In 2014, California voters approved a water bond that allocated $2.7 billion to fund the public benefits of new water storage projects. The California Water Commission has been reviewing a list of potential projects and will be announcing how much funding eligible projects will receive.

Will California get its first new dam in decades? Will groundwater storage projects receive a boost? And how are the “public benefits” of these projects being evaluated?

Tara Lohan, Water Deeply’s managing editor, discusses these questions and more with Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, and Rachel Zwillinger, water policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife.