Category: Water

A Quiet Revolution: Southwest Cities Learn to Thrive Amid Drought

4/29/2022

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 digital world’s real-world impact on the environment

2/25/2022

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

Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years

2/14/2022

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

The US is losing some of its biggest freshwater reserves

1/30/2022

As concerns over water scarcity grow, research published in Nature recently documents how freshwater availability has changed over the years, helping water specialists and managers pinpoint how this essential resource’s flows have been changing. Xander Huggins, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria and Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, and his fellow researchers decided to explore what exactly these changes would mean for life here on Earth. The team examined 1,024 basins across the world to understand how water availability couples with social processes to create vulnerability in communities. The main factor they studied were freshwater stress, which is the amount of H2O that naturally leaves the watershed or basin per year; the higher the stress, the less water there is available for ecosystems and for people’s demands, according to Huggins. Following this, he and his colleagues coupled the findings with data on how freshwater storage in underground aquifers and glaciers, for example, is changing. - Popular Science / Nature

Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project projected to serve thousands of people

1/27/2022

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

With less water on the surface, how long can Arizona rely on what’s underground?

1/20/2022

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

Geomorphology & Veg Change at CO River Campsites, Marble and Grand Canyons

1/13/2022

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

California farm town lurches from no water to polluted water

11/2/2021

The San Joaquin Valley farm town of Teviston has two wells. One went dry and the other is contaminated. The one functioning well failed just at the start of summer, depriving the hot and dusty hamlet of running water for weeks. With temperatures routinely soaring above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), farm workers bathed with buckets after laboring in the nearby vineyards and almond orchards. Even as officials restored a modicum of pressure with trucked-in water, and after the well was repaired, the hardships have endured. Teviston's 400 to 700 people - figures fluctuate with the agricultural season - have received bottled drinking water since the well failed in June. But for years, probably decades, the water coming from Teviston taps has been laced with the carcinogen 1,2,3-Trichloropropane, or 1,2,3-TCP, the legacy of pesticides. - Reuters

PFAS are everywhere—and the EPA has a new plan to fight back

10/24/2021

The United States has a PFAS problem. Whether they are raining down from the sky or popping up in food packaging, the mysterious chemicals, also known as Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have been finding their way into our bodies and environment—sometimes at concerningly high levels. PFAS are also found in everyday cosmetics, especially in longwear and waterproof makeup items and can accidentally be ingested overtime. PFAS can even be found in our drinking water. PFAS are not only dangerous because they build up in the environment and in our bodies, but the chemicals are often associated with low infant birth rates and even cancer according to the EPA. In the past year, some research has connected high rates of PFAS exposure to worse COVID outcomes. Despite being such harmful toxins to people, they’re used regularly and are not historically regulated in the U.S. To tackle this dilemma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a “Comprehensive National Strategy” to regulate the toxic industrial chemical. The plan describes three main strategies going forward–investing in more research on PFAS, leveraging authorities that can take action to restrict more PFAS chemicals from being released, and accelerating PFAS contamination cleanups. EPA administrator Michael S. Regan pointed out that the agency will work on holding polluters accountable in the announcement. - Popular Science

Pinal County farmer struggles to grow crops with less water

10/24/2021

Nancy Caywood’s Pinal County farm should have a full field of alfalfa, but since the irrigation district shut off her water because of drought, her fields are empty and dry. - Cronkite News

The Incredible Shrinking Colorado River

9/10/2021

Two decades of climate change-induced drought and rising temperatures, combined with ever-growing demand, have put the entire water system — and the flora and fauna and more than 40 million people that rely on it — into serious trouble. Now local, state and federal water managers are being forced to reckon with a frightening reality: the incredible shrinking Colorado River system. - High Country News

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

8/17/2021

The alfalfa barely exists. “Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil. The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious. Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears. - LATimes

Severe Heat and Drought the Hallmarks of a Changing West

6/20/2021

Much of the American West , from parched Northern California through Arizona and New Mexico, is drying out at a record pace.
The onset of this severe drought was far quicker than previous ones — the result of a meager Sierra Nevada snowpack and early seasonal heat that evaporated the runoff needed to fill the reservoirs and rivers. “It’s difficult to point to one occurrence and say, ‘Hah, this is climate change,’’’ said John Yarbrough, the assistant deputy director for the State Water Project with the California Department of Water Resources. But this year, the second consecutive that the nation’s most populous state will be in drought, has been different from previous ones. Yarbrough said that only 20 percent of the expected runoff from an already well-below average snowpack arrived in reservoirs. The rest evaporated during the unseasonably warm spring. - Washington Post

Some AZ Golf Courses are Pushing Back Against State's Plan to Reduce Water Use

6/14/2021

Managers of some Arizona golf courses are fighting a plan that would cut water use at a time when the state is being forced to confront shrinking water supplies. A group representing golf courses has been pushing back against a proposal by state officials that would reduce overall water use on courses, instead offering a plan that would entail less conservation. Opposition to the state’s proposal for golf courses has emerged over the past several months, aired in sometimes-tense virtual meetings where representatives of courses have said they understand the need to conserve but are concerned the proposed reductions in water allotments would damage their businesses. - AZ Central

Declining Lake Powell Levels Prompt Colorado River States to Form New Plan

5/25/2021

Declining levels at the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. have spurred officials in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico to search for ways to prop it up. Lake Powell on the Colorado River is dropping rapidly amid one of the southwestern watershed’s driest years on record. It’s currently forecast to be at 29% of capacity by the end of September – the lowest level since the reservoir first started filling in 1963. Its sister reservoir downstream on the Colorado River, Lake Mead, also is approaching a record low this year. - Cronkite News

The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking

5/25/2021

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp. Corcoran is sinking. Over the past 14 years, the town has sunk as much as 11.5 feet in some places — enough to swallow the entire first floor of a two-story house and to at times make Corcoran one of the fastest-sinking areas in the country, according to experts with the United States Geological Survey. - NYTimes

Our Own Survival Is at Stake: AZ Is Using Up Its Groundwater

5/19/2021

In 1980, AZ began regulating groundwater in the largest cities and suburbs under a landmark law that called for most of these areas to achieve an overarching goal by 2025: a long-term balance between the amount of water pumped from the ground and the amount seeping back underground to replenish aquifers. Forty-one years later, the state’s latest data shows most of the areas where groundwater is managed remain far from achieving a long-term balance, a goal known as “safe yield.” Groundwater is still overpumped in most of the state’s “active-management areas,” or AMAs. In many places, aquifer levels continue to decline. ASU researchers warn that groundwater has been seriously over-allocated under the current laws, allowing for unsustainable pumping that threatens AZ's water future. Leaders urgently need to reform Arizona’s groundwater rules to safeguard these finite reserves and prevent aquifers from continuing to drop. - AZ Central

As the West Faces a Drought Emergency, Some Ranchers are Restoring Grasslands to Build Water Reserves

5/19/2021

It’s calving season and all across the West ranchers are watching the sizes of their herds grow. It’s also the beginning of a new season on most ranches, but in the midst of a historic, persistent drought, a growing herd brings difficult questions. As average temperatures climb and the water that flows through many of the major rivers and creeks across the west is slowing, the availability of forage—grass, legumes, and other edible pasture plants—has become less predictable. As a result, many ranchers face complex calculations: Do they sell off some of their cattle and cut a profit, but risk flooding the market and getting a low price? Or do they hold onto their herd and buy extra hay and forage, rent additional pasture, or risk overgrazing—and further drying out—the land?- Civil Eats

Widespread Drought in Mexico

5/5/2021

Mexico is experiencing one of its most widespread and intense droughts in decades. Nearly 85 percent of the country is facing drought conditions as of April 15, 2021. Large reservoirs across the country are standing at exceptionally low levels, straining water resources for drinking, farming, and irrigation. The mayor of Mexico City called it the worst drought in 30 years for the city, which is home to about 9 million people. This drought doesn't stop at the Arizona borders . The entire SW USA and Mexico are affected. - NASA

California Orders Nestlé to Stop Siphoning Spring Water

4/28/2021

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state. The draft cease-and-desist order, which still requires approval from the California Water Resources Control Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the expense of local communities and ecosystems. - HCN

Demand for Water is Rapidly Increasing as Supply Dwindles - Video & Article

4/22/2021

Limited access to clean water remains a struggle for millions of Americans. And lack of water access is expected to become an even greater problem in the coming years across the U.S. and around the world. In West Virginia, many households in McDowell County rely on collecting water from fresh springs, which might freeze over in the winter or run dry in the summer. Bob McKinney is the Appalachia Water Project manager for DigDeep, a nonprofit that works to provide water to Americans who wouldn't otherwise have access. He says he estimates that about half of McDowell's population doesn't have reliable running water in their homes. - CBS News

There Are No Clear Winners in the West’s Water Wars

4/22/2021

Interstate water disputes are as American as apple pie. States often think a neighboring state is using more than its fair share from a river, lake or aquifer that crosses borders. Currently the U.S. Supreme Court has on its docket a case between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado and another between Mississippi and Tennessee. The court has already ruled this term on cases pitting Texas against New Mexico and Florida against Georgia. Climate stresses are raising the stakes. Rising temperatures require farmers to use more water to grow the same amount of crops. Prolonged and severe droughts decrease available supplies. Wildfires are burning hotter and lasting longer. Fires bake the soil, reducing forests’ ability to hold water, increasing evaporation from barren land and compromising water supplies. - HCN

As Mega-Drought Persists, Lake Mead Could Sink to Record Low Later This Year

4/19/2021

Wracked by drought, climate change and overuse, a key reservoir on the Colorado River could sink to historically low levels later this year, new US government projections show, potentially triggering significant water cutbacks in some states as early as next year. The projections released by the US Bureau of Reclamation show that Lake Mead, largest reservoir in the US and a vital water supply to millions across the Southwest, could fall later this year to its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s. - CNN

Meet Arizona's Water One-Percenters

4/8/2021

In Phoenix, two cities are emerging: one is water-rich, the other water-poor Every two weeks, Dawn Upton floods her lawn. She treks into her back yard, twists open two valves big as dinner plates, and within minutes is ankle-deep in water. “You have to have irrigation boots, girl,” she says during a video tour of her property in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. She flips her camera to reveal green grass, then tilts her phone skyward at four towering palm trees. As she walks, she pans across pecan, pomegranate, and citrus trees – lemon, orange, a grapefruit sapling. A tortoise, between 80 and 100lb, lumbers toward her, chewing. “There’s Simba,” Upton says. “Hey buddy! What is that, Simba? You can’t eat it.” She pats him affectionately on the head. - Guardian

Agencies: Arizona farmers should expect less water in 2022

4/8/2021

State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on notice that the continuing drought means a “substantial cut" in deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year. A statement issued Friday by the state Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project said an expected shortage declaration “will result in a substantial cut to Arizona’s share of the river, with reductions falling largely to central Arizona agricultural users." - AZ Family

<<Previous

A Quiet Revolution: Southwest Cities Learn to Thrive Amid Drought

The digital world’s real-world impact on the environment

Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years

The US is losing some of its biggest freshwater reserves

Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project projected to serve thousands of people

With less water on the surface, how long can Arizona rely on what’s underground?

Geomorphology & Veg Change at CO River Campsites, Marble and Grand Canyons

California farm town lurches from no water to polluted water

PFAS are everywhere—and the EPA has a new plan to fight back

Pinal County farmer struggles to grow crops with less water

The Incredible Shrinking Colorado River

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

Severe Heat and Drought the Hallmarks of a Changing West

Some AZ Golf Courses are Pushing Back Against State's Plan to Reduce Water Use

Declining Lake Powell Levels Prompt Colorado River States to Form New Plan

The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking

Our Own Survival Is at Stake: AZ Is Using Up Its Groundwater

As the West Faces a Drought Emergency, Some Ranchers are Restoring Grasslands to Build Water Reserves

Widespread Drought in Mexico

California Orders Nestlé to Stop Siphoning Spring Water

Demand for Water is Rapidly Increasing as Supply Dwindles - Video & Article

There Are No Clear Winners in the West’s Water Wars

As Mega-Drought Persists, Lake Mead Could Sink to Record Low Later This Year

Meet Arizona's Water One-Percenters

Agencies: Arizona farmers should expect less water in 2022

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