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Federal water storage among California’s Central Valley Project (CVP) reservoirs started the 2017 water year with 8.9 million acre feet, nearly twice held in the same six key reservoirs scattered about the state a year earlier. This is 145 percent of the 15-year average carryover of 6.2 million acre feet, still a “safe level” with respect to flood control or the possibility of a dry winter, according to David Murillo, regional director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The reconstruction of Oroville Dam’s flood control spillway is likely to cost as much as $500 million, state officials said Thursday, as design changes and unexpected additional work has inflated the cost of the project. Originally budgeted at $275 million, the repair has grown to cover a greater level of protection for the dam’s emergency spillway – whose near failure in February sparked the evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents – as well as unforeseen problems in the bedrock beneath the main spillway, said Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Water Resources.

Last week, the Interior Department sent a letter to Cadiz Inc. that the company long had hoped to receive. For years, the renewable resource company had been trying to build a drinking-water pipeline between land it owned over an aquifer in the Mojave Desert and thirsty residents of Southern California. To help get the go-ahead from the federal government, it hired the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to help grease the wheels in Washington.