We cannot rebuild California’s water infrastructure from the ground up. All the dams, pumps, aqueducts – and rules and laws – arise from 200 years of human engineering in the Golden State. Our forebears designed these projects for the sole benefit of a few million people, and today we struggle to adapt them to the support of threatened fish and wildlife and 39 million people.

While we depend on this infrastructure not just to survive but thrive, some of it is undeniably outdated, and sometimes harmful. We cannot undo most of the environmental damage of our water development, but we can ameliorate it.