Supply and Demand Assessment (SDA) - Pescadero Creek
Overview
The Pescadero Creek Watershed is located within Santa Cruz County and San Mateo County, extending from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It covers approximately 81 square miles[SM2.1], and its elevation ranges from sea level to roughly 2,749 feet. This watershed has a Mediterranean climate with distinct wet and dry seasons, and the land cover is mainly forest and grassland. Timber harvesting and agricultural activities are the primary land uses in this watershed. The Pescadero Creek Watershed is listed under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act for excessive sedimentation. The habitats of several threatened species, such as steelhead trout and coho salmon, have been impacted by increases in erosion and sedimentation. Moreover, towards the outlet of the watershed is the Pescadero Marsh, which is an ecologically significant area that has degraded substantially due to changes in erosion and sedimentation rates.
- Click on Map to Enlarge
Announcements
May 27, 2026 - Pescadero Creek Watershed Model Work Plan - Now Available
The work plan from Paradigm Environmental for development of a hydrologic model for the Pescadero Creek watershed is now publicly available in Model Development section below. Please email questions regarding the model development to DWR-SDA@waterboards.ca.gov.
Model Development
Outreach and Engagement
- Pescadero Creek Watershed Fact Sheet Coming Soon
Modeling in the Pescadero Creek Watershed
The SDA Unit has continued to work on the models and tools developed for the Russian River Watershed during the State Water Board's 2021-2022 Regional Drought Response. These tools provided the necessary information for the Division of Water Rights (Division) to assess water availability and issue water right curtailments to ensure adequate, minimal water supplies for critical purposes under the emergency regulation.
To capture the water demand in the SDA Program Watersheds, water right demand estimates were incorporated based on information from annual reports of water diversion and use submitted to the Division. The SDA Unit continued to develop the Division's demand dataset methodology and converted it into a series of R scripts and manual review spreadsheets that apply data quality correction flags. For example, the scripts identified and corrected unit conversion errors, duplicate reporting, and misplotted points of diversion. The SDA Unit then uses a water allocation tool adopted from the UC Davis Drought Water Rights Allocation Tool (DWRAT) to allocate available supply amongst water right holders based on their respective water right priority and water demands. This version of DWRAT allocates water at the subbasin level and accounts for imported flows.
The SDA Unit's demand methodology, along with the supply scripts and the watershed specific versions of DWRAT, will be made available on the California Water Board Data Center GitHub page as separate repositories.
Supply and Demand Assessment Program Links
Supply and Demand Assessment Information
Project Watersheds:
Stay Informed
Email Subscription List
Subscribe to the SDA Information email topic to receive notifications and the latest updates.
Contact Us
If you have questions or please email them to: DWR-SDA@waterboards.ca.gov
