You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Only 5 more inches. That’s the amount of precipitation the northern stretch of the Sierra Nevada needs between now and September 30 to become the wettest water year on record. The Eight-Station Index, a measure of precipitation in the northern Sierra that helps determine the status of Northern California’s water supply, currently stands at 83.5 inches. It’s only another storm or two away from the current record of 88.5 that was hit in the 1982–83 season.

The Mission of the State Water Resources Control Board is to balance water allocation and water quality protection for California. With its latest flows proposal for the San Joaquin River tributaries, the SWRCB does neither and is clearly promoting the governor’s Twin Tunnels project. Even though the SWRCB cites the need for increased river flows to “improve aquatic ecosystems,” their actions reveal the true intention – which is to move additional water through the damaged Delta to facilitate the export of billions of gallons of water south.

The Trump administration has handed a big boost to a private water venture in Southern California, angering California’s senior senator, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who said the decision could “destroy pristine public land” in the Mojave Desert. In a little-noticed memorandum issued last month, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management effectively relieved the Cadiz water project of the requirement to undergo a federal environmental review, which the company had sought to avoid. The decision greatly boosts the prospects for Cadiz, which wants to tap water from under the Mojave and sell it to thirsty water districts in Southern California.

Ask the residents of San Jose’s drying-out Rock Springs neighborhood and other nearby areas if it pays to ignore warnings about future disasters that seem in normal times to be nothing more than distant, negative fantasies. During the heavy rains of February, when a crisis caused by a poorly-built spillway at the Oroville Dam drew worldwide headlines, the San Jose neighborhood and areas around it suffered at least $50 million of avoidable damage to private property and about $23 million in public property damage. Some estimates of the total toll come to more than $100 million.

The Trump administration has removed a major roadblock to plans by a Santa Monica company to pump ancient groundwater from below the Mojave Desert and sell it to urban areas of Southern California. The federal Bureau of Land Management has rescinded a 2015 administrative finding that Cadiz, Inc. needed to obtain a federal right of way permit and thus had to complete comprehensive environmental studies before it could build a water pipeline within 43 miles of railroad right of way owned by the Arizona & California Railroad.