Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit

Announcements

Revised Approach to the Gualala River Watershed
Staff of the North Coast Water Board’s Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit (WARU) are revising their approach to regulating road-related sediment sources in the Gualala River Watershed and will pivot away from the watershed-specific Gualala Roads Permit. Under the new approach, the WARU team will develop and issue two orders:

A Gualala River Watershed-specific Investigative Order that requires the inventory, assessment, and prioritization of sediment-generating roads in the watershed. WARU staff anticipate a December 2026 board adoption hearing.
A regionwide order that requires the inventory, assessment, prioritization, and treatment of sediment-generating roads across the North Coast Region – including the Gualala River Watershed. Preliminary planning and schedule development is currently underway. Staff anticipate initiating public outreach for this project in Spring/Summer 2026. To receive project information as it becomes available, enroll in email notifications at the address below – select “Regionwide Roads Program” from the list of options provided. https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/CAWRCB/subscriber/new?qsp=north_coast

The revised approach is necessary in order to better align program resources with the expected costs of enrollment, establish a more equitable regulatory program throughout the North Coast Region, and maintain the focus and effort within the Gualala on assessment and prioritization through issuance of the investigative order.
An investigative order is a legally enforceable order that authorizes the North Coast Water Board to require the submission of technical information – in this case, road inventories and assessments. The investigative order will allow WARU staff to maintain momentum toward watershed recovery and ensure that road assessment in the watershed begin promptly, ultimately accelerating road improvement efforts. Contract funds remain dedicated to supporting road assessments required by the investigative order.

This revised approach is not a major departure from that of the Gualala Roads Permit. The key differences impacting the Gualala River Watershed are a shift in timing and the regulatory mechanism of how road assessments and treatments are required. Where the Gualala Roads Permit would have included inventory, assessment, prioritization, and treatment requirements in a single order, the revised approach defers treatment requirements until the regionwide order is adopted.

Contract funds that have been directed to recovery in the Gualala River Watershed will remain. Contracting to support landowners in funding and conducting road assessments in the Gualala River Watershed continues to be developed. The Sonoma Resource Conservation District (Sonoma RCD) will continue forming a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to help guide the development of key watershed analyses and road prioritization reports. The Sonoma RCD will also plan and facilitate local community meetings and landowner trainings

Upcoming Public Engagement Opportunities
The WARU team will be holding two virtual staff office hours in the coming weeks. See meeting information below for details. These will be unstructured meetings during which members of the community are encouraged to share any questions or comments they may have about this changing approach to recovery in the Gualala River Watershed.

Monday, December 22, 2025
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://waterboards.zoom.us/j/84478470266
Meeting ID: 844 7847 0266

Tuesday, January 6, 2026
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://waterboards.zoom.us/j/85054405467
Meeting ID: 850 5440 5467

WARU staff continue to work with the Sonoma RCD to hold three community meetings in the first half of 2026. The first meeting is anticipated to take place in February. Additional details will be posted on the following webpage when available: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/northcoast/water_issues/programs/waru/.

Please contact us if you have any questions about this shift in the WARU’s approach to roads permitting throughout the North Coast Region.
To receive timely updates on the development of the regionwide roads order, enroll in email list subscriptions at the address below – select “Regionwide Roads Program” from the options provided. https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/CAWRCB/subscriber/new?qsp=north_coast

General Gualala inbox: RB1-Gualala@waterboards.ca.gov
Matt Graves, Project Manager, Gualala Investigative Order
matt.graves@waterboards.ca.gov

General Regionwide Roads Program inbox: RB1-Roads@waterboards.ca.gov
Randy Lew, Project Manager, Regionwide Roads Order
randy.lew@waterboards.ca.gov

Devon Rabellino, Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit Supervisor
devon.rabellino@waterboards.ca.gov

Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit

Around 61% of streams and rivers in the North Coast Region are impacted by high amounts of sediment. The greatest contributor to sediment pollution in the North Coast Region is unpaved, rural roads. The North Coast Water Board regulates various activities that involve road work, such as timber harvest, construction, cannabis cultivation, and more, but until recently has not had a program focused exclusively on repairing rural road conditions to improve water quality throughout the North Coast Region.

In 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set limits on sediment for the Gualala River watershed to protect its health. The North Coast Water Board has been working to meet these limits using its Sediment TMDL Implementation Policy. In 2023, the North Coast Water Board requested funding to create a unit to address sediment and temperature issues in the Gualala River and other watersheds. The State Water Resources Control Board approved the request for the new unit, leading to the creation of the Watershed Assessment and Restoration Unit (WARU) in fall 2024. The purpose of the WARU is to support the recovery of sediment and temperature impaired watershed in the North Coast Region through the lens of addressing sediment pollution from rural roads.

The WARU’s initial focus is the development of a permit to reduce sediment pollution from rural roads in the Gualala River Watershed (see Gualala Roads Permit FAQs below). WARU staff also oversee other permits that apply to discharges from rural roads, including the Rural Roads General Order and Five Counties (5C) Waiver.

Gualala River Watershed Overview

The Gualala River Watershed spans about 300 square miles across Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Its unique elongated shape, influenced by the San Andreas and Tombs Creek faults, supports a diverse ecosystem with forests of redwood and Douglas-fir, and various beneficial uses of water, such as cold water fisheries, recreation, and drinking water. The Gualala River is considered "impaired" under the Clean Water Act due to too much sediment in the water and elevated water temperatures. These conditions are negatively impacting fish like native salmon and trout, affecting their migration, spawning, and early development. Approximately 61% of the sediment entering streams in the Gualala River watershed is from rural roads, which span a length of more than 1,500 miles. To improve the watershed’s health, the amount of sediment coming from these roads must be reduced by almost 90%.

North Coast Water Board’s Role in Protecting the Watershed

What is the North Coast Water Board’s role in protecting the watershed?
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, or North Coast Water Board, is the primary California state agency responsible for protecting and improving water quality in streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and groundwater in the North Coast. This involves:

setting water quality standards for waterbodies;
developing and issuing permits to regulate sources of pollution;
monitoring and analyzing the health of waterbodies; and
enforcing environmental regulations.

A Total Maximum Daily Load – a regulatory tool that identifies the amount of a contaminant (e.g., sediment) that a waterbody can receive and still properly function – was developed in 2001 and identifies roads as one of the key sediment sources in the watershed. Part of the Total Maximum Daily Load implementation strategy for the watershed is developing 1) an Action Plan that describes how the Total Maximum Daily Load will be achieved and 2) a permit that requires landowners to reduce the amount of sediment on rural, private roads that can enter waterbodies.

The forthcoming Gualala Roads Permit will be one of several permits that the North Coast Water Board administers in the watershed to prevent and minimize water pollution from land use activities. Other existing water quality permits regulate activities such as forestry management and timber harvest, cannabis cultivation, construction sites and industrial facilities, and may soon include commercial vineyards.

Road Improvement Fundamentals

A critical element of controlling sediment discharges from roads is to apply storm-proofing treatments. In their Updated Handbook for Forest, Ranch, and Rural Roads, Pacific Watershed Associates have prepared a list of storm-proofed roads characteristics. That list is reproduced below.

Storm-proofed Stream Crossings:

All stream crossings have a drainage structure designed for the 100-year flood flow (including woody debris and sediment).
Stream crossings have no diversion potential (functional critical dips are in place).
Culvert inlets have low plug potential (trash barriers or deflectors are installed where needed).
Culverts are installed at the base of the fill and in line with the natural channel.
Any existing culverts or new emergency overflow culverts that emerge higher in the fill have full round, anchored downspouts that extend to the natural channel.
Stream crossing culvert outlets are protected from erosion (extend culverts at least 6 feet beyond the base of the fill and use energy dissipation, where needed).
Culvert inlet, outlet and bottom are open and in sound condition.
Deep fills (deeper than a backhoe can reach from the roadbed) with undersized culverts or culverts with high plugging potential are fitted with an emergency overflow culvert.
Bridges have stable, non-eroding abutments and do not significantly restrict 100-year flood flow.
Stream crossing fills are stable (unstable fills are removed or stabilized).
Approaching road surfaces and ditches are “disconnected” from streams and stream crossing culverts to the maximum extent feasible using road shaping and road drainage structures.
Class I (fish-bearing) stream crossings meet State Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Service fish passage criteria.
Decommissioned stream crossings are excavated to exhume the original, stable, stream bed and channel sideslopes, and then stabilized with mulch and vegetation.

Storm-proofed Road and Landing Fills:

Unstable and potentially unstable road and landing fills that could deliver sediment to a stream are excavated (removed) or structurally stabilized.
Excavated spoil is placed in locations where eroded material will not enter a stream.
Excavated spoil is placed where it will not cause a slope failure or landslide.

Storm-proofed Road Surface Drainage:

Road surfaces and ditches are hydrologically “disconnected” from streams and stream crossing culverts. Road surface runoff is dispersed, rather than collected and concentrated.
Ditches are drained frequently by functional ditch relief culverts, rolling dips or cross road drains.
Outflow from ditch relief culverts does not discharge to streams.
Ditch relief culverts with gullies that deliver to a stream are removed or dewatered.
Ditches and road surface drainage does not discharge (through culverts, rolling dips or other cross drains) onto active or potential landslides.
Decommissioned roads have permanent drainage and do not rely on ditches.
Fine sediment contributions from roads, cutbanks and ditches are minimized by utilizing seasonal closures and installing a variety of surface drainage techniques including berm removal, road surface shaping (outsloping, insloping or crowning), rolling dips, ditch relief culverts, waterbars and other measures to disperse road surface runoff and reduce or eliminate sediment delivery to the stream.

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit

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Watershed Assessment and Recovery Unit

Gualala River Watershed Overview

North Coast Water Board’s Role in Protecting the Watershed

Road Improvement Fundamentals

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