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When two of every three Californians pay their water bills each month, they pay for reservoirs and aqueducts that were designed for them a half century ago. The State Water Project was conceived in the mid-1950s, when California’s population had doubled in the previous 15 years. Floods had recently ravaged Northern California towns. The concept was as simple as it was bold – bring water from the wetter parts of the state to the cities and agricultural operations that were outgrowing water supplies in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California.

Fast-forward decades, and the State Water Project has helped resolve groundwater problems in the Santa Clara Valley, South Coast, and elsewhere. In the San Joaquin Valley farm belt, groundwater overdraft persists, but by law irrigation districts must bring aquifers into sustainable conditions by 2040.  The 27 million Californians who pay for the State Water Project have become a $2.3 trillion economic engine, the equivalent of the eighth-largest economy in the world.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes for building a giant water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, his administration is saying it’s the “single most effective” way for California to provide enough water as the warming climate brings deeper droughts and more intense storms.

Environmental advocates and political leaders in the Delta, among other opponents, condemned a new state analysis that draws that conclusion, arguing that building the tunnel would harm the environment and several types of fish and would push water rates much higher for millions of Californians.

A new study that compiles decades of data on air quality in the Salton Sea region says there is more to worry about than polluted dust from the exposed beach of the shrinking sea.

Ozone, hydrogen sulfide gas, algal blooms, black carbon, wildfires, incinerators, landfill fires and unpaved roads contribute to the cocktail of bad air, according to the report, published on Thursday by Pacific Institute, a California-based sustainability research organization.

Tanned, rested and presumably ready after a summer vacation break, state legislators will return to the Capitol next week for the final month of their 2025 session.

The session’s final weeks will be dominated by bills aimed at registering blue California’s dislike of and opposition to President Donald Trump. The most prominent will be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw boundaries of California’s 52 congressional districts, giving Democrats five more seats to counter efforts in Texas to create five more Republican seats.

A new California bill would help ensure that our drinking water is safe. The legislation is important — and unusual in its approach.

Senate Bill 466, authored by Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, would shield water agencies from civil suits. The temporary legal immunity would protect them from lawsuits over chromium-6 contamination as they work to remove the cancer-causing chemical from drinking water supplies.