Californians living through a fifth year of historic drought received what seemed like a bit of good news last month: Researchers at Stanford found significantly larger-than-expected groundwater supplies 1,000 to 3,500ft (300 to 1,000m) below the state’s surface, in a first ever assessment of water supplies in California’s deep underground aquifers.

Updated estimates of our precious groundwater supplies are much-needed progress, as some estimates date back to 1989, but it’s critically important to approach these findings with a 21st-century mindset.

Forget about Tesla Motors Inc.’s batteries: The hottest way to store energy in the electricity business today is a century-old technology that involves moving water to stash power.

Known as pumped storage, the giant facilities push large volumes of water uphill when there is surplus electricity, and then let gravity move it back down through turbines to generate hydroelectric power when extra kilowatts are needed.

Late last week, several hundred northern California farmers suddenly became tenants of an unlikely landlord. On July 15, after three months in legal limbo, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California became the proud owner of four rural islands and their water—300 miles north of its jurisdiction.

To anyone familiar with southern California’s history of by-any-means-necessary water rights acquisition, this might seem like yet another way for the southerners to drink the northerners’ milkshake.

California officials don’t have to pay property owners to access their land to conduct preliminary testing before deciding whether to move forward with a $15.7 billion plan to build two giant water tunnels to supply drinking water for cities and irrigation for farmers, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The landowners in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta had demanded payment for thousands of acres sought by the state for testing. The payments would have added millions of dollars to the cost of the tunnels project.