diff --git a/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/pom.xml b/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/pom.xml
index acad0a480ebc..0804466dcb65 100644
--- a/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/pom.xml
+++ b/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/pom.xml
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
     <dependency>
       <groupId>com.google.cloud</groupId>
       <artifactId>google-cloud-storage</artifactId>
+      <scope>provided</scope>
     </dependency>
     <dependency>
       <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
diff --git a/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/spanner/jdbc/ConnectionOptions.java b/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/spanner/jdbc/ConnectionOptions.java
index ff1bdff49ec0..3b03aca5e82d 100644
--- a/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/spanner/jdbc/ConnectionOptions.java
+++ b/google-cloud-clients/google-cloud-contrib/google-cloud-spanner-jdbc/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/spanner/jdbc/ConnectionOptions.java
@@ -291,7 +291,9 @@ public Builder setUri(String uri) {
      * Sets the URL of the credentials file to use for this connection. The URL may be a reference
      * to a file on the local file system, or to a file on Google Cloud Storage. References to
      * Google Cloud Storage files are only allowed when the application is running on Google Cloud
-     * and the environment has access to the specified storage location.
+     * and the environment has access to the specified storage location. It also requires that the
+     * Google Cloud Storage client library is present on the class path. The Google Cloud Storage
+     * library is not automatically added as a dependency by the JDBC driver.
      *
      * <p>If you do not specify a credentialsUrl (either by using this setter, or by specifying on
      * the connection URI), the credentials returned by {@link