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The State Water Resources Control Board will began public hearings, today, on the controversial California WaterFix. The plan would add three new points of diversion that would move water around the Delta and to pumps near Tracy for transport to southern parts of the state.

Farmers and environmentalists fear the project would mean less water for Central Valley agricultural uses and lessen the health of the Delta’s ecosystem and water quality. Unions and Southern California interests tend to be in favor of the project. Unions argue the project would bring thousands of high-paying jobs.

The water that flows into Sorek desalination plant is drawn from near the Mediterranean Sea floor. Pumped inland, the water is cleansed, step by step, of salts and impurities. The transmutation does not take long. Forty minutes after entering the facility, the stuff of sailboats and sunbathers is now drinkable.

Sorek is the newest of five Israeli coastal desalination plants. A national mission in the last decade to develop the fleet, plus many more years of investment in wastewater recycling facilities, have turned Israel into as much a water producer as a water consumer.

The heat wave gripping parts of the country including Philadelphia, where tens of thousands are descending upon the city for the Democratic National Convention this week, is not going away anytime soon and will hit a peak Monday with temperatures in the city feeling like 108 degrees. Excessive heat warnings will continue Monday, the first day of the convention, in the Philadelphia area, most of the Midwest and regions out west.

Every year, the state battles invasive water weed species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The state Division of Boating and Waterways is at it again in 2016, and the hot, dry conditions created by the ongoing drought continue to make the job even harder.

Still swirling in controversy, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $15.5 billion re-engineering of the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is heading into a critical phase over the next year that could well decide if the project comes to fruition. Crunch time starts Tuesday. The State Water Resources Control Board begins months of grueling public hearings on the details of Brown’s plan to burrow a pair of massive tunnels beneath the heart of the Delta, a grand public works project designed to shore up the reliability of water deliveries to millions of Southern Californians and San Joaquin Valley farmers.