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While California is breathing a sigh of relief and rightfully celebrating an epic water year, efforts in Sacramento threaten to make seismic changes in the way our water has been managed in the Coachella Valley and across the state. Last week, the governor released a report outlining steps for long-term water conservation by residential and business water users. The Coachella Valley Water District worked alongside state agencies to provide input into that framework – we wanted to ensure that the unique circumstances of our community were reflected in the proposed legislation.

Federal officials have concluded that infrastructure for a proposed hydropower project — which would tap billions of gallons of groundwater in the California desert, just outside Joshua Tree National Park — wouldn’t be especially harmful to the environment. The Bureau of Land Management issued a “finding of no significant impact” Thursday for power lines and water pipelines that would enable Eagle Crest Energy Company to build a massive hydroelectric power plant in the Eagle Mountain area, which is surrounded on three sides by the national park. That finding clears the way for the agency to approve the project infrastructure in a few months, after a final protest period.

A question that’s long been asked about California American Water’s proposed desalination plant – and which is brought up in several letters commenting on the project’s environmental impact report – is exactly how big it should be. What’s surprising is that, in a year as wet as this one, the plant wouldn’t even be necessary. Pure Water Monterey, a recycled water project launched by the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency and the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, will deliver 3,500 acre-feet of water annually to the Monterey Peninsula beginning in 2018.

California’s historic five-year drought is officially over, washed away with the relentlessly drenching rains, floods and snowstorms of this winter. But just as tougher building codes and better emergency planning follow major earthquakes, the brutally dry years from 2012 to 2016 are already leaving a legacy, experts say, changing the way Californians use water for generations to come. “There’s no question that we’ll be better prepared for the next drought because of the lessons learned in this one,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento. “This was the wake-up call of the century.”

With their deadline less than three months away, local governments in many critical California groundwater basins still haven’t settled on a local entity to implement the state’s new pumping regulations, a key water official says. Counties, cities and water districts in many areas have submitted “a hodgepodge of overlapping claims” to be their region’s groundwater sustainability agency, said Pat Minturn, who is on the Northern California Water Association’s groundwater committee that’s working with state officials on solutions.