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The Salton Sea is about to start shrinking more rapidly. A 2003 water transfer deal called for the Imperial Irrigation District to deliver “mitigation water” to the lake for 15 years. With those water deliveries ending in the final days of 2017, the lake’s decline will begin to accelerate. More than 19,000 acres of dry lakebed have already been left exposed as the shorelines have retreated over the past two decades. And as the lake continues to shrink, more lung-damaging dust is expected to spew from the growing stretches of lakebed into communities that already suffer from high asthma rates.

After a 17-year run of mostly dry years, the Colorado River’s flow has decreased significantly below the 20th century average.  Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, now stands just 39 percent full. The level of the reservoir behind Hoover Dam has been hovering a bit above historic lows during the past year, helped by a bigger snowpack last winter and strides in water conservation.

Elected officials and other groups representing those living below the troubled Oroville Dam have asked the Trump administration to hold off on renewing its 50-year license, saying the federal government should at least know why the spillway broke in half last winter before signing off. On Wednesday, the dam’s owner, the California Department of Water Resources, sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission saying it was past time to renew the dam’s license, an effort that has been on hold for the past 11 years.

For the first time in more than two weeks, rain fell overnight in the Bay Area. But the amount of precipitation recorded was minimal, and with no rain in the forecast through Sunday, December remains on track to be one of the driest in the Bay Area on record. Rain totals were generally less than one-tenth of an inch, with as much as .25 in some North Bay  locations, according to the weather service. Rainfall reports through 4 a.m. include Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains .24 inches, San Francisco .13 inches, San Carlos .10, Oakland .07, Danville .09 and San Jose .03.

Moving closer to final decisions about which California water projects will receive funding from a bond passed by voters in 2014, the California Water Commission heard presentations regarding about a dozen storage projects that have applied for bond funding. Potential projects include large-scale surface storage, reservoir expansions, groundwater projects and recycled-water projects.