Until Donald Trump won the presidency, prospects looked bleak for Cadiz, a California company that has struggled for years to secure federal permits to transform Mojave Desert groundwater into liquid gold. With the change of administration, a new day is dawning. In December, the National Governors Association circulated a preliminary list of infrastructure projects provided by the Trump transition team, and Cadiz’s was on the list. The company’s stock price rose on that news, part of a trend that has seen Cadiz’s valuation more than double – to roughly $14 a share – since the election.

The Bay Area is gripped by an historic housing shortage and affordability crisis. A plan being circulated now by state water officials will only make it worse. The State Water Resources Control Board wants to cut water supplies to 2.6 million Bay Area residents in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the East Bay by up to 50 percent at the first sign of any future drought. The proposed cuts will dramatically reduce our ability to build the new housing we so badly need, even as we struggle to close a massive housing deficit that has been decades in the making.

Officials are working to find ways to repair the Oroville Dam spillway, which has concrete erosion.

Radar satellite maps created by NASA show land continues to sink rapidly in certain areas of the San Joaquin Valley, putting state and federal aqueducts and flood control structures at risk of damage. An August 2015 NASA report documented record rates of subsidence or sinking in the San Joaquin Valley, particularly near Chowchilla and Corcoran, as farmers pumped groundwater in the midst of the historic drought.