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california Water Today 109 local and regional public and private entities manage over 150 hydroelectric facilities. In some areas, local resource conservation districts are charged with overseeing ecosystem-related land and water management. This institutional diversity creates the potential for innovation and flexible responses to management challenges, but it can also limit the scope for effec- tive coordination (Bish 1982). Coordination can be particularly important— indeed necessary—when water management involves multiple functions, or when the scope of management is geographically defined. For instance, water and wastewater utilities need to collaborate to effectively manage recycled wastewater programs, and significant problems can occur if land use authori- ties do not coordinate with water suppliers, wastewater utilities, and flood management agencies when making zoning and land-use-permitting deci- sions. Coordination at the level of groundwater basins is required to limit problems of groundwater overdraft, and broader watershed coordination can create benefits that cut across institutional lines (e.g., recharging aquifers with stormwater to augment water supply and limit polluted runoff from enter- ing local streams). Coordination also can enable local entities to realize scale economies in some activities. Some of California’s local water management entities already benefit from structures that facilitate coordination. For instance, a few agencies manage both water supply and floods, and about 40 percent of water utilities also treat wastewater.38 About 70 percent of large urban water utilities belong to wholesale networks, the largest of which—the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California—indirectly serves roughly 18 million of the state’s residents.39 Utilities that jointly manage water and wastewater and members of wholesale networks produced significantly better urban water management plans than utilities not benefitting from this integration (Hanak 2009a). The physical link- ages and institutional arrangements within wholesale networks also can sig- nificantly improve the capacity to respond to supply shortfalls. Many Southern California utilities are also linked through their membership in adjudicated basins, supervised by court-appointed water masters who oversee water supply and use; such adjudications facilitate the trading of supplies.40 38. Estimates on the share of joint water and wastewater utilities are from Hanak (2005b). Examples of agencies that provide both water supply and flood control functions include the Yuba County Water Agency and the Santa Clara Valley Water District. 39. Estimate on the share of retail utilities within wholesale networks is from Hanak (2005b). 40. For instance, sales of water between members of the Mojave Basin and several other Southern California adjudicated basins are common (Water Strategist, various issues).