Colorado River states have weeks remaining to resolve deep divides over how to manage the river for years to come, officials at a water conference in southwestern Colorado said Friday.
Last week’s rain and floods in California may soon give way to concerns about drought in the West as spring kicks off the region’s dry season. This year’s storms won’t erase looming drought worries across the entire southwestern U.S., experts fear. Of particular concern are the giant reservoirs of the Colorado River basin, Lakes Mead and Powell, which remain far below capacity.
Californians don’t have to worry too much about drought for the foreseeable future.
The state’s Department of Water Resources said Tuesday’s snowpack survey revealed the snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains is above average at roughly 113%.
After a wet year and a push to conserve water in the Southwest, federal officials say the risk of the Colorado River’s reservoirs declining to critically low levels has substantially eased for the next couple of years.
Facing rising costs and rates, the leaders of San Diego’s water lifelines are looking to sell some of its most expensive supply: de-salted ocean water from a massive plant in Carlsbad. But, at the same time, they’re also trying to make more of it.
The federal government announced three new conservation agreements to bolster water storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell on Tuesday. The new agreements total about 400,000 acre-feet of water savings — more than twice the amount of Colorado River water used by Las Vegas over the past year.
The Biden administration announced its support on Tuesday for a consensus-based, short-term proposal that will promote significant water conservation efforts across the Colorado River basin.
A Native American tribe with one of the largest outstanding claims to water in the Colorado River basin is closing in on a settlement with more than a dozen parties, putting it on a path to piping water to tens of thousands of tribal members in Arizona who still live without it.
It was just 18 months ago when the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation warned that the Colorado Water River system was in danger of collapse unless wholesale water use reductions were enacted — cutbacks much bigger than the system has ever seen.
River basins around the world that were once regularly snowbound are increasingly seeing their snowpack shrink and climate change is to blame, a new study found. “Many of the world’s most populous basins are hovering on the precipice of rapid snow declines,” concluded the study of snow amounts since 1981 in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
