Despite the recent heavy rain, California’s water situation remains dire. Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that 100 percent of California is “abnormally dry.”

It is the worst drought the state has seen in decades and is tapping our water resources to their limits, and, for many, beyond. Water agencies in some of the hardest-hit regions of the state are expecting to be without water by the summer.

It’s why Gov. Jerry Brown promised to do, “everything that is humanly possible to allow for a flexible use of California’s water sources.”

But the state still seems bent on pushing ahead with water policies that appear to make the drought artificially worse, from the New Deal-style public-works Bay Delta Conservation Plan boondoggle that seeks to upend the Sacramento Delta for dubious water supplies and the benefit of a bait fish, the Delta smelt, to projects closer to home.

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