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Consumers and farmers are being unjustifiably denied what should be fairly normal water supplies this year while bureaucrats continue to waste water on a failed experimental effort to help fish. Unfortunately, the fish aren’t recovering, and the bureaucrats are just making a bad situation worse for all Californians.

People who receive water from the state and federal water systems are seeing this year’s supply once again flushed to the ocean – water that 3 million acres of farmland and 25 million consumers depend on.

After a promising start to winter, California’s snowpack has shrunk to below-average levels, causing state water officials to redouble their calls for water conservation.

On Tuesday, the statewide snowpack stood at only 83% of average for the day, a result the California Department of Water Resources blamed on fall and winter seasons that have brought only “moderate precipitation” and “relatively warm temperatures.”

Although there are some short- and medium-term fixes already in the works, the job of saving the Salton Sea is a long-term proposition – one that requires planning well into the next decades.

A group of local leaders – known as the Long Range Plan Committee – has been assembled under the auspices of the California Natural Resources Agency to convene a series of meetings to listen to presentations that address long-term solutions for the sea.

This growing region needs more water, and it’s spending hundreds of millions to get it. A $72 million plant opened here in 2014 to turn wastewater into drinking water, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District is planning to build five more plants to purify water in the region

Water is scarce and expensive in California, and facilities like this one, the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Plant, use some of the most advanced technology in the world to make sure Silicon Valley’s booming population will have water when it turns on the tap.

California’s recent trend toward warmer, drier weather has raised concerns that El Nino may be a bust and that the 5-year-old drought may hang around much longer. The Sierra Nevada snowpack has fallen below normal levels, and state data show Californians have been slipping in their monthly water-savings efforts.

“As a percent of normal, it keeps dipping because we’re supposed to be accumulating during this time not having bright sunny skies,” said California’s state climatologist Michael Anderson.