When it Rains, it Pours, and Stormwater Infrastructure Breaks
Most of us don’t think about stormwater infrastructure - infrastructure that diverts, stores, and/or filters water, until it breaks. During an intense storm, pipes can break, and storm drains can clog. Poorly maintained stormwater infrastructure leads to chronic flooding and pollution, posing direct threats to human and environmental health.
Every year, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) manual is updated, making the previous year’s manual obsolete. A book treasured by CEQA practitioners, the manual is turned into a dense paperweight that gets heavier each year. At the same time, exemptions to CEQA are limiting this foundational law’s domain.
Between 2014 and 2016, an unprecedented marine heat wave known as “The Blob” spread across the Pacific coast and pushed ocean temperatures off the coast of Northern California several degrees above normal. Along the rocky coastline of the Sonoma Coast, vast underwater forests of bull kelp that support fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals began to disappear. Within just a few years, more than 90% of the region’s bull kelp canopy had collapsed.
What if one of the most widespread pollutants on Earth was already in your body? You may have consumed microplastics today without realizing it. They could have been in your bottled water, floating through the air, or shed from the clothes on your back. Once considered a distant ocean pollution issue, microplastics are now found in Antarctic ice, deep ocean trenches, mountain peaks, and even in human blood and brain tissue.
This project partnered with the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI) to evaluate California's Fifth Climate Change Assessment, identifying opportunities to improve collaboration, communication, and support for author teams to strengthen future statewide climate planning.
In collaboration with Rooted Futures Lab, our team worked to illuminate DC zoning & permitting in 12 states: Georgia, Virginia, Michigan, Arizona, Oregon, California, Louisiana, Colorado, Nevada, New York, New Mexico, and Texas. We dove into the complex world of local governance and spoke to practitioners, lawyers, and journalists to understand how local and state processes work, what journalists are seeing on the ground, and where our research can shine the most light for communities, advocates, and researchers.
Towards the end of May, our UC Davis Environmental Policy and Management policy clinic group, in collaboration with California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI) and California Sea Grant, traveled to San Diego, CA. We headed to the 2026 CalCOFI Conference on ‘A Decade of Remarkable Change: Heatwaves, HABs, Hypoxia, and Other Ocean Changes off the California Coast.’ This trip allowed us to share the culmination of our research on practical recommendations for marine climate resilience and refugia in California. We heard and discussed the intense impacts of climate change on California’s marine ecosystems, showcasing the need for policy and management action. We engaged with researchers working towards goals aligned with our recommendations, further inspiring us to continue protecting California’s waters.
In April 2026, we - a group of UC Davis students from the Environmental Policy and Management (EPM) Graduate Group, in partnership with American Rivers, headed to Washington, D.C.. This trip was the culmination of six months of research, with the intention to share our findings with congressional staff during “Water Week” - a week dedicated to water policy advocacy in D.C.
As the world rushes toward a clean energy future, there's a growing concern coupled to progress: the very materials fueling the green transition—like lithium—can also deepen environmental and social injustices if we’re not careful about the way we extract them.
“As California goes, so goes the Nation.” California is the world's fourth-largest economy and remains at the forefront of environmental leadership. So, who carries out this key climate-related legislation across the state?
