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The state Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by Delta interests attempting to block the sale of roughly 20,000 acres of land to a Southern California water agency. The court’s decision appears to clear the way for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to finalize its controversial $175 million purchase. San Joaquin and Contra Costa counties, Delta farmers and environmentalists fought the deal and were able to delay it twice, but their last-ditch request for the Supreme Court to get involved did not succeed.

The state Supreme Court has cleared the way for Southern California’s powerful Metropolitan Water District to buy five islands at the epicenter of the delta’s water system, officials said Friday.

Some officials and environmentalists in Northern California had fought to halt the sale, worried about what the MWD planned to do with the land. The agency has said it might use some of the land to provide access for the construction of a proposed delta tunnel system, a controversial project some oppose amid California’s five-year drought.

Under a comprehensive strategy released Tuesday, state and federal agencies will work to rapidly improve conditions for endangered Delta smelt, which are close to extinction after several extremely dry years.

According to a California Natural Resources Agency press release, the strategy represents a management shift for state and federal water and wildlife agencies, which are addressing multiple stressors on Delta smelt in a systematic way while studying the synergy of the actions.

Funny what a little rain can do. Last summer, the Grassland Ecological Area — a sprawling wetland tucked into agricultural fields near Los Banos in California’s Central Valley — was bone dry. For the hundreds of thousands of traveling birds that stopover in the wetlands each year, it was if someone had boarded up the last roadside Denny’s.

The numbers of Mallard ducks began to plummet by 40 percent, much to the chagrin of the area’s numerous duck hunting clubs. Most of the other 270 avian species frequenting the area followed.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has enlisted a Washington senior statesman to help his massive, $15.7 billion water tunnel proposal clear regulatory and financial hurdles, officials said Thursday.

Since June 22, the state has paid former Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt $10,305 a month to advise senior administration officials on the project.

Brown wants a number of local water agencies to pay for building two, 35-mile tunnels to carry water from the Sacramento River under the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and on to water contractors, primarily in Central and Southern California.