The Southern Nevada Water Authority is slowly removing obstacles in the way of its plan to pump water from the Great Basin and ship it to Las Vegas.
Items by Matt Jenkins
Saving fisheries -- and taking the edge off the dangerous derby of the sea.
If Eric Kuhn is right about the Colorado River, then the state faces a dry and difficult future of fighting for water.
California is enthusiastic about creating “water banks” to help the state’s cities weather future droughts.
In the quest for the ultimate firefighting machine, the BLM in Nevada has turned to some very big, very strange, and very foreign vehicles.
For years, Native Americans, fishermen and farmers have
battled over the Klamath River in southern Oregon and Northern
California, but finally a complicated truce is in the
works.
The Navajo Nation is determined to finally claim its
rightful share of the Colorado River after 86 years of being left
out of the region’s water politics.
Matt Jenkins wants to help save the world – and its
ski slopes – one compact fluorescent light at a
time.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
– the West’s most powerful water agency – uses a
shrewd blend of Wall Street tactics and rural diplomacy to keep the
water flowing to L.A. and its environs.
Chris Kelly’s environmental group, The Conservation
Fund, is carefully logging its own redwood trees in order to save
forests and salmon in Northern California.
Western farmers band together to form the “OPEC of
Potatoes” – a farmers’ cooperative called the
United Potato Growers of America
Monsanto’s genetically modified Roundup Ready
alfalfa may take over the West, as the company re-engineers the
world to conform to its business plan
Global warming spurs calls for new dams in the West
– but where will the water come from to fill them?
Efforts to privatize instream-flow protection – to
keep enough water in rivers and streams to sustain their ecological
functions – face tough going in the West.
Water efficiency has long been touted as a silver bullet
for the West’s water problems, but too much efficiency can
cause problems of its own, especially in the fragile Colorado River
Delta.
Giles Slade’s new book, Made to Break: Technology
and Obsolescence in America, is a fascinating intellectual history
of how marketers demolished the American tradition of
thrift.
Kern County, Calif., is trying to prevent Los Angeles
sludge from entering the county, where it is used to fertilize
farmland, and the resulting stink is raising all kinds of questions
about how we handle human waste
Six decades after Friant Dam killed off the San Joaquin
River’s spring-run chinook, the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the Friant Water Users Authority are working with the
federal government to restore both the fish and the river
California geology professor Jeff Mount uses river trips
as an educational tool
California’s Proposition 87 would tax oil produced
in the state to raise money for the development of alternative
fuels
A detailed map shows the work being done on Oregon’s
Whychus Creek to restore instream flows with the cooperation of
local farmers
In Oregon, a revolutionary community alliance is working
to put water – and steelhead trout – back into the
Deschutes River
Several magazines and newspapers provide good independent
commentary on water in the West, but there is always room for
more
John Orr created his "Coyote Gulch" blog to follow
Denver-area politics and Colorado water issues
Rick Spilsbury, a Western Shoshone Indian, writes bitingly
and sometimes hilariously about Nevada’s water issues on his
"noshootfoot" blog
Although many rural Nevadans are unhappy with Las
Vegas’ plans for a giant groundwater project, the six other
states that rely on water from the Colorado River are hoping the
Nevada project goes ahead.
California’s decision to tackle global warming is a
sign that the West is finally growing up enough to realize that it
is not an "exceptional" place, entirely detached from the rest of
the modern world.
The writer salutes California for taking action on global
warming and says that the notion of Western "exceptionalism" is
dead
Three compromise wilderness bills have passed the House
and now await Senate approval
Matt Jenkins visits the annual Combine Demolition Derby in
the tiny farming town of Lind, Wash.
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