That's quite a stretch, though, don't you realize? The H in HN stands for "hacker". I fail to see the connection to any "hacking" here in the article other tha

That's quite a stretch, though, don't you realize? The H in HN stands for "hacker". I fail to see the connection to any "hacking" here in the article other than maybe "hacking bureaucracy to make a dam", but you must see the incredible lengths to which one must stretch the notion of hacker-related ideas to apply to this article. There are other non-SWE-related topics that certainly qualify, like overcoming natural barriers in engineering a la the Iceland forest article that was posted a couple days ago. This news article in OP is little more than a status update about something that affects California's water infrastructure and nothing else.