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The Libertarian Developer Who Spent Decades Guzzling West Maui’s Water
November 30th, 2023
Via Grist, a report on Peter Martin, he libertarian developer looming over West Maui’s water conflict: Just weeks after the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history ripped through the coastal town of L?hain?, Native Hawaiian taro farmers, environmentalists, and other residents of West Maui crowded into a narrow conference room in Honolulu for a state […]
Read more »Lithium in Paradox: Drought Could Halt New Utah Mining Activity
November 28th, 2023
Via The Land Desk, a look at how water scarcity could stop a new Utah mining rush: Myriad proposals to tap lithium deposits in southeastern Utah are progressing from the conceptual to the exploratory phases. But they are running up against a familiar obstacle in these arid parts: concern about how the projects might affect diminishing […]
Read more »Can Farmers Save the Great Salt Lake?
November 27th, 2023
Via Reasons To Be Cheerful, a look at how farmers are doing their part by choosing to do more with less to help solve Utah’s water crisis: The Bear River flows out of Wyoming’s Uinta Mountains, winding 350 miles through sagebrush meadows and agricultural fields in Idaho and Utah before it fans out into wetlands […]
Read more »As U.S. Groundwater Dwindles, Powerful Players Block Change
November 26th, 2023
Courtesy of The New York Times, a look at some of the people fighting efforts to conserve a vital resource that’s disappearing across the United States: From a small brick building in Garden City, Kan., 13 men manage the use of groundwater across five million acres in the southwest corner of the state, some of […]
Read more »Colorado River Crisis: How Did The Nation’s Two Largest Reservoirs Nearly Go Dry?
November 23rd, 2023
Via The Colorado Sun, a look at how historic drought, poor planning, competing political agendas and climate-change denial contributed to dangerously low levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, experts say: During the drought-choked summer of 2021, Colorado’s largest reservoir, Blue Mesa, was low, its shoreline exposed and dusty like a dirty white collar. The […]
Read more »Pumped Storage Hydro: Key to the Clean Energy Transition, but Where Will the Water Come From?
November 21st, 2023
Via Inside Climate News, a look at dozens of proposed projects that would pump water uphill to reservoirs before releasing it to generate electricity when wind and solar can’t. But their reliance on groundwater in the drought-stricken Southwest is leading to pushback: The smell of piñon pine filled the air as the Ghost Train of […]
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