With Lake Mead receding year after year and the threat of a shortage looming, the overallocated Colorado River seems to be approaching a breaking point.

But John Fleck argues this crisis doesn’t necessarily mean we’re headed for a future in which conflicts flare and communities run dry. In his new book “Water is for Fighting Over,” Fleck focuses on success stories, including multiple examples of cities and farms reducing water use, and a deal that briefly revitalized the parched Colorado River Delta in 2014 during an event called the “pulse flow.”

A plan to build two huge tunnels to shunt fresh water around the Sacramento Delta is supposed to be funded entirely by the people who receive the water. But taxpayers may end up paying a substantial amount of the tab. That’s according to documents obtained by the Stockton-based environmental group Restore the Delta that discuss the cost of the California WaterFix project, which is projected to cost at least $16 billion to build.

The forests of San Diego County that have shaded 500 generations of local people and provided pine needle bedding, oak woodland and spiritual renewal could disappear. Overly intense fires in quick succession, along with drought, borer insects and climate extremes are laying waste to trees and creating a hostile environment for regrowth. Beloved local places — the Laguna mountains, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, Palomar Mountain — could convert to chaparral or even to grasses. Some scientists mention even the Torrey pines as possibly at risk.

In the mid-1940s, the Salton Sea was a hotbed of activity, attracting Hollywood’s most glamorous actors and musicians to its yacht clubs and campgrounds. Now, what was once the largest lake in California is disappearing before our eyes and endangering all its life. We can still save it, but if we don’t, we will have a massive public health, environmental and economic crisis that could cost as much as $70 billion. The Salton Sea is a lake that was created most recently 112 years ago after canals and dikes failed along the Colorado River, opening the Imperial Valley to extreme flooding.