The second-largest reservoir in the United States now stands at its lowest level since it was filled in the mid-1960s. The view from above is sobering. Lake Powell, a key component of the western U.S. water system, is currently filled to just 26 percent of capacity, its lowest point since 1967. On August 22, 2022, the water elevation of the lake surface was 3,533.3 feet, more than 166 feet below “full pool” (elevation 3,700 feet).- NASA Earth Observatory

In the rolling hills around San Diego and its suburbs, the rumble of bulldozers and the whine of power saws fill the air as a slew of new homes and apartments rise up. The region is booming, its population growing at a rate of about 1 percent a year. This, in spite of the fact that Southern California, along with much of the West, is in the midst of what experts call a megadrought that some believe may not be a temporary, one-off occurrence, but a recurring event or even a climate change-driven permanent “aridification” of the West. The drought is so bad that last year federal officials ordered cuts to water provided to the region by the Colorado River for the first time in history. Water officials in San Diego, though, say they are not worried. “We have sufficient supplies now and in the future,” said Sandra Kerl, general manager of the San Diego Water Authority. “We recently did a stress test, and we are good until 2045” and even beyond. - Yale Environment350

The U.S. power generation market has changed dramatically over the past five years. Natural gas has been bleeding market share to cheaper sources of electricity, which include solar, wind, and even nuclear. At roughly $5 per MMbtu, the price of natural gas today is more than double what it was just two years ago. Even at half of that price, natural gas has been unable to compete with solar in the Southwest. - AZ Capitol Times

The question now, as it has been since 1911 when the first big reservoir was completed to supply Phoenix with water, is one of longevity. Can this desert bounty be sustained for another 100 years, or even another 50? That question is more urgent and more relevant than ever. Climate change is disrupting the rules of the development game. Drought and extreme heat are emptying rivers and reservoirs, fallowing tens of thousands of acres of farmland, forcing thousands of homeowners to secure water from trucks and not their dead wells, and pushing Arizona ever closer to the precipice of peril.- HCN

During his last year in office, Gov. Doug Ducey is trying to create a legacy of water security in drought-stricken Arizona. But his most ambitious effort in that quest could end up being in Mexico. In his last state of the state speech in January, he proposed an investment of $1.16 billion over the next three years to make the state “more resilient to drought, secure a sustainable water future and allow for continued growth.” The goal, he said, is to “secure Arizona’s water future for the next 100 years.”- Inside Climate News

​Beginning February 12 of this year, a small swarm of earthquakes rattled the southern side of Theodore Roosevelt Lake. Although earthquakes are rare in southern Arizona, the area surrounding Roosevelt, AZ has experienced many historical earthquakes. Beginning in 2008, the Arizona Geological Survey began a statewide effort to monitor earthquakes using 8 broadband seismometers.  In 2017, 6 new stations were installed, including one near Roosevelt, Arizona, and two additional stations were added to the seismic network in 2018. With increasing station coverage, more of Arizona’s smaller earthquakes are being detected and better located. The latest swarm detected near Roosevelt Lake included 3 events (summary table below) with M 2.5 or greater and 10s of M1.0-1.5s that were too small to be located accurately. - AZ Geologic Survey

Every office email, every social media “like,” every credit card transaction and telecommuter call still has to be processed by physical computers, real machines that use real energy and water and have real environmental impacts. Even cryptocurrency must be “mined” in an energy-intensive way. Thousands of servers, storage units and network devices stacked up in sprawling warehouses across the West - on the fringe of Phoenix, along the Columbia River, and even in Wyoming’s hinterland - suck juice from the grid to process millions of transactions. The electricity becomes equipment-straining heat, which must be shed using water or more electricity. Instead of seeking veins of gold or silver, cryptocurrency miners chase cheap energy — even setting up shop on oil and gas pads to utilize methane that otherwise would be flared — because more power use equals greater computing capacity, which equals higher profits.- HCN

John Loleit has kept a watchful eye on the towering saguaros and well-worn trails of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve for 22 years. Loleit, the natural resources coordinator for Scottsdale, takes to the wilds of the 47-square-mile park almost every day in all weather, mending fences, leading hikes and training park employees and volunteers, encouraging visitors to look for clues about what’s happening to the environment around them from year to year. “I tell folks, pick out a saguaro cactus, and that’s your saguaro. Every time you pass by, just take a look at it. Look at the main trunk,” Loleit said. “Over a period of time, are you seeing that it’s thin, and its ribs are shrinking and losing water or then they’re opening up and fat if we’ve got rain?” - Cronkite News

A water and electric utility in central California will install a first-of-its-kind network of solar panels on water canals. Turlock Irrigation District (TID) has secured a $20 million grant from the state to pursue the first-in-the-nation project, which could serve a beneficial double whammy: create renewable energy and save some water in the process. Project Nexus is based off an analysis published last year in Nature Sustainability, which put some real numbers behind the idea that solar panels over canals could do some good. A lot of water in California wends its way through the state’s 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) of open delivery canals that comprise the aqueduct system, transporting water supply from the Sierra Nevada mountains and northern parts of the state to reservoirs, lakes, hydropower plants, and farms. The water supply in the state is already under serious dual threats from overuse and climate change, so every drop counts. And these exposed canals have a serious flaw: They allow some of that precious water to evaporate. - Gizmodo (from Nature)

Shrunk reservoirs. Depleted aquifers. Low rivers. Raging wildfires. It's no secret that the Western U.S. is in a severe drought. New research published Monday shows just how extreme the situation has become. The Western U.S. and Northern Mexico are experiencing their driest period in at least 1,200 years, according to the new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The last comparable – though not as severe – multi-decade megadrought occurred in the 1500s, when the West was still largely inhabited by American Indian tribes. Today, the region is home to tens of millions of people, massive agricultural centers and some of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. — all in an area where there's less water available than there was in the past, partially due to human-caused climate change. - NPR

Inflation may be at a 40-year high, but the cost of grazing on public lands is lower now than it was 40 years ago, in 1981. Last week, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service announced federal grazing fees for 2022: Just $1.35. Grazing fees dictate how much ranchers pay for each “animal unit” — one cow and calf, one horse or five sheep — per month. This year’s fee — just $1.35 per animal unit — keeps the grazing costs at the same rate since 2019, when Trump’s BLM lowered the fee from $1.41. Fees apply to roughly 18,000 BLM grazing permits and leases and 6,250 Forest Service permits; income is funneled to rangeland betterment funds, the U.S. Treasury, and the states where the grazing occurs. - High Country News

A federal appeals court said Monday that SRP customers who also have solar panels at their homes can pursue an antitrust claim against the utility for a policy of charging them more than other customers. The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had thrown out the case, which claimed the higher fees were aimed at stifling competition from renewable energy. Advocates for the customers welcomed the ruling as a win for “everyday people” like William Ellis, the lead plaintiff in the suit. “These are everyday people like Mr. Ellis, who just wants to put rooftop solar on his house to get clean energy,” said Jean Su, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which supported the customers’ suit. - Cronkite News

A unique gem mine in the mountains northeast of Mesa is in the process of rebuilding after a wildfire wiped it out in 2020. The Bush Fire is now the 5th largest in Arizona's history as firefighters battle multiple blazes. "The fire came roaring up the mountain. It was so intense," the mine's owner, Kurt Cavano said, as he gathered charred debris to be removed from the site. When the Bush Wildfire burned through nearly 200,000 acres northeast of the Valley, the flames raced up the side of Four Peaks, scorching everything in their path, including the mine. - AZ Family 

Arizonans are facing water shortages as the Colorado River declines, but Teddy Lopez and many other residents of the Navajo Nation have lived without easy access to clean water for decades. Lopez, 66, has learned that nothing is guaranteed – with water or in life. “I just take it one day at a time and try to work what I can, what I can do,” said Lopez, who in August received news no one wants to hear. “I have cancer, so I just take care of my family, I guess,” said Lopez, who lives with his wife in Lybrook, New Mexico, and his daughter and grandchildren come to cook meals for him every day. - Cronkite News

This summer, Phoenix, became the first city in the country to publicly fund an office dedicated to tackling the issue of extreme heat. It’s part of a growing awareness among government officials that heat’s dangers need to be dealt with more strategically as the world grows warmer. In Phoenix, the nation’s third-fastest-warming city, the number of heat-related deaths has continued to climb. Now, David Hondula, an associate professor and researcher at ASU will lead the city’s heat strategy as director of the newly formed Office of Heat Response and Mitigation.  Hondula is optimistic that the new office can reduce the number of heat-related deaths and help create a city that is cooler and more comfortable for its residents. High Country News recently spoke with Hondula to better understand just what his office will be doing, and how it plans to direct resources to neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by heat. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. - HCN

In Arizona, verdant fields of crops and a growing sprawl of suburban homes mean a sharp demand for water in the middle of the desert. Meeting that demand includes drawing from massive stores of underground water. But some experts say those aquifers are overtaxed and shouldn’t be seen as a long-term solution for a region where the water supply is expected to shrink in the decades to come. “We should recognize now, as we do with the Colorado River, that we have to take action before it’s too late,” said Kathleen Ferris, a senior research fellow with Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. - Cronkite News

Sandbars along the Colorado River are used as campsites by river runners and hikers and are an important recreational resource within Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Regulation of the flow of river water through Glen Canyon Dam has reduced the amount of sediment available to be deposited as sandbars, has reduced the magnitude and frequency of flooding events, and has increased the magnitude of baseflows. This has caused widespread erosion of sandbars and has allowed native and non-native vegetation to expand on open sand. Previous studies show an overall decline in campsite area despite the use of controlled floods to rebuild sandbars. Monitoring of campsites since 1998 has shown changes in campsite area, but the factors that cause gains and losses in campsite area have not been quantified. These factors include changes in sandbar volume and slope under different dam flow regimes that include controlled floods, gul- lying caused by monsoonal rains, vegetation expansion, and reworking of sediment by aeolian processes. - USGS

The date is Feb. 9, 1997, and the man responsible for one of the most egregious environmental follies in human history is sitting at a restaurant in Boyce, Virginia, with the leader of the movement seeking to undo his mistake. Of the hundreds of dams Floyd Dominy green lit during his decade running the Bureau of Reclamation, none are as loathed as his crown jewel, the Glen Canyon Dam. In 1963, Dominy erected the 710-foot (216-meter) tall monument to himself out of ego and concrete, deadening the Colorado River just upstream of the Grand Canyon, drowning more than 250 square miles (648 square kilometers) in the heart of the Colorado Plateau, and inventing Lake Powell in the middle of a sun-baked desert. - Gizmodo