SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In better times, droves of young winter-run Chinook salmon would travel 300 miles downstream from the Sacramento River, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific. They would return as adults, shimmering silver and red, and spawn at their exact place of birth in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.

Today, fewer and fewer salmon are able to survive the journey. They need cold water, increasingly difficult to access on a warming planet. They need clean water, but contaminants seep into waterways. And they simply need more water.

They’re not the only ones. The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is an epicenter of California’s bitter water wars, supplying water to fish, farmers and semi-arid Southern California.

Stakeholders — fishermen, farmers, water managers, researc

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