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‘Go West, Young Man’…But Where Is The Water?
August 20th, 2021
Via AP News, an article on Greeley, Colorado’s search for water: “Go West, young man,? Horace Greeley famously urged. The problem for the northern Colorado town that bears the 19th-century newspaper editor’s name: Too many people have heeded his advice. By the tens of thousands newcomers have been streaming into Greeley — so much so […]
Read more »High and Dry: The American West Is Drying Up
August 17th, 2021
Via The Economist, a report on the drought in the U.S. west: Locals call it the “bathtub ring”. A white strip more than 150 feet tall encircles the turquoise surface of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, showing visitors how high the water once was, and how far it has fallen. The shrinking of Lake Mead and […]
Read more »First-Ever Water Cuts Declared For Colorado River In Historic Drought
August 17th, 2021
Via CNN, a report on the first-ever water cuts declared for Colorado River in historic drought: The federal government on Monday declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows. Lake […]
Read more »Small Towns Grow Desperate for Water in California
August 15th, 2021
Courtesy of New York Times, a report on how California’s drought is revealing that – perhaps even more than rainfall – it is money and infrastructure that dictate who has sufficient water during the state’s increasingly frequent dry spells: As a measure of both the nation’s creaking infrastructure and the severity of the drought gripping […]
Read more »The Colorado River Basin’s Daunting New Math
August 15th, 2021
Via Circle of Blue, an article examining how the Colorado River basin’s big reservoirs have fallen to uncharted territory, with a dire forecast in the future: Lakes Mead and Powell, icons of 20th century water engineering in the American West, are in bad shape. The story of their decline is written into the edges of the […]
Read more »Household Wells Are Failing In Northern California
August 13th, 2021
Courtesy of Circle of Blue, a look at the impact of drought in Northern California where many household wells are failing: Though it was a sudden death, happening overnight during a record-smashing June heat wave, the demise of Maralee and Noal Childs’s household water well was not entirely unexpected. The Childses live in Glenn County, […]
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