As California has struggled to live with drought, cries have gone up for new dams, expanded reservoirs, and construction of a pair of enormous water tunnels to store and deliver water more reliably. But what about the need to maintain the capacity of the land to soak up and slowly shed rainwater and snowmelt? Shouldn’t we consider the water-gathering capabilities of our forests as part of our water infrastructure, too?

AB2480, carried by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, would recognize watersheds as essential to water storage and delivery as the pipes, canals, dams and aqueducts that make up our state’s water infrastructure. This would mean watershed maintenance and restoration would receive the same consideration for financing as building a dam.

Laurie A. Wayburn, the co-founder and president of Pacific Forest Trust, which is working with Bloom on the legislation, suggests improvements in the five key watersheds of California — the Trinity, the McCloud, the Feather, the Pit and the Upper Sacramento — could yield 5 to 20 percent more water. These five watersheds, all located in the northeastern corner of the state, provide 80 percent of California’s water, including 85 percent of the water flowing into San Francisco Bay.

The concept, though, could apply to any watershed.

The northeastern forests, however, are not in the best of shape — Bloom described their condition to the state Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee as “distinctly suboptimal.” These logged-over forests are now crowded with young, second- or third-growth pine and fir. Most of the land (62 percent) is federal forest, with 32 percent private lands, and much of the rest tribal domains.

To bring them back to their natural best, land managers would need to thin the forest to create more gaps between the trees. A less dense forest canopy would allow more snow to fall to the ground than cling to treetops, where it evaporates quickly. The shade would slow the snowmelt and cool the air, allowing the watershed to store more water and — importantly — shed it into streams and rivers later into the spring and summer. Thinning, and other activities such as stream restoration, would provide 7,000 jobs (direct, indirect and induced) in a region of high unemployment.

“We need to invest in the state’s water infrastructure,” Wayburn said. “This is the cheapest thing we can do to get more water and more reliable water.”

Climate models show that as the state warms, this northeastern corner will become cooler and wetter — and thus potentially yield more water in the future.

Wayburn’s trust and a host of environmental organization are on board in support of AB2480. The Association of California Water Agencies supports the objectives (which are also embodied in the state water plan), but is opposed to any scheme to tax water users to finance watershed restoration.

While “who pays” is always the question, it is one to take up another day. AB2480 recognizes nature’s work as valuable as human-engineered parts of our water infrastructure — and just as worthy of restoration, care and maintenance.