When President Trump nominated David Bernhardt for a top-level post at the Interior Department, environmentalists and water experts could see trouble ahead. They feared that Bernhardt would bring to the post of deputy Interior secretary — the No.2-ranking job at the agency — conflicts of interest on a dizzying scale.

He would be overseeing an agency that deals with “clients who have paid his law firm millions of dollars in legal and lobbying fees,” as my colleague Bettina Boxall reported. These included Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest irrigation district, and Cadiz Inc., a company that wants to pump Mojave Desert groundwater and sell it to Southern California cities.