High Country News

Farmers agree to tax those who deplete groundwater

Amid drought and climate change in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, farmers vote for a new approach to rein in their overpumping of groundwater.

by Cally Carswell, Feb 25, 2013
Drought forces a new era of agricultural water conservation

Whether converting open ditches into pipelines or fallowing fields, farmers and ranchers in the West are being forced to change the ways they use water as climate-induced drought tightens its grip.

by Paul Larmer, Feb 18, 2013
Three days in the Four Corners

A loop around the Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet, leads into a land of both historical and geological friction.

by Jonathan Thompson, Jul 05, 2012
Balancing fish and farms on a Washington estuary

A restoration effort at Fisher Slough in Washington's Skagit River Delta has encouraged cooperation between farmers and environmentalists - and might even help endangered chinook salmon.

by Eric Wagner, May 08, 2012
Weighing our water options

As the rapidly growing city of Las Vegas, Nev., schemes to find more water, it reminds those of us who live outside big cities that we also need to rethink the way we use water

by Paul Larmer, Sep 19, 2005
Residents of Montana's High Plains are angry - but not at the real threats

Though climate change and the economy are the issues threatening their livelihoods, many of the High Plains people are angry at almost everything else.

by Joe Wilkins, Feb 02, 2012
Detente in the rancher v. environmentalist grazing wars?

Buying out grazing permits from willing ranchers could help solve conflicts over grazing on public lands.

by Jodi Peterson, Jan 22, 2012
'There was just some hard hittin' going on'

Matt Jenkins visits the annual Combine Demolition Derby in the tiny farming town of Lind, Wash.

by Matt Jenkins, Aug 07, 2006
Dust in the wind

In his new book, The Worst Hard Time, Tim Egan interviews survivors to tell the story of the great American Dust Bowl on the southern Great Plains in the 1930s

by Gail Binkly, Jul 24, 2006
A world built on groundwater

In Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the Great Plains, William Ashworth examines the effects of groundwater dependency in a dry land

by Matt Jenkins, Jul 24, 2006