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The engineers who scrambled to prevent Delta farms from flooding this year have long insisted that the levees surrounding those low-lying islands are not as fragile as they’re sometimes portrayed to be. Now, after seven months of high water without a single major island flooding, those engineers feel validated. “We hear so many bad things about the levees,” said engineer Gilbert Cosio, who works for a number of the rural reclamation districts run by farmers. “But we’ve been doing a lot of good the last 30 years. This kind of proves it. This was not the disaster it could have been.”

Even after a decade of studies and tens of thousands of pages of analysis, no one can say precisely what Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels will do to the Delta. Pushing forward with the $17 billion project despite the uncertainty, backers are promising to evaluate the impacts of the tunnels after they’re built, and potentially change how they are operated as new information comes to light.

The Colorado River flows 1,500 miles (2,400km) – through rises and rapids, valleys and deserts, all the way to Mexico. But this river of critical importance to our country is facing incredible challenges. The Colorado River provides water to almost 40 million Americans, but it is still reeling from the impacts of a 17-year drought that has drained most of Lake Mead and left Arizona and Nevada on the brink of imposed shortages. The struggle we face to protect the Colorado River basin is one of necessity, not choice.

Fresh Sierra mountain snowmelt would make a better drink of water for rural Tulare County folk who currently rely on wells tainted by fertilizers, leaky septic systems and decades-old pesticide residues. Nobody argues with that here in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The problem is obtaining even a tiny fraction of the average 1.7 million acre-feet of Kings River snowmelt that heads mostly to farm fields each year. Even after securing the water, millions of dollars would be needed for a treatment plant, which is required for surface water.