A proposed water rights settlement for three Native American tribes that carries a price tag larger than any such agreement enacted by Congress took a significant step forward late Monday with introduction in the Navajo Nation Council.
A few weeks ago, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology declared that the Pacific Ocean is no longer in an El Niño state and has returned to “neutral.” American scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been more hesitant, but they estimate that there is an 85% chance that the Pacific will enter a neutral state in the next two months and a 60% chance that a La Niña event will begin by August.
As summer approaches, the Imperial Irrigation District is gearing up for another battle with the weeds that infest its canals. To do that, the regional water agency is calling in reinforcements: a small army of plant-munching fish.
EVERY DROP COUNTS: California had (is still having, amazingly) a really good water year. But all the rain and snow is doing almost nothing to lubricate the state’s perpetual conflicts between fish and farms.
Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.
“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”
The impacts of climate change in central California’s agriculture hub are causing such drastic increases in irrigation demands that annual water use over the past decade now matches the volume of the region’s biggest reservoir, a new study has found.
After facing criticism, California water regulators have proposed new conservation rules that would ease requirements for urban suppliers and lead to smaller statewide water savings than originally planned.
California is expected to receive more rainfall by Friday from an atmospheric river storm than what Lake Mead in Nevada—the largest reservoir in the U.S.—can hold, meteorologists have said, as the state continues to face the threat of flooding.
Millions of people rely on water from the Colorado River, but there’s just not enough to quench everyone’s thirst. In other words, there’s a big gap between the amount of water in the river, and the amount that people are using.
