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The plan to buoy historically low salmon populations imperiled by California’s historic drought made for a contentious hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill. House Republicans accused federal agencies of depriving farmers of water while the Golden State’s reservoirs sit full. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Maine Fisheries Service teamed up for the drought proposal debated at this morning’s hearing of the House Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.

California wildlife agencies say the drought has pushed the endangered Delta smelt close to extinction. State and federal agencies announced Tuesday a joint effort to improve habitat conditions for the fish.

The plan is designed to prevent predators from eating the fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Most of those predators are not native. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will spend $4.2 million from the state budget to eradicate invasive aquatic weeds where predators lurk. The strategy calls for assessing the feasibility of adding sediment to certain zones in the Delta to create the turbid waters where smelt hide.

In a failed effort to protect endangered fish, the federal government decided without proper study to default to restricting the giant pumps at the bottom of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

So argues a lawsuit filed Friday at the U.S. District Court in Sacramento by a powerful consortium of water agencies. They’re hoping for a larger share of Delta water. It’s the latest salvo in a political and legal dispute over how to manage the competing demands on the fragile estuary.

Grass species of crops adopt an “austerity” strategy and limits the development of its root system during times of drought, a study has revealed.

The results offer an insight into the little understood biology of roots and could help breeding effort to improve drought tolerance, say scientists. Many of the world’s key food and energy crops belong to the grass family and are often grown in drought-prone areas. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With Delta smelt numbers at all-time lows, state officials on Tuesday released a list of more than a dozen projects they’re hoping to undertake in the next few years in a last-ditch effort to stave off the fish’s extinction.

One of those plans is sure to be contentious. The “Delta Smelt Resiliency Strategy” released Tuesday by the California Natural Resources Agency calls for allowing between 85,000 and 200,000 acre-feet of extra water to wash out to sea this summer to bolster smelt habitat.