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Colorado River Rescue Plan: North vs. South in the West
February 15th, 2024
Via The Desert Sun, a look at the status of the Colorado River rescue plan: Will seven Western states be able to rapidly craft a voluntary plan to keep the Colorado River afloat for decades to come? It’s increasingly unclear, as negotiations have foundered between two sides, according to key players. There are sharp differences […]
Read more »Lithium Liabilities: The Untold Threat to Water in the Rush to Mine American Lithium
February 14th, 2024
Via Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, a report that uncovered the coming electric battery revolution in America will require billions upon billions of gallons of water to mine lithium. Many of the new U.S. mines will be located in the drought-prone American West. Nyle Pennington, a veteran water scientist who tracks groundwater for local governments, stopped […]
Read more »U.S. East Coast Is Sinking
February 14th, 2024
Courtesy of the New York Times, a look at new satellite-based research which reveals how land along the coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise. A major culprit: overpumping of groundwater. Researchers say a dominant cause for subsidence is groundwater depletion. A layer cake of overlapping aquifers extends […]
Read more »In a Victory for Poland Spring, Maine Rejects New Groundwater Limits
February 14th, 2024
Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on a recent legal victory for the bottled-water company which – last year – tried to kill legislation aimed at protecting aquifers at a time when many are at risk nationally. Maine’s Legislature voted down a bill that would have limited large-scale pumping of groundwater in the […]
Read more »Big Companies Cashed In on Mississippi’s Water. Small Towns Paid the Price.
February 14th, 2024
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on how big companies vowed to fix Mississippi’s water woes and save cities millions, but an Times investigation found the deals racked up debt and left many worse off than before: In winter 2021, more than 150,000 people living in Jackson, Miss., were left without running water. Faucets […]
Read more »With Climate Change, Colorado River Officials Peer Into Muddy Future
February 12th, 2024
Via the Washington Post, a report on efforts to use innovative, web-based tools to predict the Colorado River’s future flows: To ensure that the Colorado River can remain a lifeline for 40 million people, the federal government is looking for answers in the extremes of the distant past and the warnings of a hotter future. In a low-slung […]
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