The effort to prevent sewage from flowing from Tijuana into San Diego County got a small boost Monday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation to provide about $2.1 million in funds for the effort. Senate Bill 507, authored by state Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, and Assembly member Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, reallocates one-time funds previously designated for use by San Diego County under the Wildlife, Coastal and Park Land Conservation Act.

Unprecedented amounts of rain fell across Northern California last winter, ending a damaging drought that reached to the southern edges of San Diego County. The dramatic turnaround was highlighted by a series of powerful, river-like storms that might become more frequent in the future. That’s the thinking of many scientists, including Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Scripps researcher Alexander “Sasha” Gershunov. Ralph and Gershunov put the past and future in perspective during a discussion with the Union-Tribune.

Water moves quickly but water policy slowly. For decades, Gov. Jerry Brown has wanted to shore up the State Water Project, the system of canals, pipelines and reservoirs that his father helped create and that now carries Northern California water to Southern California. In 1982, during Brown’s first stint as governor, he pushed for a big open canal to help ensure water would continue flowing south. Voters didn’t like that idea. Now, toward the end of his career, he’s backing a plan to build a pair of 35-mile underground tunnels instead.

San Diego officials were informed repeatedly of the dangers of disease-carrying runoff from homeless encampments into area waterways, as far as a decade before the current hepatitis A crisis spurred action. Typical of the volumes of reports is a 2015 city plan for Mission Bay, which cited hepatitis research in setting priorities for officials regarding environmental quality. “The issues raised by transient encampments are socio-economic by nature,” the city Transportation and Storm Water report said. “Addressing the sources of homelessness requires coordination with law enforcement, social services, and the legal community. Therefore, it has been designated as an uncontrollable source.”