San Francisco Estuary Partnership

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership is part of the National Estuary Program, a non-regulatory program of the EPA created through the Clean Water Act. Our planning area encompasses the San Francisco Estuary and its watersheds, from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the San Francisco Bay.

Who We Are

We lead a regional strategy, the Estuary Blueprint (also known as the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, or CCMP) to protect and restore the water quality and ecological integrity of the Estuary from the Golden Gate to the Sacramento Delta. 

Catalyst: The San Francisco Estuary Partnership convenes agencies and organizations in the region and catalyzes regional work towards our collective vision of a health Estuary. We work hand-in-hand with communities, funders, and other key stakeholders to collaborate, innovate, and adapt to the dynamic needs of the estuary and its watershed communities against a backdrop of global climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change .  

Scale:  The San Francisco Estuary Partnership builds partnerships and leverages federal funding with millions of dollars in state and local funds for regional-scale restoration, water quality improvement, and resilience-building projects.  

Unique Structure: San Francisco Estuary Partnership is a part of the National Estuary Program, a place-based program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  The Estuary Partnership sits within the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the regional housing, land use, and transportation planning agencies. We are a regional governmental organization with a federal mandate to protect and restore the nationally significant San Francisco Estuary.