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Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to drill two enormous tunnels to divert water to the Central Valley and Southern California should have been buried a long time ago. The $17 billion price is too high, as is the risk of an out-and-out water grab at the expense of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast. But the governor stubbornly resisted alternatives to his California WaterFix — until now.

Critics who say state water policy tilts too far toward Southern California got additional ammunition last week, when Gov. Jerry Brown named a new director to run his Department of Water Resources. New DWR Director Karla Nemeth is married to Tom Philp, an executive strategist with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Nemeth’s duties include overseeing the State Water Project, which delivers water from Northern California to the southern half of the state, and forging ahead with Brown’s controversial Delta tunnels project.

Between droughts and floods, the last decade has offered water managers in the southwest a preview of how climate change could impact a supply largely dependent on winter snow. This year’s disappointing snowpack has them worried again. “Water and climate change are joined at the hip,” said Brad Udall, a researcher at Colorado State University who published a paper earlier this year showing how climate change has reduced flows in the Colorado River. “One of the primary impacts of a warming atmosphere are changes to our water cycle.”