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What If Farmers Competed With One Another To Cut Colorado River Water Consumption?
October 22nd, 2022
Via The High Country News, commentary on the potential if farmers competed with one another to cut water consumption on the Colorado River: It’s now clear that the Colorado River simply does not deliver as much water as we take from it. Fast, dramatic cuts — totaling up to 30% of all the water currently in use […]
Read more »USG Paying Farmers and First Nations To Conserve Water
October 21st, 2022
Via Arizona Central, an article on U.S. government efforts to pay users to leave water in Lake Mead: The Gila River Indian Community is the first Arizona water rights holder to publicly pursue the federal government’s new offer of compensation to leave Colorado River water in Lake Mead. Tribal Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis announced the […]
Read more »U.S. Southwest Water Problem About ‘People and Politics’
October 6th, 2022
Via Grand Junction Sentinel, commentary on the relationship between water and politics: The most important long-term issue for Colorado today is the same as it was 120 years ago… water. In 2010, Smithsonian Magazine published an article titled, “The Colorado River Runs Dry.” The article included a quotation from Brad Udall of Colorado State University, […]
Read more »Will Drought Put U.S. Alfalfa Farmers Out Of Business?
October 1st, 2022
Via The Guardian, an article on how agriculture – mainly alfalfa – consumes 80% of the Colorado River’s dwindling water supply, prompting calls for conservation: On an early August morning in California’s Imperial Valley, tractors rumble across verdant fields of alfalfa, mowing down the tall grass and leaving it to dry in shaggy heaps under […]
Read more »How A 100-year-old Miscalculation Drained The Colorado River
October 1st, 2022
Via Vox, an article on how an epic drought in the West is drying up the river, but that’s only part of the story: By now, you may have heard that the Colorado River is drying up. The river’s flow is down by about 20 percent, compared to the 1900s, and the two largest reservoirs it feeds […]
Read more »Colorado River: “I Don’t See How This Ends Well”
September 27th, 2022
Via John Fleck, commentary on the Colorado River crisis: I don’t see how this ends well. Most of the major players – the ones that matter, anyway, by which I mean Arizona, California, and the federal government – appear boxed in by constraints they can’t seem to overcome, while the water in the Colorado River’s […]
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