Colorado River Drought Behind Rural-Urban Tensions in the Centennial State
Western Colorado rancher Bill Fales said he thinks that California will come for Colorado’s water someday soon.
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Levee Repairs Coming to Oroville
Oroville’s 109-year levee is in need of maintenance, and on Tuesday the Oroville City Council approved a services agreement with the Sutter Buttes Flood Control Agency to assign work projects around repairing the city’s levee.
Monterey City Leaders Seek Collaboration With Neighboring Water Suppliers to Meet Housing Mandate
In an effort to ease the California housing crisis, the state requires every city and county to develop a certain number of affordable housing units. But in the city of Monterey, they have one big problem— there’s just not enough water.
Don’t Call It ‘Toilet to Tap’ — California Plans to Turn Sewage into Drinking Water
Californians could drink highly purified sewage water that is piped directly into drinking water supplies for the first time under proposed rules unveiled by state water officials. The drought-prone state has turned to recycled water for more than 60 years to bolster its scarce supplies, but the current regulations require it to first make a pit stop in a reservoir or an aquifer before it can flow to taps.
California’s Winter Waves May Be Increasing Under Climate Change
A new study from UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher emeritus Peter Bromirski uses nearly a century of data to show that the average heights of winter waves along the California coast have increased as climate change has heated up the planet.
Colorado River Task Force Focuses First Meeting on Hopes, Concerns about Fast-Paced Process
Members of the Colorado River Drought Task Force met for the first time Monday to lay the groundwork for five months of water supply problem-solving. The Colorado General Assembly passed legislation in May to create the interim task force, which will study and recommend ways state lawmakers can address Colorado River water scarcity in the future. As the members head into those discussions, several of them said one of their main priorities is to condense diverse and at times conflicting perspectives into a unified message for lawmakers.
Colorado River Losing Vast Amounts of Water Due to Warming Climate, Study Finds
For much of the last 23 years, the Colorado River has been ravaged by unrelenting dryness, its reservoirs falling to their lowest levels since they were filled. New research shows that global warming is a major culprit, shrinking the river’s flow and robbing the region of a vast amount of water.
A team of scientists at UCLA estimated that from 2000 to 2021, rising temperatures led to the loss of about 32.5 million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River Basin, more than the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir.
July Keeps Sizzling as Phoenix Hits Another 110-Degree Day and Wildfires Spread in California
Phoenix sizzled through its 31st consecutive day of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) and other parts of the country grappled Sunday with record temperatures after a week that saw significant portions of the U.S. population subject to extreme heat.
The National Weather Service said Phoenix climbed to a high of 111 F (43.8 Celsius) before the day was through.
Opinion: Arizona Has an Ambitious Goal to Save Water – If We Can Pull it Off
Five years from now, if all goes to plan, Arizona will have conserved 5 million acre-feet of water.
That’s enough to fill about 2.5 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Or about 70% of what the state is estimated to use in a year, from all sources.
Or a little less than double Arizona’s annual Colorado River allotment (that is, if we were getting our full allocation, which hasn’t happened in a while).
Southwest States Facing Tough Choices About Water as Colorado River Diminishes
The drought-stricken Colorado River is in critical condition. Almost two years ago, the federal government declared the first ever shortage on the river, triggering cuts to water supplies in the Southwest. Today, the river remains unsustainably low. The Colorado is the lifeblood of the region. It waters some of the country’s fastest growing cities, nourishes some of our most fertile fields, and powers $1.4 trillion dollars in annual economic activity. The river runs more than 1,400 miles, from headwaters in the Rockies to its delta in northern Mexico where it ends in a trickle.
