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Calling all water users: If you would like to buy in on water from a future Sites Reservoir, now is the time.

Plans for Sites Reservoir are moving forward, with a deadline of June 2017 to ask the state Water Commission to pay for half of the estimated $4.4 billion construction cost. Sacramento Valley water users had the first chance to ask for (and pay for) a future of the water supply pie. Sacramento Valley water districts are on paper to purchase about 128,000 acre-feet of water annually.

Despite a good winter, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service Tahoe Management Unit says the basin’s forests are still stressed and in danger from wildfires.

“We had a better snow pack this year and a better precipitation season in the Tahoe Basin,” said Brian Garrett, urban forest manager for USFS. “But the trees in the forests are still extremely stressed and one season of 100 percent precipitation does not take you out of that condition.”

A group representing powerful statewide business and water interests has filed a petition to ease Sacramento River fishing regulations for striped bass, a predator fish some blame for the demise of chinook salmon.

The California Fish and Game Commission will consider the petition, which also includes changes to black bass regulations, during its meeting next month in Folsom.

The filing is the latest in an ongoing debate over striped bass, a non-native fish some say eat enormous amounts of young salmon in the Sacramento River and in the Delta as the little fish try to make it to the ocean.

Californians seem to be adopting conservation as a lifestyle, and that’s encouraging. It’s also necessary. As the state, particularly the southern portion, didn’t get the full benefit of El Nino this past winter and spring, drought conditions persist in much of California. If you’ve lived here for any length of time, you know that drought is a fairly regular occurrence in our state. We see periods of higher- and lower-than-normal precipitation, but the latter seem to be occurring more often and for longer spans.

A proposal to divert Colorado River water to Denver recently has won the endorsement of Gov. John Hickenlooper and the approval of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

But Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir expansion project may be just as notable for its general lack of opposition west of the Continental Divide. That’s thanks to a wide-ranging agreement, effective in 2013, in which Denver Water obtained concessions including a promise that numerous Western Slope parties to the agreement wouldn’t oppose the expansion project. In return, Denver Water made a number of commitments to the Western Slope.