Over the last decade, California has faced droughts, wildfires, and rising temperatures that all underscore the importance of carefully managing the surface and groundwater that irrigates more than 9 million acres of California farmland and supplies water to 40 million Californians. In a new special issue of ARE Update, the authors assess the current impacts of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), analyze competition for scarce water allocations throughout the Colorado River Basin and the successes of federal water conservation projects in the basin, and consider how the history of tribal water rights for surface water in California differs from that of other western states, with implications for future groundwater policy. … ARE Update is a bimonthly magazine published by the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.