Dianne Feinstein championed the environment. On California water, her legacy is complicated

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It was 1990, and a self-identified city girl in a denim skirt and boots perched herself atop bales of hay near Los Banos in California’s farming heartland. Dianne Feinstein was running for governor and looking for votes. “I want to be a good governor for the agriculture industry of California,” she told the crowd, the Los Angeles Times reported. But the former San Francisco mayor lost the race to Pete Wilson, a more familiar face in the world of Central Valley agribusiness. Feinstein would win election to the Senate two years later and become a powerhouse, the longest serv...