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On rich Delta farmland just outside Tracy, Suzanne Womack spent her childhood on more than 600 acres dating back to 1961. “I moved there when I was 3 years old,” said Womack. “I learned to ride horses there.” Now, for years, her attention has turned to preserving her land against what she calls poor maintenance by the state linked to the massive Clifton Court Forebay fed by the Delta’s Old River, right next door.

Images from the state Department of Water Resources show round-the-clock work the week of March 11-17, 2017 at Oroville Dam. A giant fracture developed in Oroville Dam’s main spillway during a heavy storm earlier this year. Five days later, water flowed over the dam’s emergency spillway for the first time, nearly causing the hillside below to fail. Approximately 188,000 downstream residents were evacuated for two days.

Despite the wet winter and far-above-average Sierra Nevada snowpack, California forests remain at risk from tree mortality, bark beetle infestations and overgrown landscapes, according to presentations at the 2017 California Farm Bureau Federation Leaders Conference.(Left) Timber operator and Tuolumne County Farm Bureau President Shaun Crook during the California Farm Bureau Leaders Conference in Sacramento. Photo/Ching Lee. During the event, foresters and forest landowners discussed all those issues and communicated concerns directly to Randy Moore, U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest regional forester, who participated as a guest speaker.

While this winter’s precipitation was good news for Northern California, that story doesn’t translate to much of the Inland Empire, area water managers said Tuesday. “The precipitation that refills our underground storage basins is actually below average, so far,” said Bob Tincher, manager of water resources for San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District. “So if it were to stop raining today, even with the wet year in Northern California, our groundwater storage levels could actually decrease again this year.” The Inland Empire needs three consecutive above-average precipitation years to refill local groundwater basins, he said.