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

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., stayed off the Senate floor on Friday evening while her California Democratic colleague, Sen. Barbara Boxer, opposed a water resources bill. Boxer and senators from Washington and Oregon said the bill contains provisions to deal with the California drought that could damage the salmon industry and reduce the power of the Endangered Species Act. Boxer, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, also said that the drought provision was the work of a single House member, which was a veiled reference to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Are we going to decide to kill fish tonight? It was a question Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell brought to the Senate floor last Friday as she implored colleagues to vote no on a controversial water bill that would increase water flow to San Joaquin farmers and away from fish habitat in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. And if they start messing with water flows in northern California, what’s to stop them from doing it in Washington?

The drying out starts … now. The storm that swamped the Bay Area and prompted flash flood warnings, inundated roads and triggered rock and mud slides from Sonoma County into Monterey County has moved south. After a few showers late Thursday and early Friday, the region is in for what appears to be at least a week of non-rain.

That’s not Police Chief Martin Brody of Amity Islands from the 1975 movie Jaws. Wrong coast. Wrong century. Curt Schmutte, a consultant to the Metropolitan Municipal Water District of Southern California, recently saw a shark warning on a sign at a bait shop along the Sacramento River – easily a good 30 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Wait. What? “If the governor builds those tunnels,” the bait shop cashier explained to Curt, “we’ll have great white sharks in the Delta.” OK. Rewind.

Welcomed by farm and water leaders as a balanced solution, significant federal legislation authorizing $558 million worth of drought-relief actions for California heads to the president after passage in Congress. The bipartisan drought legislation, part of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, or WIIN, invests in California water storage and desalination projects, and includes a number of short-term provisions intended to increase flexibility of the state’s water system in response to drought.