Rep. Scott Peters and Sen. Alex Padilla introduced legislation Tuesday to help alleviate the western water crisis, stemming from the long-term drought conditions affecting the Colorado River and its reservoirs.
Time is running out for the West’s wet season, but recent storms have done wonders for the snowpack and the drought across much of the region, especially in California.
In winter 2021, more than 150,000 people living in Jackson, Miss., were left without running water. Faucets were dry or dribbling a muddy brown.
The American Business Water Coalition (ABWC), a national organization comprised of water-reliant businesses, has released a “U.S. Water Infrastructure Funding and Business Risks Survey,” examining voter opinions across a wide spectrum of water issues.
The survey focused on water issues such as water quality, federal infrastructure funding and perceived risk to U.S. businesses and local communities from potential water-related crises.
Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with an economy that offers many opportunities for workers and businesses. But it faces a daunting challenge: a water crisis that could seriously constrain its economic growth and vitality.
When I sat down a year ago to pen a guest Where I Stand column, the water situation on the Colorado River looked very different. The previous winter had brought no relief to the drought-stricken region and the reservoirs were threatening to drop to catastrophic levels with the very real possibility that our neighbors south of us could be cut off from river water entirely.
Luis Ramirez leapt onto the roof of his bright blue water truck to fill the plastic tank that by day’s end would empty into an assortment of buckets, barrels and cisterns in 100 homes.
It was barely 11 a.m. and Ramirez had many more stops to make on the hilly, grey fringes of Tijuana, a sprawling, industrial border city in northwestern Mexico where trucks or “pipas” like Ramirez’s provide the only drinking water for many people.
“Each time, it gets farther and farther where we have to go,” he said, blaming the city’s water problems on drought and population growth, before jumping into the driver’s seat next to 16-year-old assistant Daniel Alvarez.
Among the last cities downstream to receive water from the shrinking Colorado River, Tijuana is staring down a water crisis driven also by aging, inefficient infrastructure and successive governments that have done little to prepare the city for diminishing water in the region.
State officials from across the Colorado River Basin seized on a single message as they gathered here to discuss the future of the struggling waterway last week: The river is in a state of emergency that will very soon reach a crisis for the 40 million people who rely on it, affecting agriculture and municipalities alike. But faced with doomsday projections from the Bureau of Reclamation about major reservoirs, officials agreed that harmony has not yet extended to how best to address the shortfalls triggered by more than two decades of drought, which have dramatically constricted both the river’s flows and water storage.
Noemi Barrera has spent four months without running water for herself and her four children and is among many people in California living without it as wells across the state run dry. Like most in the 184-person agricultural community of Tooleville, nestled by the Tulare County foothills, Barrera can hear the county’s water truck arriving down the street to bring five-gallon jug rations every other week.
Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and a critical source of water for Nevada, Arizona and California. But right now, it’s at only about 25 percent of total capacity.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
