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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.

Californians living through a fifth year of historic drought received what seemed like a bit of good news last month: Researchers at Stanford found significantly larger-than-expected groundwater supplies 1,000 to 3,500ft (300 to 1,000m) below the state’s surface, in a first ever assessment of water supplies in California’s deep underground aquifers.

Updated estimates of our precious groundwater supplies are much-needed progress, as some estimates date back to 1989, but it’s critically important to approach these findings with a 21st-century mindset.

Forget about Tesla Motors Inc.’s batteries: The hottest way to store energy in the electricity business today is a century-old technology that involves moving water to stash power.

Known as pumped storage, the giant facilities push large volumes of water uphill when there is surplus electricity, and then let gravity move it back down through turbines to generate hydroelectric power when extra kilowatts are needed.

Late last week, several hundred northern California farmers suddenly became tenants of an unlikely landlord. On July 15, after three months in legal limbo, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California became the proud owner of four rural islands and their water—300 miles north of its jurisdiction.

To anyone familiar with southern California’s history of by-any-means-necessary water rights acquisition, this might seem like yet another way for the southerners to drink the northerners’ milkshake.