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Republicans from arid Western states have set their sights on making dam-building easier. Led by California Representative Tom McClintock, lawmakers from Wyoming, North Dakota, Arizona, and Colorado introduced a bill last week that would try to force federal agencies to complete complex environmental studies for dam-building plans within a year. But many water scientists, river law experts, and regulators say House Resolution 1664, which is sponsored by California Republican Congressman Tom McClintock, presents an unrealistic timeframe given that any major modern dam proposal includes dozens of detailed scientific, engineering, and safety studies running to thousands of pages.

After millions of dollars of flood damage and mass evacuations this year, California is grappling with how to update its aging flood infrastructure. Some say a natural approach might be part of the answer. All the water that poured down spillways at the Oroville Dam in northern California did a lot of damage to the area — and for miles down the river. “It looks like a bomb’s gone off,” says John Carlon of River Partners, a nonprofit that does river restoration. “That’s what it looks like.”

After the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a 65% initial allocation for those growing operations south of the Delta in the Central Valley of California, Western Growers’ President and CEO Tom Nassif declared the allocation “defies logic.” Particularly since the announcement follows another notice that other parts of the Central Valley would receive100% initial allocations. The unusually high levels of rain over the winter led growers to hope for a 100% allocation, Western Growers says. Key storage facilities like the San Luis Reservoir were filled to capacity.

Surveyors will crunch across the deepest mountain snowdrifts California has seen in years on Thursday to take the first snow measurement of the spring, a time when the snow begins to melt and flow downhill. The snowpack stretches along 400 miles of the Sierra Nevada, creating an icy reservoir that provides roughly one-third of irrigation and drinking water to the nation’s most populous state during hot, dry months of the year. The water content of the snowpack measured at 164 percent of normal Wednesday, according to the state’s electronic monitors throughout the mountain range.

As snow continued to fall on the eastern Sierra Nevada this week, platoons of earth movers, cranes and utility trucks fanned out across the Owens Valley, scrambling to empty reservoirs and clean out a lattice-work of ditches and pipelines in a frantic effort to protect the key source of Los Angeles’ water.