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In 2015, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation on more than $1 billion in spending for water projects. Hundreds of millions of those dollars are allocated for long-term projects associated with flood control, desalination, water recycling, and conservation. One particular project currently in the water works is Southern California’s plan for desalination by turning 50 million gallons of the Pacific Ocean into potable water per day. The plant opened in December of 2015 as the first in the state to tap an ocean for drinking water. More than a dozen other plants in California are in the planning stages.

Practitioners in the water sector are familiar with the statistics on water management in Israel. An estimated 90 percent of the wastewater generated there is reused, making it the global leader in this practice. For comparison, Spain is second at about 20 percent reuse; the United States reuses about 1 percent of its water. In addition to water reuse, Israel supplies about two-thirds of its domestic water from desalination.

As the Cadiz project seems increasingly likely to go forward, Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a statement contending the underground desert water could ultimately contaminate much of Southern California’s water supply. The project involves the transfer of ancient groundwater in a remote part of San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert to parts of Orange County and other locations, where it could serve as many as 400,000 people.

The wettest winter on record for Northern California filled most of the state’s reservoirs and had the massive Delta water pumps roaring at full tilt for the first half of the year. Despite this seeming abundance of water, the never-ending dispute continues between farms and cities wanting to receive more water and environmental groups fighting for the Delta’s fragile population of tiny smelt. Environmentalists are opposed to a proposal championed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Southern California water interests to ramp up pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta starting next week.