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A controversial California irrigation drainage deal designed to resolve one of the West’s trickiest, most expensive and longest-running water problems won approval from a key House of Representatives panel Thursday. But the debate – and uproar over the proposal – is only beginning, and its long-term fate is uncertain. On a mostly party-line 23-16 vote, the House Natural Resources Committee approved the bill to settle the irrigation dispute between the mammoth Westlands Water District and the federal government.

I will never forget the extraordinary experience California voters gave me over my 40 years in elected life, from local office, to congresswoman and then 24 years in the U.S. Senate representing the entire state. And when people ask me to recount the issues that are forever sealed in my memory, one of them is the very difficult challenge of climate change and the strain we are already experiencing from drought and extreme weather in our beloved state.

As the Delta tunnels hearings resumed in Sacramento this week, an engineering expert for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California testified that many other large tunnels have been drilled “without incurring risk or injury to project stakeholders.” But in their “detailed” survey of these projects spread across two continents, Delta tunnels proponents did not actually talk to nearby landowners, who would presumably be considered “stakeholders.” Instead, officials relied on their meetings with project designers and owners, construction managers, and on written reports available on the Internet.