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Oregon water managers are celebrating an exciting milestone this fall. Owyhee Reservoir is ending its irrigation season with 170% of its 35-year average water volume, which is a sign of much-needed stability for local farmers and communities.

Capital Press reported that officials say the reservoir’s healthy levels are great news for the coming seasons. When the irrigation season closed on October 10, the reservoir held 357,000 acre-feet of water — nearly double what’s typical for the time of year.

As a federally imposed deadline for a Colorado River agreement came and went without a deal, Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Legislature called for the federal government to intervene. Hobbs and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Legislature blamed Colorado and the other Upper Basin states for the impasse.

The November 5 edition of the AgNet News Hour struck a chord with California farmers and voters alike as hosts Nick Papagni and Josh McGill welcomed Don Wagner, candidate for Secretary of State of California, to discuss the state’s leadership crisis, water mismanagement, and the fight to restore common sense to Sacramento.

Wagner, currently serving in Orange County and endorsed by former Secretary of State Bill Jones and former Governor Pete Wilson, said the same thing many Californians are feeling: “The problems in this state are entirely man-made.” He pointed to decades of political gridlock and poor decision-making that have crippled business, agriculture, and infrastructure. “We don’t have a resource problem,” Wagner said. “We have a government problem. It’s bad policy, not bad luck, that’s hurting California.”

California often swings between climate extremes—from powerful storms to punishing droughts. As climate change drives more intense and frequent dry and wet cycles, pressure on California’s water supplies grows.

A new University of California, Davis, economic study finds that drought in California pushes the price of water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs up by $487 per acre-foot, more than triple the cost during an average wet year.

This week one of the nation’s earliest and most important public works projects, the 363-mile Erie Canal linking the Hudson River with Lake Erie, marked its 200^th anniversary.

There was only negligible media and political notice. That’s regrettable, because the canal opening in 1825 utterly transformed the nation’s economy and ignited its expansion from a few sparsely populated former colonies on the Atlantic Coast some 3,000 miles westward to the Pacific Ocean.