Legislation addressing California's drought reached an inconclusive high-water mark Tuesday, passing the House on a largely party line vote before trickling off to a bleak fate in the Senate.

While the Republican-controlled House approved the California water bill by a 230-182 margin, California's two Democratic senators oppose it with varying degrees of severity.

The Senate resistance and the bill authors' inability to reconcile competing state interests effectively renders the stand-alone California Emergency Drought Relief Act a Capitol Hill orphan. Last-minute efforts to add similar language onto a separate spending bill continue.

"The people in the Central Valley are living through a disaster, and this measure provides the temporary relief they need," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday.

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