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The thousands of miles of concrete channels diverting street water from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers represent the last major water project in Los Angeles County, built almost 100 years ago. On Thursday, Dave Sorem, owner and vice president of Mike Bubalo Construction Co., showed off the first of a second wave of street-water projects that elevate what is essentially water pollution into a drinkable water source.

It’s a safe bet most people would say they find sound of flowing water to be a soothing, positive experience. This is especially true right now when it comes to a particularly large flow in our Coachella Valley. The Desert Water Agency and Coachella Valley Water District recently reported that a record amount of Colorado River water has been coming into the desert and is being deposited into our aquifer – the primary source of our drinking water.

As expected, an “atmospheric river” delivered moderate to heavy rain to the Bay Area on Thursday. The North Bay and Santa Cruz mountains received a majority of the rainfall, with a handful of locations recording more than 4½ inches, including Ben Lomond, according to the National Weather Service in Monterey. Some locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains recorded 2 inches of rain in six hours.

For as long as agriculture has existed in the Central Valley, farmers have pumped water from the ground to sustain their livelihood and grow food consumed by much of the nation. This has caused the ground in certain places to sink, sometimes dramatically, eliminating valuable aquifer storage space that can never be restored. The damage by subsidence extends to the California Aqueduct, the 700-mile artificial river that conveys water from Northern California to the valley and beyond as the principal feature of the State Water Project. The recent drought only intensified the problem.

The global dam industry claims hydropower can build climate resilience, and harmlessly wean us from fossil fuels. But as events in the past 12 months have shown, nothing could be further from the truth. A press release, issued on October 31, read: “Itaipu is a UN Climate Change Partner at the COP23 Climate Conference.” For those who don’t know, the Latin American firm was behind Itaipu Dam, one of the largest megadams in Latin America.