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A drive around the north state these days shows how remarkably fast the fragile water picture can change. It can be confusing as well. Just three months ago, at the end of an El Niño rainy season, the state’s two largest reservoirs — Shasta and Oroville — looked blissfully the same. They were full for the first time in years, to the point that houseboats on the lakes could tie up to trees on the bank rather than pound a stake into the dirt bathtub ring.

Scientists from two federal agencies are about to overhaul the rules governing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, potentially increasing protections for endangered fish populations and limiting the amount of water pumped to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will re-examine the nearly decade-old environmental regulations covering the Delta water pumps – rules that some experts say have been rendered nearly obsolete by drought and the devastation of endangered species. The old rules will remain in effect during the review, which could take two years or longer.

The American West is in the midst of a serious drought – which compounds the underlying water crisis that stems from overdevelopment, misuse, and political maneuvers carried out long ago. This documentary examines the causes and consequences.

A cellphone video that has been seen more than 5 million times after KCRA 3 shared it on Facebook Tuesday. It shows a mother bear and her two cubs swimming at Pope Beach in Lake Tahoe, near Camp Richardson. It’s not every day you see a family of bears playing in a public lake — unless you’re a biologist. “At Lake Tahoe, we get bears down at the lake frequently,” said Jason Holley, a supervising wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

 

Last week, University of California Davis Professor Geoff Schladow broke the news gently before a crowd of residents and scientists that Lake Tahoe is still getting warmer, regional winters are still getting shorter, and overall snowfall is still on the decline. “Hopefully you’re not like me where you’ve been investing in skis each year,” said Schladow. The news — highlighted by the fact that 2015 was the warmest year yet for Lake Tahoe — came with the release last week of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center’s 10th annual “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report.”