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Controversial efforts to steer more water toward California farms advanced Wednesday in the House of Representatives, setting up yet another post-election showdown.

Amid frustration and finger-pointing from all sides, the Republican-controlled House rejected Northern California Democrats’ efforts to strip the California water provisions from a fiscal 2017 funding bill.

The House’s actions, following debate Tuesday night, mean House and Senate negotiators will once again confront technical and highly consequential California water language when they work out a final federal government funding package.

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, known as SGMA, is comprehensive statewide groundwater legislation that went into effect Jan. 1, 2015. SGMA requires for the first time sustainable groundwater management throughout California. The legislation allows local agencies to develop Groundwater Sustainability Plans specific to local conditions, however, if local agencies cannot or will not manage groundwater sustainably, the state will step in.

SGMA mandates that all high and medium priority groundwater basins in California must be managed sustainably over a 20-year implementation period. In Colusa County we have two groundwater basins subject to SGMA: the Colusa subbasin and the West Butte subbasin.

California Republicans are spreading out their bets in their annual effort to steer more water to the state’s farmers. In the absence of negotiations, such tactics matter most right now. Framed by a hearing Tuesday, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives will vote this week on whether to retain farmer-friendly California water provisions in an Interior Department funding bill for the fiscal year that begins in October. Whether this vehicle succeeds where others have failed will probably be known only after the November elections.

With habitat for California waterbirds drying up, conservation groups and rice farmers are collaborating to flood fields and enhance waterbird habitat on roughly 550,000 acres of California’s rice fields.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is contributing $7 million, matched by partner agencies, for helping share farmers’ costs of implementing new practices that align rice growing with waterbird needs. “The idea behind the program is to provide the incentive for people to adopt new things and then do it on their own even without the payment,” program manager Alan Forkey said.

Grass species of crops adopt an “austerity” strategy and limits the development of its root system during times of drought, a study has revealed.

The results offer an insight into the little understood biology of roots and could help breeding effort to improve drought tolerance, say scientists. Many of the world’s key food and energy crops belong to the grass family and are often grown in drought-prone areas. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.