You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Touching down in Fresno one week ago, Donald Trump offered a standard Republican critique of California’s water shortage – that it is, as legions of roadside banners here proclaim, the “man-made” result of environmental policies restricting water flows.

Then he barreled further, declaring “there is no drought.”

But if exaggeration is Trump’s style, Hillary Clinton’s would appear to be avoidance.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner, campaigning in Fresno on Saturday, localized her longstanding criticism of Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants living in the United States, pledging to make sure “that 1.2 million farmworkers in California will not be rounded up and deported.”

It is easy to assume seawater desalination is the answer to California’s long-term water woes. All you have to do is look west, and the vast Pacific Ocean simply glimmers with opportunity.

But as with so many things involving water, desalination is not that simple. Converting seawater into drinking water is very expensive, it consumes a lot of electricity and it comes with a host of potentially unsavory environmental impacts.

 

California’s drought is perhaps more of a political ping pong ball than it is anything else, but makes no mistake: drought in California is real; it happens; it’s cyclical; and, politicians have done nothing to mitigate its impacts to the state’s 40 million residents.

While El Niño arguably did not materialize as predicted it did fill northern California reservoirs. Shasta Lake is full, as are Lake Oroville and Folsom Lake. Those facts arguably moved state officials to allocate more than half the requested water allotments to State Water Project users, which include farmers and urban residents.

A water briefing in the Central Valley gave attendees an outline of how the water situation looks in California and clarified that the winter wasn’t as wet as some reports. The California Department of Water Resources and Water Education Foundation, in cooperation with the Center for Irrigation Technology, held a water briefing seminar at California State University of Fresno. The morning session had a statewide focus and speakers showed detailed information on where California stands with water and the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

It’s no secret that the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is in rough shape, by many metrics. One of the most talked about, and controversial, subjects is the state of the delta’s native fish populations, including endangered salmon runs and delta smelt. Management to protect critical fish populations has meant curbing water exports from the delta, which support farms and cities farther south and west – a policy unpopular with many water users.

But is there a better way to do things?