Southwest states have bought time with an agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada to cut Colorado River water use by about 14%. Now comes the hard part.
Sprinklers water a lettuce field in Holtville, California with Colorado River water.
Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images
Two decades of drought have reduced the river’s flow by one-third compared to historical averages. The Biden administration is considering mandatory cuts to some states’ water allocations.
California’s snowpack was more than twice the average in much of the state in early March 2023.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Reservoirs and streams are in good shape in California and the Great Basin, but groundwater and ecosystems are another story. And then there’s the Colorado River Basin.
The white ‘bathtub ring’ around Lake Powell, which is roughly 110 feet high, shows the former high water mark.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
A climate scientist explains the forces behind the summer’s extreme downpours and dangerous heat waves, and why new locations will be at risk in the coming year.
The Yangtze river bed in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, eastern China on August 23 2022.
EPA-EFE/Alex Plaveski
Stemming the water crisis in the western US will require cities and rural areas to work together to make water use on farms – the largest source of demand – more efficient.
The white ‘bathtub ring’ around Lake Mead, shown on Jan. 11, 2022, is roughly 160 feet high and reflects falling water levels.
George Rose/Getty Images
A Western scholar proposes allocating water from the Colorado River based on percentages of its actual flow instead of fixed amounts that exceed what’s there – and including tribes this time.
Water flows into a canal that feeds farms in Casa Grande, Ariz.
AP Photo/Darryl Webb
The Supreme Court recently dealt defeat to Florida in its 20-year legal battle with Georgia over river water. Other interstate water contests loom, but there are no sure winners in these lawsuits.
The white “bathtub ring” around Arizona’s Lake Mead (shown on May 31, 2018), which indicates falling water levels, is about 140 feet high.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Western states adopted a 7-year plan in May 2019 to manage low water levels in the Colorado River. Now they need to look farther ahead and accept that there will be less water far into the future.
Dawn on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
Murray Foubister/Wikimedia
The Grand Canyon, which marks 100 years as a national park on Feb. 26, 2019, is known today as an iconic natural wonder. But early European visitors weren’t impressed.
The shrinking supply of Colorado River water is evident at the Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a Native American scholar explains why water means more than just sustenance for life and how it’s the place of the divine.
What does the shrinking of the Colorado River mean for Native American religions?
Ken Lund
Historically, indigenous peoples used the natural seasonal cycles of weather, plants and animals as part of their religious calendar. What will be the impact of climate change on their practices?
Lake Powell, photographed April 12, 2017. The white ‘bathtub ring’ at the cliff base indicates how much higher the lake reached at its peak, nearly 100 feet above the current level.
Patti Weeks
The Colorado River supplies water to millions of people and irrigates thousands of miles of farmland. New research warns that climate change is likely to magnify droughts in the Colorado Basin.
Samual A. Graham Dean, and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor of Environmental Education, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan