In a week when supervisors approved one of the largest housing projects in San Bernardino County history, and when an even larger project was being set before Riverside County supervisors, it was not small news that the giant Metropolitan Water District was talking about going into the seawater desalinization business.

What surer sign could we want that the rules of growth are undergoing -- no pun -- a sea change? In Southern California, there may be no more fundamental issue.

In fact, the MWD put out its request for desalinization proposals last month. In 1995, when the MWD blocked out its next 25 years of water development in its Integrated Resource Plan, desalinated seawater wasn't worth mentioning. Six years into that plan, what's changed? Lots.

For one thing, even though Diamond Valley Lake is becoming a big reality, long-term concerns overshadow it.

In 1995, we were heralding the coming (on Jan. 1, 1996) of the smog-fighting gasoline additive, MTBE. Thoroughly unappreciated was how efficiently it would contaminate groundwater.

In 1995, Southern Californians were getting as much as 70 percent of their water from the Colorado River -- and overdrawing their legal share by 18 percent. Then (in December, 1996), Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt made a major water policy address. He gave the state a year to come up with a conservation plan or face cutbacks. The state has since acknowledged that it will have to live with less from that source.

In 1995, Southern California still had not emerged from the last recession. Growth pressures seemed distant, spent. Then (in early 1996) we exploded anew. Some 36,000 people were added to Riverside and San Bernardino counties that year, and in '97, 40, Riverside County alone grew by 40,000. That year, Riverside was Southern California's fastest-growing county, and until this recession hit we had hardly looked back.

And that has produced another accelerant we could hardly have envisioned in 1995. Here at the end of 2001, a state law is about to require developments to show proof of water supply to win local approval. It seems no accident that as the year ends, big developments are trying to crowd into the pipeline.

And so, after decades of madcap growth, the most critical conventions are changing. Now there are experiments in the works to store water in desert aquifers. Now, big Inland agriculture -- in Imperial County, in Blythe -- is selling water entitlements for urban use. And now there's desalinization, which produces potable water at one-tenth the cost of 20 years ago and is finally, under such conditions, edging into cost-effective reach.

Growth has been a way of life for generations in California. For the same reasons that have always powered it, we can expect it to continue. What's different -- what's changing -- is this: Having recognized the need to grow more intelligently, we're finally making a pivotal concession to that imperative.

One toll fits all?

It was a dizzying about-face. Last Tuesday, a committee of Orange County's toll roads agency unanimously endorsed a scheme to charge Inland commuters more than Orange County locals for using the same lanes. One day and one committee meeting later, there was a complete change of heart. Those rates, the agency assured, would be uniform after all. It was suggested that a majority of agency directors just didn't want to be unfair and bad neighbors to Inland commuters.

But the quick turnaround suggests that the agency -- which oversees the 241 and 73 toll roads, plus branch lines -- is really of two minds about this. It also suggests that neighborly sentiment isn't what carried the day.

The Orange County toll roads use the same FasTrak electronic system for counting tolls as do other regional toll agencies (for Highway 91, and on the I-15 in San Diego). They all make money by providing users with the system's transponders. With their first vote last week, the Orange County agency was really proposing to undercut the others' rates and woo their customers away. With their second vote, they were backing off. Part of what happened in the interim is that some of the other toll operators, at least, pointed up the destructive folly of fare wars as a business plan.

This Orange County agency is overseen by people who are elected in Orange County. These toll roads were built with money from bonds sold to investors. Agency officials know whose interests they serve foremost. Inland commuters are way, way down that list, just the same as always.

Tall baseball tales

Bud Selig became interim commissioner of baseball in 1992, permanent commissioner in 1998. He clearly enjoys the confidence of baseball's owners. The first question he should have been made to answer, appearing before Congress last week, was: Why? If his testimony was true, the game has fallen to financial ruin on his watch.

But his testimony was not right, not accurate. His description of things bore so little resemblance to the baseball landscape that is clear for all to see that the House Judiciary Committee could properly have considered whether he was in contempt.

Mr. Selig sat there and said with a straight face that baseball owners lost $519 million last year. It is likely that number was inflated by several hundred million dollars, and everybody knew it. Mr. Selig's testimony at one point left the room speechless. At another point, Rep. Maxine Waters reminded him he was under oath. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura lanced him like a boil. He called Mr. Selig's testimony "asinine."

This commissioner's testimony did a lot to advance two arguments: that baseball's antitrust exemption has outlived its usefulness, and that the integrity of hearings like this one really ought to be more jealously guarded.