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Will J.D. Vance save the Great Lakes from Trump?
February 14th, 2025
Courtesy of Grist, commentary on the new U.S. Administration’s policy towards the Great Lakes: Last year, Vice President J.D. Vance, then an Ohio senator, was part of a bipartisan coalition calling to increase funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI — among the country’s largest investments aimed at protecting and restoring the Great Lakes. “The Great […]
Read more »Water: The Other US-Mexico Border Crisis That Is Growing Worse
February 7th, 2025
Via The Conversation, a report on growing water tensions between the U.S. and Mexico: Immigration and border security will be the likely focus of U.S.-Mexico relations under the new Trump administration. But there also is a growing water crisis along the U.S.–Mexico border that affects tens of millions of people on both sides, and it can only […]
Read more »The American Dream (Water Not Included)
February 7th, 2025
Via The Lever, a look at how real estate developers are running a dark-money campaign to overturn new housing rules — and ignore basic laws of nature: For most of human history, a simple axiom for survival seemed to prevail: Don’t build houses where there is too little water. Amid dangerous droughts, Arizona officials recently […]
Read more »At Phoenix’s Far Edge, a Housing Boom Grasps for Water
January 31st, 2025
Via Circle of Blue, a report on how more than 1 million people could pour into western Maricopa County, Arizona in the coming decades – if housing developers can secure the water: Buckeye, Arizona, has plans to become one of the Southwest’s largest cities in the next decades. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue Beneath […]
Read more »The Shrinking Caspian Sea: An Environmental and Geopolitical Emergency
January 22nd, 2025
Via The Diplomat, an article on allowing the Caspian Sea to succumb to industrial exploitation and climate-induced desiccation would be an irreversible tragedy: Last month, an 18th-century 28-meter wooden shipwreck was discovered off the Mazandaran coast of the Caspian Sea in southern Iran. Operating under Russian influence, the ship likely comprised part of a merchant fleet carrying botanical […]
Read more »Stable On The Colorado River: When “Good” Is Not Good Enough
January 17th, 2025
Via JFleck at Inkstain, a report on the Colorado River: Stable isn’t good enough. Preliminary year-end Colorado River numbers are stark. Total basin-wide storage for the last two years has stabilized, oscillating between 30 and 27 maf (million acre-feet), where storage sits at the start of 2025[1]. That is lower than any sustained period since […]
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