The report’s findings were unequivocal: Given the current pace of water diversions, the San Francisco Bay and the Delta network of rivers and marshes are ecological goners, with many of its native fish species now experiencing a “sixth extinction,” environmental science’s most-dire definition of ecosystem collapse.Once a vast, soaked marsh and channel fed by the gushing San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, the Delta has diminished dramatically over the previous century as those rivers and their mountain tributaries have been diverted to irrigate farms and Bay Area urbanity.

California is a big diverse place. California probably will experience droughts this year of different types in different places, and no drought at all in some places, simultaneously.  Even if conditions this year are very wet, with flooding, parts of California will have drought issues. (This is what makes California a great place to work on water problems.) The first two months of this new water year have been wetter than average in the north and much drier than average in the south.  But it is still early days.

Negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico to seal a water-sharing deal over the dwindling supplies on the Colorado River are confronting a new deadline: the inauguration of Donald Trump.

A 16-year drought has sent water levels at the river’s most important reservoir, Lake Mead, to their lowest point since it was first filled in the 1930s, threatening supply cuts for 40 million people across seven U.S. states and two Mexican states. It’s also raising the stakes for the two countries as they try to hammer out an extension of a four-year-old agreement on how to share the water.