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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.

The $17 billion “California WaterFix” project reached a tipping point Tuesday after a Silicon Valley water district voted against Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach in favor of a less expensive, scaled-back version. The San Jose-based Santa Clara Valley Water District agreed to “conditionally support” California WaterFix – a plan to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta through a pair of 40-foot-wide, 35-mile-long tunnels – but said the state will have to consider cheaper alternatives before the district can commit hundreds of millions to the water project.

An atmospheric river is poised to funnel gigantic amounts of rain and snow to the Northwest over the next few days. As much as 15 inches of rain is forecast in the mountains along with several inches in coastal areas, including Portland and Seattle. It could be Seattle’s wettest weather since February, the National Weather Service said. There is also a risk of flash flooding in western Washington and northwestern Oregon on Thursday as a result of the heavy rainfall, the weather service warned.

The Trump administration has cleared the way for a controversial project that would suck groundwater from under Southern California’s Mojave Desert and sell it to water providers. On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management wrote that Cadiz Inc.’s plan to build a 43-mile pipeline along a railroad right of way did not require the agency’s approval. The letter reverses the Obama administration’s opinion, which said in 2015 that the 1875 law governing the easement required that it be used for railroad purposes. Otherwise, it required federal approval.