex Karolyi, a River Partners spokesperson.

Related: The Delta in Decline: Wildlife and businesses in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are suffering from lack of fresh water

River Partners has observed young salmon using the fish gate during high-water events on the Sacramento River. Chinook salmon were the second leading fish observed in 2024, according to a River Partners report. They were able to eat bugs that accumulated on the property.

River Partners bought the property from farmers, as it has on other floodplain restoration projects, including Dos Rios, which recently became California’s newest state park. The founders of River Partners were farmers, which makes working with other farmers a natural fit, Karolyi says.

Conservation groups working cooperatively with farmers is a sharp turn from the farmers versus environmentalists headlines that have dominated disputes over fish protection efforts during recent droughts. Such cooperation also defines Floodplain Forward’s work in another environmental arena: bird habitat.

Generally speaking, California’s waterbirds are faring much better than its fish, although they face similar problems because of habitat loss. Millions of birds migrate along the Pacific Flyway, which runs between South America and the Arctic, and spend winters in Central California.

“The current way that water is managed across the valley has disrupted natural flow patterns that may have otherwise created wetland habitat that could support these birds,” says Xerónimo Castañeda, working lands program director for Audubon California.

Partnering with 200 growers and wetland managers, BirdReturns has delivered $6 million in direct payments to landowners while creating essential habitat for migrating birds in California, says Lishka Arata, a Point Blue spokesperson. Ducks Unlimited has received a federal grant to explore further incentives for rice farmers who could provide waterbird habitat.

Related: The Lasting Agreement: California’s long legacy of trying to solve its water problem

The northern pintail, one of the most common migratory waterbirds in Central California, travels 2,000 miles nonstop from California to Alaska, where they breed, notes Jeff McCreary, director of operations for Ducks Unlimited’s Sacramento office. “That’s why Ducks Unlimited is interested in making sure we always have rice on our landscape, because that’s how they make their journey — fed by rice,” he says. The rice fields are flooded for birds after harvest. But the fields still contain rice and rice byproducts for the birds.

Habitat restoration is central to the plan put forward by Newsom and others as an alternative to an earlier proposal by the staff of the State Water Resources Control Board that would reduce water diversions from the Sacramento River watershed. The “Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes” call for, among other things, “floodplain restoration and seasonal flooding of agricultural land. Restoration actions for floodplain habitats in the Bypasses and in the Delta involve providing access to improved and diversified rearing habitat conditions on a seasonal basis for a wide variety of native fish species.”

The Northern California Water Association is one of the parties that signed the agreements, along with water agencies, farming interests and other government agencies. The association calls the agreements a “model for cooperation” that “provides the opportunity to take a collaborative approach with diverse parties from Red Bluff to San Diego,” according to promotional material from the association.

Some environmental groups oppose the proposal because they say it would not provide enough water for fish. The State Water Resources Control Board, which is appointed by the governor, voted in July to include the governor’s proposal in its draft plan, which will go through public hearings before final approval.

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