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The Colorado River Is Effectively Insolvent — And Corporate Water Users May Not Have Priced It
April 9th, 2026
Via Todd Cort’s informative Substack, commentary on the Colorado River, a climate-induced bankruptcy sitting on the balance sheet: Imagine that a company had a pension fund that promised $16.5 billion in future payouts but the value of that fund today sits at only $12.4 billion. Moreover, that pension fund has been drawing down the balance […]
Read more »‘The Precedent Is Flint’: How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis
March 29th, 2026
Courtesy of Rolling Stone, an insightful report on how Amazon has come to Oregon’s eastern farmland, worsening a water pollution problem that’s been linked to cancer and miscarriages: In the spring of 2022, Jim Doherty kept having the same conversation with folks at the only grocery store in Boardman, his eastern Oregon hometown, or at the grain […]
Read more »The Audacious Plan to Refill Great Salt Lake
March 28th, 2026
Via NBC News, a report on how a “Herculean” goal to replenish the water in Utah’s Great Salt Lake by the 2034 Olympics is gaining momentum and attracting strange bedfellows: The Great Salt Lake has been shriveling up for decades. At its record low about four years ago, the exposed lake bed became a source of […]
Read more »The American West Is Drying Up. Can the Market Help?
March 18th, 2026
Via New Republic, a look at how – as hedge funds buy up land to obtain water rights – a libertarian state representative from Arizona has proposed a seemingly radical solution to the water crisis. Is he right? When members of the Colorado River Water Users Association, or CRWUA, descended on Caesars Palace for their annual […]
Read more »After a Decade of Missteps, a Texas City Careens Toward a Water-Shortage Catastrophe
March 13th, 2026
Via Inside Climate News, a look at how officials in Corpus Christi expect a “water emergency” within months and to fully run out of water next year. That would halt jet fuel supplies to Texas airports, trigger a surge in gasoline prices and result in an “economic disaster” without precedent, former officials said. The imminent […]
Read more »The Alfalfa Fallacy
March 10th, 2026
Via The Land Desk, commentary on the lack of “obvious” solutions to the Colorado River crisis: Oh dear. You’d best get your skiing in now, because it looks like the spring melt will hit a lot earlier than usual. A big heat wave is on its way to the West, with the most unseasonably warm […]
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