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The California Water Data Challenge, announced on Friday, invites interested individuals and teams to develop apps, websites, data visualizations or other tools “that leverage publicly available data sets in novel ways to support creative solutions to California’s water challenges, as outlined in the Brown administration’s California Water Action Plan,” according to a joint release by several state agencies supporting the competition. Sponsors of the challenge include the State Water Board, the California Department of Water Resources, California Fish and Wildlife, California Government Operations Agency, and the California Department of Technology.

Seven of the 10 worst cities in America for air pollution are in California, per the American Lung Association. The two worst—Bakersfield and the Visalia-Porterville-Hanford metro area—are trending down. The two bear much of the attack that California’s drought is waging on the state’s air quality. Their location at the southern tip of the Central Valley, where the sun beats down unobstructed, creates an “inversion layer” of warm air, trapping industrial chemicals beneath it.

On his first visit to Melbourne in 2009, Stanley Grant, a drought expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, had a question for his taxi driver. “How’s the drought?” he asked. “It’s about 28 percent,” came the reply. Grant was puzzled. But shortly afterward, they drove past an electronic road sign announcing that the city’s reservoirs were indeed at just 28 percent of capacity. The taxi driver knew the state of the reservoirs exactly.

Many residents in California’s agricultural regions rely on groundwater from private wells rather than from municipal supplies for clean drinkable water. Test results on many of these wells have revealed excess nitrates and other dangerous elements. Indisputably, all state residents deserve clean potable water. Cris Carrigan, director of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) Office of Enforcement, issued confidential letters to growers in two regions, Salinas Valley and the Tulare Lake Basin, demanding these farmers supply potable water to the citizens in need.

Once thought to be the wave of the future, turning seawater into drinking water is proving to be a tough sell in California. Desalination of ocean water has long held promise, but the dream of sticking a straw in the ocean and getting unlimited clean water by simply opening the spigot of technology — that’s looking less and less likely here.

Scarcely a decade ago, when “desal” was relatively new to the state and optimism was high, there were 22 different proposals for plants up and down the California coast.