[sedev]

> If this is upheld it could have some interesting repercussions on water rights in the Central Valley > if I remember, some of those were parts of Mexican land grants as well.

That's both news to me and a wincing moment of "wow, California politics really do come down to water issues 90% of the time".

[jfb]

I remember telling a friend's kid, in ~2000, that if she really wanted a totally secure future, that she should quit computer programming and become a riparian lawyer. I maintain that this is still the best advice I've ever given.

[alabut]

It absolutely is. I took a California Government class in college that blew my mind about how much of bipartisan political scheming is about water, to this day, because there's so much money in it.

His oft repeated quote was "when politicians agree on something and it stays out of the news, it's usually not in the public interest".

People like to make fun of Las Vegas as a city that wouldn't exist without imported water but most of So Cal wouldn't either. The bad guy in the film Chinatown is loosely based on William Mulholland, the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars