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Navajo Nation’s Long Fight To Secure Drinking Water
April 8th, 2024
Via the Los Angeles Times, an article on the Navajo’s long fight to secure access to drinking water for all of their people: Gilarya Begaye looks out across the brush-blanketed pastures, red-dirt plains and flat-topped mesas that surround her home in the Navajo Nation. “Everywhere I’ve ever moved, it never felt like home,” says Begaye, […]
Read more »Lithium Companies Fight Over Water in the Arid Great Basin
April 8th, 2024
Via Inside Climate News, an article on the fight between water and clean energy in the US southwest: Over the past few decades, the United States has imported most of its lithium from Chile and Argentina, but there’s one major domestic source of the mineral—Nevada. Clayton Valley, a remote basin in the nation’s driest state, […]
Read more »Why Does US West Grow So Much Alfalfa?
April 4th, 2024
Via Sustainable Waters, commentary on the nexus between water use and food production in the US West: During recent years I’ve had the great fortune to work with some amazing scientists on some really interesting research projects focused on water use and food production in the American West. Due to widespread concerns over water scarcity […]
Read more »Hydro Project Could Test U.S. Tribal Sovereignty Rule
March 30th, 2024
Via Western Water Notes, a look at an important case in Nevada that is testing the boundaries of tribal sovereignty, specifically the sovereignty question here seems straightforward: pumped hydro may be of value broadly, but if the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe doesn’t want it on tribal land, isn’t their right to refuse the project inherent […]
Read more »Last Call: New Mexico’s Colorado River Deliveries Vulnerable To Existing Water Management Framework
March 30th, 2024
Courtesy of the Colorado Environmental Law Journal, a new article that digs into dig into the law surrounding the New Mexico’s San Juan-Chama Project, which imports Colorado River water into the Rio Grande Basin that has become vital to water supplies in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. A summary of learnings was that New […]
Read more »New Water Accounting Reveals Why Colorado River No Longer Reaches The Sea
March 29th, 2024
Via Nature, a new study that demonstrates how new water accounting reveals why the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea: Abstract Persistent overuse of water supplies from the Colorado River during recent decades has substantially depleted large storage reservoirs and triggered mandatory cutbacks in water use. The river holds critical importance to more than […]
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