California’s effort to secure water supplies is a struggle older than the state itself.
It played out during the Gold Rush, and it defines modern San Francisco and Los Angeles. It has created divisions between north and south as well as east and west.
From climate change to species loss and pollution, humans have etched their impact on the Earth with such strength and permanence since the middle of the 20th century that a special team of scientists says a new geologic epoch began then.
Called the Anthropocene — and derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” — this epoch started sometime between 1950 and 1954, according to the scientists. While there is evidence worldwide that captures the impact of burning fossil fuels, detonating nuclear weapons and dumping fertilizers and plastics on land and in waterways, the scientists are proposing a small but deep lake outside of Toronto, Canada — Crawford Lake — to place a historic marker.
A wet and cool start to 2023 helped Southern Nevada consume 25 percent less water from the drought-stricken Colorado River through the first five months of the year.
From January through May, the region’s consumptive use from the river was just under 61,000 acre-feet of water, Warren Turkett, a natural resource analyst for the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, told commissioners Tuesday. That’s down from nearly 82,000 acre-feet of water consumed during the same time period last year, which was near the same amount the valley consumed in 2021 (84,489 acre-feet) and 2020 (80,885 acre-feet).
Lake Mead has risen more than 3 feet over the past month, and nearly 13 feet since Jan. 1.
The lake, which supplies 90% of the water used in the Las Vegas valley, is bucking the trend of the past five years. Lake Mead typically drops beginning around April, following a seasonal pattern.
As snow melts upstream in the Upper Colorado River Basin, water is held back in dams all along the way to prepare for higher consumption during the hot summer months. Water eventually reaches Lake Powell before flowing through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead.
Over the past century, the fossil fuel industry has made a habit of letting others clean up their messes. Today, the U.S. is dotted with millions of “orphaned wells,” crevices in the earth that companies once used to extract oil and subsequently abandoned once they were no longer considered profitable. But additional help appears to be on the way: This week, the Biden administration announced it would make nearly $660 million in funds from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law available to states to plug more of these polluting fissures.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills Monday aimed at streamlining the construction of solar and wind farms, reservoirs, bridges, railways and other infrastructure projects in the Golden State.
Schools in New Delhi were forced to close Monday after heavy monsoon rains battered the Indian capital, with landslides and flash floods killing at least 15 people over the last three days. Farther north, the overflowing Beas River swept vehicles downstream as it flooded neighborhoods. In Japan, torrential rain pounded the southwest, causing floods and mudslides that left two people dead and at least six others missing Monday.
As droughts strain water supplies across Western states, some cities and farmers have struggled with mandatory cutbacks. Determining who gets cut is decided by the foundational pecking order of Western water: the older your claim to water, created as the country expanded westward, the better protected it is. When there’s a shortage, those with newer water rights have to cut back first, sometimes giving up their water completely before older claims lose a single drop.
California’s Imperial Valley is one of the few places where a 95 degree day can be described as unseasonably cool.
In the shade of a sissoo tree, with a dry breeze rustling its leaves, JB Hamby called the weather “pretty nice” for mid-June. Over his shoulder, sprinklers ticked away over a field of onions. Every few minutes, a tractor rumbled across the broiling asphalt of a nearby road.
Hamby is a water policy bigwig, especially around these parts. He helps shape policies that define how water is used by arguably the most influential water users along the Colorado River. Hamby holds two jobs – he serves on the board of directors for the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) and was recently appointed to be California’s top water negotiator.
And he’s only 27 years old.
Thunderstorms high in the Cascades recently stirred up a lot of dirt in a central Washington river, causing problems for people on its banks.
All the dirt in the Naches River was too much for the city of Yakima’s water treatment plant to handle. Cities and towns could see situations like this happen more often as the climate continues to change.
Climate change will cause more storm runoff, change when snowpack melts and lead to more severe wildfires and harmful algal blooms, said Amanda Hohner. She studies how post-wildfire runoff affects drinking water treatment plants.
“At least in the Western U.S., the effects of wildfire and also climate change are really starting to challenge drinking water treatment plants, resulting in different water quality than maybe those water treatment plants were designed for,” Hohner said.
