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U.S. Southwest: The Last Straw for Desert Sprawl?
October 27th, 2008
From the always interesting Patagonia corporate blog, a story from Southwestern Utah, where the most recent example of water resource redirection is being played out. As the article notes: “…In the 1990s, St. George, Utah outpaced Las Vegas as the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S.; it now sits just behind Greeley, Colorado. The Lake […]
Read more »Time For Northwest To Cash In Its Water?
August 30th, 2008
As recently discussed in The Oregonian, parched Southwest U.S. states recently considered ways they might bring more water to the overtaxed Colorado River, and they imagined snaking a fiberglass straw up the Pacific coast and sipping from the Columbia River. And, as the article notes: “…That’s probably a pipe dream, but it’s also a recurring […]
Read more »Water Wars of the West: Is History Repeating Itself with The Next Owens Valley / Aral Sea?
August 10th, 2008
Many commentators are convinced that the major conflicts of the future will be over water rather than oil. There is a grim aptness in the fact that shrinking the word “water” produces “war”. This is becoming ever more common in the U.S. Southwest – where rapidly growing cities looking to obtain & secure alternative sources […]
Read more »A Boon(e) for Water Pipelines?
August 7th, 2008
As recently featured in Popular Mechanics, legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is in the planning stages of a $1.5 billion initiative to pump billions of gallons of water from an ancient aquifer beneath the Texas Panhandle and build pipelines to ship them to thirsty cities such as Dallas.  As the article notes: “…So far, […]
Read more »U.S. – Entering an Era of Freshwater Scarcity
July 12th, 2008
Circle of Blue recently offered two interesting articles on the impending era of freshwater scarcity in the United States. The first noted that: “…builders in the Southeast are confronting limits to planting gardens and lawns for new houses as a result of local water restrictions prompted by a continuing drought. The Ogallala Aquifer, the vast […]
Read more »California: Water Wars On The Boil
July 12th, 2008
Courtesy of PBS’s NewsHour, a detailed report on the fact that – for the first time since the early 1990s – California is facing a summer of potential water shortages. The rains tapered off this spring, producing the second dry year in a row and causing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a statewide drought. As […]
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