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Environmentalists are adamant in their objections to moving water from Northern California south. They took a stand against the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta peripheral canal project in 1982, and they are against the delta tunnels project (the California WaterFix) now. I count myself an environmentalist but my position has long been less a stand than a crouch. I think the tunnels (or some form of them) are necessary but for years have preferred to let the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California take the heat for promoting them.

A state commission is throwing a new hurdle in front of Cadiz Inc.’s plans to turn a remote desert valley into a lucrative water source for Southern California. In a Sept. 20 letter to Cadiz, the State Lands Commission informed the company that its proposed water pipeline crosses a strip of state-owned land and therefore requires a state lease. The letter is the latest twist in the long, convoluted history of the politically connected company’s attempts to pump groundwater from its desert holdings 200 miles east of Los Angeles and sell it to Southern California cities.

The chances of a weak La Niña are increasing for the rainy season, and scientists are trying to figure out what that means, especially after a year when the meteorology profession was thrown for a loop by unexpected monsoon-like conditions. La Niña, the inverse of better-known El Niño, is a cooling of equatorial waters in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean and can impact atmospheric conditions worldwide.

No one should have been surprised when the giant Westlands Water District voted Sept. 19 against joining the state’s equally imposing $17-billion water infrastructure project. After all, the Central Valley district — at 600,000 acres the largest agricultural water district in the nation — had been signaling its uneasiness about the California WaterFix for months. The district accepted that the reliability and volume of the water supply for Southern and Central California could be enhanced by the plan to build two 30-mile, four-story-high tunnels to carry water under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The wide-open middle section of the Oroville Dam spillway is 70 percent filled, with the deadline for this season’s work fast approaching. The contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. remains on track to have the 3,000-foot spillway ready to pass flows of 100,000 cubic-feet per second by Nov. 1, said Jeanne Kuttel, chief of engineering for the state Department of Water Resources, in a media call on Wednesday morning.