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Southern California’s largest water agency Tuesday threw a lifeline to California WaterFix, approving a $4.3-billion buy-in to the water delivery project. The closely watched vote by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California board does not ensure the survival of the $17-billion project, which needs significant funding from other urban and agricultural water districts to move forward.

In 1960, the water barons of Los Angeles stood between Gov. Pat Brown and his dream of building a network of dams and canals to make the southern half of California bloom. He beat them – just barely, after weeks of public arm-twisting – and the State Water Project was born. Now Brown’s son, the current Gov. Jerry Brown, is calling on Southern California to support another massive water project – the Delta tunnels, a controversial plan aimed at fixing the system his father helped build.

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.