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Lake Mead water levels have a 50 percent chance of falling below a threshold that will trigger an official shortage, federal water managers have said, which would result in a significant reduction of water shared by three states. The lake stores water for Arizona, California and Nevada. If it falls below 1,075 feet above sea level, or about 35 percent capacity for the reservoir, federal regulations would kick in mandating radical cuts to the share in water received by the states.

Efforts to create a new reservoir in Northern California took a step forward Tuesday. The Sites Project Authority issued a “notice of preparation,” which is the first step in the environmental review process. “Californians made a bold and innovative decision to invest in new water storage when they overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1 in 2014,” Authority board president Kim Dolbow Vann said in a statement. “The Sites Project makes sense for California — which is why it has strong, diverse and bipartisan support across the state — and why it is important to move this environmental review forward.”

After a month of huge blizzards and “atmospheric river” storms, the Sierra Nevada snowpack — source of a third of California’s drinking water — is 177 percent of the historic average, the biggest in more than two decades. The last time there was this much snow on Feb. 1 in the Sierra was in 1995. Pete Wilson was California’s governor, “Seinfeld” was the top-rated show on television and Steve Young had just led the 49ers to a blowout win in Super Bowl XXIX.

As the The Valley is slammed with rain and storms, the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range is coming in under average for snow fall totals, which accounts for nearly 30 percent of drinking water for all Californian. The under average conditions brings up the question, does California need more water infrastructure? The state already has a lot of water infrastructure including reservoirs, aquifers, and dams. More than 1,400 dams play an integral role in helping move water from the northern part of the state to the southern portion.