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Colorado Squeezing Water from Urban Landscapes
November 11th, 2023
Via Big Pivots, a look at how how Colorado is navigating a world in which headwaters state struggles to embrace limits of water supply in a warming, likely drying climate: Like weekly haircuts for men, a regularly mowed lawn of Kentucky bluegrass was long a prerequisite for civic respectability in Colorado’s towns and cities. That […]
Read more »Colorado River Crisis Averted?
November 3rd, 2023
Via The Land Desk, commentary on the US federal government’s federal proposal to cut Lower Basin water use which is a start, but dry winters in the next three years could send the river back to the brink of a crisis: Maybe by now you’ve heard that the collective users of the Colorado River have […]
Read more »Water Usage On The Colorado River Is Way Down As The West Begins Planning For A Future With Less
October 24th, 2023
Via CNN, a report on water usage on the Colorado River: As the Biden administration kicks off a years-long negotiation process to divvy up the shrinking water supply of the Colorado River, there are finally some signs of optimism after several bleak years. A record-breaking winter snowpack last year halted a precipitous downward spiral on the river and raised water levels […]
Read more »To Tackle Groundwater Overuse, Nevada takes New Approach: Buying Back Farmers’ Rights
October 17th, 2023
Via The Nevada Independent, a report on Nevada’s plans to issue $25 million in grants to retire groundwater rights in places where use exceeds what is sustainable: The Pershing County Water Conservation District’s headquarters in Lovelock sits off Interstate 80 a few miles before the Humboldt River disappears into a desert sink. Farmers here have […]
Read more »A Dam Waste In the Age of Megadrought
October 14th, 2023
Via TruthDig, commentary on how Colorado’s Gross Dam illustrates the folly of impounding water to feed unsustainable economic and population growth in the American West: Mining explosions and summertime thunder can sound remarkably similar. In my rural Colorado neighborhood, 10 miles southwest of Boulder, the smaller blasts that clear ground for the expansion of Gross Dam […]
Read more »The Colorado River Wars Are Based on Bad Math
October 12th, 2023
Via Mother Jones, a look at how faulty assumptions have brought the Colorado “Law of the River” to a breaking point: California and Arizona are currently fighting each other over water from the Colorado River. But this isn’t new—it’s actually been going on for over 100 years. At one point, the states literally went to war about […]
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