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Water, we are repeatedly told, will be “next oil.” In the United States, climate projections predict increasing drought frequency throughout most of the country. Around the world, political and even military conflicts due to water scarcity are multiplying. Water is a limited and essential resource, and we are becoming more sensitive to the need to use it wisely. So it probably seems like good news that the U.S. Interior and Agriculture Departments have pledged almost $50 million in new public investment to improve water efficiency in domestic agriculture.

A late-season surge of rain and snow melt made a bad year better for the Colorado River, but it wasn’t enough to lift Lake Mead out of record-low territory. The reservoir that supplies 90 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s drinking water bottomed out at 1,071.61 feet above sea level on July 1, its lowest level since May 1937, when the lake was filling for the first time behind a newly completed Hoover Dam.

Scientists from two federal agencies are about to overhaul the rules governing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, potentially increasing protections for endangered fish populations and limiting the amount of water pumped to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will re-examine the nearly decade-old environmental regulations covering the Delta water pumps – rules that some experts say have been rendered nearly obsolete by drought and the devastation of endangered species. The old rules will remain in effect during the review, which could take two years or longer.