BLOG
Last Straw: How The Fortunes Of Las Vegas Will Rise Or Fall With Lake Mead
June 15th, 2014
Via Popular Science, a detailed look at the massive, expensive, and politically fraught project to build a new tunnel under Lake Mead to deliver water to Las Vegas: The bathtub ring can be seen for miles. The 120-foot-high band of rock, bleached nearly white by mineral-rich water, circles the shoreline of Lake Mead. Water levels […]
Read more »U.S. Southwest: High And Dry
April 28th, 2014
Via RAND Corporation, a detailed look at implications of climate change on water supplies & management in the United States’ southwest: Droughts across the western United States have left water managers worried like never before. The Colorado River and its reservoirs, upon which seven states rely, are being depleted by 14 years of drought nearly […]
Read more »Sinking Hopes: San Joaquin Valley Sinking As Farmers Race To Tap Aquifer
April 2nd, 2014
Courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News, an interesting article on the deleterious impact wells are having upon California aquifers: So wet was the San Joaquin Valley of Steve Arthur’s childhood that a single 240-foot-deep well could quench the thirst of an arid farm. Now his massive rig, bucking and belching, must drill 1,200 feet […]
Read more »American West’s Drought And Growth Intensify Conflict Over Water Rights
March 18th, 2014
Via the New York Times, a report on increasing water tensions in the arid western region of the United States: Across the parched American West, the long drought has set off a series of fierce legal and political battles over who controls an increasingly dear treasure — water. Just outside this minuscule farm town, Frank […]
Read more »Canadian Ambassador: Water Wars With U.S. Will Become Bigger Issue Than Pipelines
February 25th, 2014
Via the Vancouver Sun, an article reporting that some senior Canadian diplomats think that water wars with the U.S. will soon become more important than current cross-border deliberations over potential petroleum pipelines: Canada must prepare for diplomatic water wars with the U.S., as demand on both sides of the border grows for this vital but […]
Read more »The Drying Of The American West
February 23rd, 2014
Courtesy of The Economist, a sobering report on the drought conditions in the American west: THE first rule for staying alive in a desert is not to pour the contents of your water flask into the sand. Yet that, bizarrely, is what the government has encouraged farmers to do in the drought-afflicted south-west. Agriculture accounts […]
Read more »