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About 9,200 households in Granada Hills and Porter Ranch were dealing with a water service outage on Wednesday after the Los Angeles Department of Water Power announced that emergency repairs were underway at a pump station.

The problem arose on Tuesday afternoon. The DWP said that as crews were making repairs of a leak at a pump station that connects to a 10-million-gallon tank, a valve controlling the flow of water failed to open.

One of the largest solar and battery power plants in the United States is now supplying Los Angeles and Glendale from Kern County.

Local leaders and clean energy experts gathered Tuesday beneath a blazing desert sun to mark the initiation of full production from 1.36 million solar panels and 172 lithium iron phosphate batteries that make up the Eland solar-plus-storage electricity project. It’s as large as 13 Dodger stadiums, parking lots included, and will generate 7% of the electricity for all of the city of Los Angeles, much of it at a record-low price.

While Southern California has managed to escape the worst of the summer heat (so far), mild June and July temperatures have probably helped obscure the region’s single biggest issue: water, or the lack thereof. Despite the easy weather, this part of the world has been hurtling deeper into drought conditions since early spring, and new data shows just how bad things have gotten from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Recent statewide precipitation data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows just how little rainfall Southern California has received since Oct. 1, the start of the state’s formal water year. Monitors in Santa Barbara have only collected 7.09 inches of rain in that time, compared to last year’s giant tally of 25.16 inches during that period. Historically, Santa Barbara would have received 17.17 inches by now, meaning the Central Coast city’s rainfall totals are down by nearly 60%. Things aren’t much better elsewhere, either.

State officials and nonprofit groups have sounded the alarm on the City of Los Angeles’ failed promises to restore water levels at California’s Mono Lake, citing massive harms being done to the local ecosystem, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“It’s not in good shape right now,” said Barthshé Miller, policy director of the nonprofit Mono Lake Committee, per the Times. “There is a systemic illness in the lake in terms of the health of the ecosystem, and it needs more water to recover to full health and vitality.”

In the distant past, hunters and gatherers relied on what nature provided. Today, farmers grow food for billions of people around the globe—and that takes water.

Yet there’s a growing drumbeat about the amount of water agriculture consumes in the Colorado River Basin and beyond. Critics say farmers use a disproportionate share compared to cities and if farmers would simply use less, there would be plenty for everyone else.