You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Fish and Wildlife will now take a more active role in protecting California waterways after the passing of Senate Bill 837. Scott Bauer, a Senior Environmental Scientist with California Fish and Wildlife said, “It provides for additional resources for our own department, our watershed enforcement team, for the state water board and it helps us better regulate water use on marijuana cultivation sites.” Bauer estimates there were about 5,000 grows in 2014 in Humboldt County. He believes that number is even higher now, and says that means more grows and more diversions from local streams and rivers.

Funny what a little rain can do. Last summer, the Grassland Ecological Area — a sprawling wetland tucked into agricultural fields near Los Banos in California’s Central Valley — was bone dry. For the hundreds of thousands of traveling birds that stopover in the wetlands each year, it was if someone had boarded up the last roadside Denny’s.

The numbers of Mallard ducks began to plummet by 40 percent, much to the chagrin of the area’s numerous duck hunting clubs. Most of the other 270 avian species frequenting the area followed.

California has shifted its message on the drought. Now, instead of calling on residents to cut their water consumption collectively by 25 percent, water agencies are saying something akin to this: “Trust us, it’s all under control.”

In May, the State Water Resources Control Board threw out the numerical conservation mandates it had imposed on more than 400 California water agencies. Instead, it adopted what it calls a “stress test.” Water agencies must show that they have enough water to serve customers for three more years, based on average demand during the just-concluded 2012-2015 drought period.

We cannot rebuild California’s water infrastructure from the ground up. All the dams, pumps, aqueducts – and rules and laws – arise from 200 years of human engineering in the Golden State. Our forebears designed these projects for the sole benefit of a few million people, and today we struggle to adapt them to the support of threatened fish and wildlife and 39 million people.

While we depend on this infrastructure not just to survive but thrive, some of it is undeniably outdated, and sometimes harmful. We cannot undo most of the environmental damage of our water development, but we can ameliorate it.