In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buzzing chainsaws interrupt the serenity. Crews are hustling to remove charred trees and other debris that have been washing down the mountainsides in the wake of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, choking rivers and streams.
Heavy equipment operators are moving boulders dislodged by the daily torrential summer rains that have followed the flames.
The Colorado River is the backbone of the West’s water supply. The river provides water to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and 40 million people in seven U.S. states (California, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada) and northern Mexico. But overuse, a 23-year “megadrought” and aridification fueled by the climate crisis has left the river stretched far too thin.
Up and down the Colorado River last week, the state, local and tribal leaders in charge of water supplies for more than 40 million people waited to see if the federal government would impose deeper cuts to river allocations.
The Bureau of Reclamation had given states and tribes an Aug. 15 deadline to find ways to conserve 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of water to stabilize the drought-stricken river and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Without such a plan, the bureau said, it would act.
Federal officials aren’t ready to give states along the Colorado River a new deadline for water conservation goals.
The seven states that rely on the river blew past an August 16 deadline without a plan to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water. They were given that task by officials with the Bureau of Reclamation and from within the Interior Department. The agency’s models show that amount is what is necessary to keep the river’s biggest reservoirs — lakes Mead and Powell — from reaching critical levels.
When Contra Costa County supervisors last summer signed off on 125 new homes slated for 30 acres of grazing land in the oak-dotted Tassajara Valley, they were warned water was going to be an issue.
As droughts worsen across the world, investors are turning up the heat on companies wasting water and trying to pick winners from a sparse crowd of specialist listed companies looking to address the problem.
From Kenya to California and nearly half of Europe, a shortage of fresh water has grabbed the attention of policymakers and given millions of citizens a fresh window into the stressed state of the planet.
California has $1.5 billion to distribute to cities and local water agencies to help the state cope with increasing aridity and less predictable rainfall. Should at least a third of it go to Los Angeles to boost a historic water recycling project?
That’s an easy “yes.” $500 million in state funding would be a smart investment not just for residents of L.A. but for the entire state.
One cannot overstate the importance of Colorado River water in the evolution of Southern California from a collection of small cities and villages into a megaregion of 20-plus million people — more than the population of all but three states.
Tuesday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that it would require Arizona and Nevada to reduce their annual allocation of water from the Colorado River came as no surprise to most water experts.
The reductions announced by Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton have been part of a long-standing agreement, known as the interim guidelines, since 2007.
A new report shows what temperatures in the United States could look like in 30 years — and the outlook isn’t good.
The report, from the First Street Foundation, a climate-focused research organization, found that temperatures will likely rise everywhere due to climate change, though the way that is expected to play out varies in different parts of the U.S.
