Cloverdale's new 5-year water plan reinforces the Esmeralda WSA findings
July 29, 2026
Cloverdale adopted an updated Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP) this June.
The City Council approved Esmeralda's Water Supply Assessment & Water Supply Verification (WSA/WSV) in December 2025, based on the City's 2020 UWMP.
What is a UWMP?
A UWMP is a long-range blueprint that documents a city's projected water demand and available supplies. State law requires that every city in California update its UWMP every 5 years.
A UWMP identifies conservation, recycling, groundwater, and emergency-response strategies needed for sustainable water management.
Does the new (2025) UWMP change anything? To answer this question, EKI Environment & Water1 compared the two UWMPs side-by-side.
EKI's analysis found no material differences that would change the WSA/WSV's conclusions. If anything, the new 2025 UWMP strengthens the findings in the WSA/WSV.
The 2020 UWMP (and the WSA/WSV) assumed faster population growth and higher demand than the City now expects.
The 2025 UWMP projects Cloverdale reaching about 11,200 people by 2045 (with Esmeralda!), versus roughly 15,600 in the 2020 UWMP and WSA/WSV.
Lower population means lower demand, which means a bigger safety margin than the WSA/WSV assumed.
The City's senior pre-1914 water right is 910 million gallons per year (MGY). Even after applying a reduced 740 MGY figure — adjusted downward to reflect the temporary 2021 drought curtailments — the City's projected 2045 demand with Esmeralda is around 519 MGY under the 2025 UWMP.
In other words, projected demand (with the project included) stays well below the most legally restricted supply in Cloverdale's history.
Neither UWMP quantifies the impact of Potter Valley Project decommissioning on Cloverdale's supply; the 2025 UWMP notes that the extent of impacts isn't yet known and that Russian River watershed users are working together on regional strategies.
The Esmeralda WSA/WSV went further than state law requires and evaluated it anyway. The WSA/WSV found that the City's senior rights and broader watershed inflows are expected to result in little to no impact on Cloverdale's long-term supply.
The WSA/WSV looked at both the City's legal rights and the actual physical availability of water in the Russian River underflow that Cloverdale's wells draw from.
The 2025 UWMP confirms the City has sufficient physical supply for existing and projected demand and provides no evidence that there has been an actual physical shortage of groundwater.
During severe droughts the City implements its Water Shortage Contingency Plan (WSCP). As a City customer, Esmeralda would be subject to the same plan.
The 2025 UWMP evaluates shortages against the stricter post-2021 allocation and still concludes the City can address shortfalls through its WSCP — and it does not conclude that Esmeralda worsens supply issues or forces stronger restrictions on existing customers.
Curtailment allocations are set per capita, so adding residents does not reduce anyone's legal share.
The 2025 UWMP identifies several supplemental supply projects in the planning stage that were not included in the WSA/WSV projections. If built, they would further improve reliability beyond what the WSA/WSV assumed.
Separately - Esmeralda will also build, pay for, and transfer to the City a 1-million-gallon water storage system.