California just agreed to significantly cut its Colorado River water use, but the deal might not be the conservation boon that it seems.
The seven states that share the Colorado River’s water celebrated some conservation wins at their annual meeting here this week but quickly began sparring over who will bear the brunt of future pain that they agree a drying climate will dole out.
The Biden administration has announced new water-saving agreements with California water agencies intended to shore up supplies on the overburdened Colorado River.
State authorities are set to vote next week on regulations for turning sewage into drinking water across California. The State Water Resources Control Board’s “toilet to tap” resolution would create, as a means of protecting public health, uniform recycling criteria for the direct reuse of treated wastewater as potable water, according to the agency.
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.
