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Record rains are a double-edged sword for California’s Salinas Valley: While the recent deluge virtually ended the state’s historic drought, it also created muddy, unworkable fields – sending prices for everything from kale to cauliflower soaring. The famed agricultural region just south of Silicon Valley is usually a springtime sea of green vegetables. But this year, there are patches of brown unplanted dirt in “America’s salad bowl,” which supplies more than 60 percent of the country’s leaf lettuce and almost half of its broccoli.

Official reports released Monday say the catastrophic damage to Oroville Dam’s main spillway probably stemmed from swift water flows under the concrete chute, which was cracked and of uneven thickness. The observations, contained in consultants’ reports prepared for the state Department of Water Resources, echo much of an independent assessment made for UC Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. An official verdict on the cause is not due until the fall, when a separate forensics team investigating the February spillway break will submit its report.

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.