Desperate for water, a desert city hopes to build a pipeline to the California Aqueduct

After decades of unrestricted pumping in the rain-starved northwestern corner of the Mojave Desert, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin Authority has the distinction of managing one of the most critically overdrawn aquifers in California.

Now, the region is in an uproar over a proposal that the authority sees as a way out of its groundwater crisis, one that…