For people who closely follow California water, here are headlines in the paper or tweets in your feed that you never see about water operations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta: “Pumping curtailed during next storm due to nearby migrating salmon” Or: “Storm opens water supply window as few fish conflicts detected” Why? Our rules, cobbled over time from various state water right decisions or federal biological opinions, are too rigid. Pumping rules in the Delta on Nov. 30, for example, are very different than those 24 hours later, regardless of the weather.