The story of California’s water wars begins, as so many stories do in the Golden State, with gold. The prospectors who raced westward after 1848 scoured fortunes out of mountainsides using water whisked, manically and in giant quantities, out of rivers.
The Biden administration signed agreements with California water agencies Wednesday to conserve a significant share of water through 2025, part of a larger effort to stave off potential disaster in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin.
The deals, including some expected to be signed as soon as next week, will save 643,000 acre-feet of water — nearly 210 billion gallons — in Lake Mead, the Bureau of Reclamation said.
It’s been a lackluster start to the rainy season in California, but there are growing signs that the storm door is about to swing wide open.
Kevin McCarthy’s chaotic exit from Congress on top of the death of Senator Dianne Feinstein has left California’s water world – and particularly the San Joaquin Valley – in somewhat of a representational void at the federal level.
Water is life. It’s also big business. In our November + December 2023 issue, Mother Jones dives into the West’s deepening water crisis—and the forces behind it, from historic drought to short-sighted policies to corrupt lawmakers and the special interests they serve.
U.S. agriculture is at risk from climatic extremes and groundwater over-extraction, says a new report from the Environmental Defense Fund.
When the highest stakes water negotiations in a century opened this fall, the largest, most powerful state — California — was represented by the youngest person at the table, a 27-year-old named John Brooks Hamby, who graduated from college barely four years ago.
Water is the lifeblood of California, and the state has always faced unique challenges in managing its precious water resources.
A proposal to build a project to capture water in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during wet weather and make it available in drier areas is advancing as state officials anticipate losing 10% of its water supply by 2040 as a result of hotter temperatures.
California water regulators are poised to approve long-awaited rules that will allow local water agencies to convert sewage — such as what drains from toilets and showers — directly into drinking water.
