Blogpost

Planning Ahead: What Agencies Need to Know About the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan

3.2 minute read

May 27, 2025

Urban water planning in California isn’t just a regulatory obligation—it’s a vital opportunity to ensure your community is prepared for a resilient, sustainable future. With the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP) due to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) by July 1, 2026, now is the time for city leaders to begin planning for this data- and resource-intensive process.

At Harris, we understand the pressure public agencies face—aging infrastructure, climate impacts, staffing shortages, and increasing demand for transparency. Overloaded public agency employees often find it difficult to set aside the time required to develop the UWMP. Fortunately, you're not in this alone.

What Is the 2025 UWMP—and Why It Matters

Required every five years, UWMPs are essential for water suppliers serving more than 3,000 customers or delivering over 3,000 acre-feet annually. These documents:

Demonstrate how agencies will ensure long-term water reliability
Align with state mandates and local development patterns
Serve as the foundation for Water Supply Assessments (WSAs) for development projects
Include a Water Supply Contingency Plan (WSCP) that guides emergency response

The 2025 update will reflect lessons learned since 2020, including enhanced approaches to climate resilience, conservation, and demand forecasting. While DWR’s final Guidebook for 2025 is still pending, the complexity and scope of what lies ahead is already clear.

Common Client Challenges

From our experience with UWMPs since 2010, agencies often run into the same hurdles:

Understaffing: Limited internal capacity to gather and analyze extensive datasets, fill out forms, and draft and finalize comprehensive plans with hundreds of pages of appendices.
Data Gaps: The data requirements for the UWMP are extensive and come from multiple sources. Frequent follow-up is required to gather, develop, analyze and review data sets.
Internal and External Silos: Working across departments and agencies can be a challenge. Harris understands the importance of communicating how data will be used, allowing sensitive users to “pre-review” draft write-ups and analyses, ensuring alignment across sometimes competing goals, while meeting the myriad and detailed requirements of the California Department of Water Resources.
Outdated Models: Oftentimes, existing Water Master Plans provide some useful data, but demand estimates need to be updated to current data and extended to meet the 20-year scenario required by the UWMP. Harris provides demand and supply modeling for a 25-year timeframe, to better align with planning needs.
Climate Change Impacts: The 2025 Guidebook will require updated estimates of climate change impacts on your water supply. Harris is comfortable writing climate change documents that align with local and regional estimates while adding a more water intensive focus.

These challenges can significantly delay the planning process or result in documents that don’t meet the expectations of DWR—or your community.

How Harris Supports the Process

Harris brings more than two decades of experience in preparing UWMPs and supporting public agencies with integrated water planning. We begin with a review of your 2020 UWMP, develop a focused data request, and guide your team through demand forecasting, supply reliability assessments, climate change impacts, and updates to your Water Supply Contingency Plan. Our deliverables are structured to closely align with DWR guidance while remaining clear, usable documents for internal planning and communication.

Because water planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum, our team also collaborates across disciplines — Engineering, Water and Wastewater Management, and City Managers or Planning for development forecasts — as well as with external jurisdictions such as Groundwater Sustainability/Water Management Agencies. Harris helps our clients ensure a seamless process that integrates multiple planning agencies to develop a comprehensive UWMP and WSCP.

Let’s Talk About Your 2025 UWMP

Our team is already working with agencies to plan for this next cycle. If you're ready to get ahead of the curve—or just want to explore your options—Harris is here to help. Together, we can build a plan that does more than comply. It will inform, empower, and prepare your city for a secure, resilient water future.