| In California, millions of residents and thousands of farmers depend on the Bay-Delta for fresh water—but they can’t agree on how to protect it.  Illustration by Alëna Skarina Google Earth can connect us to even the most remote regions of the world, but, as a result, great wonders can suddenly look small, two-dimensional. For instance, if you look up the California Delta, as David Owen writes, in a fascinating new feature, it resembles “a triangular green jigsaw puzzle.” Yet the Delta provides fresh water for tens of millions of Californians, and, as the ocean rises and the Western drought continues, it is in enormous danger of saltwater intrusion—which would make it unusable. No single regulatory body oversees the water management of the Delta, making it a “perennial challenge to effective planning in California.” And every potential solution has proved controversial. Nonexperts tend to propose the same few solutions: build a big pipeline, create new reservoirs, or use desalination. (Or, as Donald Trump once told Owen in a call, “You could do something with the sea, with the—what do they call it?”) Among experts, any given idea provokes ire in one quarter or another, making it impossible to mount a viable public campaign. Farmers and homeowners, politicians and environmentalists are pitted against each other in a game of “chicken.” Is there a compromise in sight? —Jessie Li, newsletter editor | 
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