Not only are these water supplies not depleted, they are in fact relatively healthy despite California's recent six-year drought.

"Dorothy Green has produced a tour de force with her wonderfully clear exposition of the evolution of water-management successes and failures in the greater Los Angeles area and much of the state."—Norris Hundley, author of The Great Thirst: Californians and Water—A History "If you have questions about water management in California, this book holds the answers. Water delivery systems make life possible in California, from natural watersheds and rivers to man-made aqueducts, treatment plants and delivery pipes. Dorothy Green's Managing Water uses the Los Angeles area to tell a statewide story of water supply, drinking water quality and treatment, conservation, recycling, and future planning. How is water kept pure or, when polluted, made clean again? What contaminates lurk in groundwater basins? What agency delivers water to your home? And how are water policy decisions made that effect your future? This is a detailed summary of the complex world of California water management that provides common sense recommendations for the future."—David Carle, author of Introduction to Water in California "For students of California water, Dorothy Green uses the complexity of water management in the Los Angeles area as the essential classroom. This is required reading and a necessary reference for all who participate in southern California's efforts to manage its most limited and threatened resource."—Jeffrey Mount, University of California, Davis, author of California Rivers and Streams

This book is a firsthand investigation into water management in a fast-growing region of the arid American West. It presents three states that have adopted the conjunctive management of groundwater and surface water to make resources go further in serving people and the environment. Yet conjunctive management has followed a different history, been practiced differently, and produced different outcomes in each state. The authors question why different results have emerged from neighbors trying to solve similar problems with the same policy reform. Common Waters, Diverging Streams makes several important contributions to policy literature and policymaking. The first book on conjunctive water management, it describes how the policy came into existence, how it is practiced, what it does and does not accomplish, and how institutional arrangements affect its application. A second contribution is the book's clear and persuasive links between institutions and policy outcomes. Scholars often declare that institutions matter, but few articles or books provide an explicit case study of how policy linkages work in actual practice. In contrast, Blomquist, Schlager, and Heikkila show how diverging courses in conjunctive water management can be explained by state laws and regulations, legal doctrines, the organizations governing and managing water supplies, and the division of authority between state and local government. Not only do these institutional structures make conjunctive management easier or harder to achieve, but they influence the kinds of problems people try to solve and the purposes for which they attempt conjunctive management.