As every Californian knows by now, our state is in the fifth year of a drought, and this persistent imbalance of supply and demand in our water supply is likely the new norm. The good news is that many of our state leaders have woken up to this fact, and in recent years have been clearing some of the logjams around smart water management. The state adopted a historic groundwater bill in 2014 to help ensure our reserves don’t run dry, and the legislature and voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond to help fund the infrastructure to make our state more resilient.

Looking north from Blue Canyon near Shaver Lake, copper-colored forests blanket mountain slopes that stretch ridge after ridge to the horizon. The patches of fading green that dappled these hillsides last fall have merged into an unbroken cover of rust-needled pines.  At dusk, when the winds die down, an eerie stillness gives way to the muffled sound of munching as beetles chomp through one tree after another, thousands after thousands. This is the look — and the sound — of drought. Four consecutive winters with little to no snowpack, followed by four dry summers, have devastated California’s southern Sierra Nevada.

Californians are known to take pride in the state’s many exceptional characteristics. But in at least one important area, we’d be wise to learn a thing or two from our neighbors. Not only are the Golden State’s water management challenges shared by other western states, but many of these places use more advanced practices to understand how much water is available, who has claims to it, and how much is being used.