In 1884, a group of ranchers from Redlands rode up over 5,000 feet of elevation into the mountains to their north, where they built a rock dam to collect water for agriculture. … But in recent years, the lake has been plagued by drought-fueled low water levels, followed by short recovery stints after heavy winter storms, making it a prime example of the climate change-fueled whiplash that’s being experienced across California. … The water issues are hard to spot from the docks. After all, Big Bear Valley is centered around a giant, gleaming blue body of water. But that water is technically still owned by the successors of those 19th-century ranchers. The mountain communities, meanwhile, rely entirely on local groundwater fed by precipitation. … Now, the mountain community is in the early stages of an $88.6 million plan to keep its wastewater local.