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The End Of California?
May 3rd, 2015
Courtesy of the New York Times, commentary on California’s drought: A buoy stuck on the bottom of a bone-dry Lake McSwain. IN a normal year, no one in California looks twice at a neighbor’s lawn, that mane of bluegrass thriving in a sun-blasted desert. Or casts a scornful gaze at a fresh-planted almond grove, saplings […]
Read more »How The U.S. West Was Lost
August 6th, 2014
Via National Geographic, a report on the drought gripping the U.S. west: The Colorado River at it delta Just as the settling and development of the arid American West was fueled by harnessing its available fresh water, the growing lack of water availability may well be its undoing. California’s epic drought is just the latest […]
Read more »Last Straw: How The Fortunes Of Las Vegas Will Rise Or Fall With Lake Mead
June 15th, 2014
Via Popular Science, a detailed look at the massive, expensive, and politically fraught project to build a new tunnel under Lake Mead to deliver water to Las Vegas: The bathtub ring can be seen for miles. The 120-foot-high band of rock, bleached nearly white by mineral-rich water, circles the shoreline of Lake Mead. Water levels […]
Read more »U.S. Southwest: High And Dry
April 28th, 2014
Via RAND Corporation, a detailed look at implications of climate change on water supplies & management in the United States’ southwest: Droughts across the western United States have left water managers worried like never before. The Colorado River and its reservoirs, upon which seven states rely, are being depleted by 14 years of drought nearly […]
Read more »U.S., Mexico: The Decline Of The Colorado River And A Projected Water Deficit
May 14th, 2013
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), a detailed look at an amendment to a standing water treaty between the United States and Mexico which has received publicity over the past six months as an example of progress in water sharing agreements. But – as the article notes – the amendment, called Minute 319, is simply a glimpse […]
Read more »Phoenix And LA Spar Over Colorado River Water
March 26th, 2013
Courtesy of National Geographic, an interesting article on the increasing tensions between Phoenix and Los Angeles over dwindling supplies of Colorado River water: In a recent volley between Phoenix and Los Angeles, newspapers in those two arid cities pointed fingers at each other over who has the least sustainable water supply. In the L.A. Times, […]
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