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Although it’s not exactly news that California could use some more water, new research has revealed just how extensive the need has become – and at what cost for the state economy. The good news is, new research of a much different kind has revealed the answer: affordable, large-scale ocean desalination.

California’s water problem is so extensive that only a widely scoped solution will do. In a new UC Davis study reported by CNBC, water shortages this year were determined to threaten a whopping $550 million cost to the state’s agricultural industry, plus over 1,800 lost jobs.

When engineer Bruce Townsend walks around this hot and dusty construction site in El Centro, it is not the massive gas-fired power plant nearby that catches his imagination. His eyes are planted firmly on the future of energy — and the low-slung metal building that will house it.

“This is really going to take off,” Townsend said. Townsend was referring to a nearly $38 million battery, the largest battery of its kind in the western U.S. He was the venture’s original project manager.

California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013.

Last week, Northern and Southern California state legislators had a rare breakthrough over one of the state’s most divisive issues — water. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to instruct the State Auditor to launch an audit of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed Delta Tunnels. Recent revelations show the project has murky funding and even supporters know the tunnels cannot be built on a financial house of cards. The Delta Tunnels would be 40-foot tall, 35-mile long tunnels dug beneath the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary.

California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013. Staff members of the State Water Resources Control Board announced that 343 of the state’s 411 water districts reported having enough water to meet their customers’ demands — even if the next three years are unusually dry. To blunt the impact of drought, the state required water providers to reduce their consumption compared to 2013 levels. Each provider was assigned a so-called conservation standard, which was expressed as a percentage.