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Every year for almost half a century, California snow surveyor Pat Armstrong has trekked the rugged Sierra Nevada with three simple tools: a snow core tube, a scale and a notebook. For as long as he can remember, state water officials have relied on the accuracy of those tools to deliver crucial data on the size of the Sierra snowpack and its ability to sustain a growing population. “It hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” Armstrong said of the survey. But there is a growing belief that this low-tech process alone is becoming too unreliable to accurately manage California’s water needs.

Everything is surprising about this sea. Saltier than the ocean, it breeds then suffocates tilapia. A mirage in the desert, it feeds flyway pelicans and cormorants. But it feels like a graveyard. Birds are dying in mortal rhythm with the fish. There is no tide and rivers flow north to a southern inlet. The sea sinks into view beneath waves of heat, shimmering in the Sonoran Desert, trapped between San Andreas Fault and Superstition Hills. The Salton Sea’s north shore starts after hedge rows of table grapes and fields of lettuce. The southern rim is 35 miles from Mexico.

Even after a very rainy winter in California, the state—and much of the West—is still experiencing drought conditions. To call water a complex issue is an understatement. Tershia D’Elgin has immersed herself in the subject of Western water rights. In her book, The Man Who Thought He Owned Water, the San Diego-based writer and water resources consultant charts the history of her family’s farm, Big Bend Station, on the South Platte River in Colorado through the water it uses.

A company’s vision to pump water from the Mojave Desert and sell it to thirsty Southern California cities had looked to some to be a long shot. Cadiz Inc., which owns about 50 square miles atop a major aquifer in the Cadiz Valley, has pushed proposals to tap the water since the 1990s. The latest iteration has been mired for years in a thicket of regulatory and legal hurdles. But a series of developments has invigorated backers of the project, which involves both federal and state jurisdictions.