Interior Department investigation shows a history of harassment, hostility and retaliation.
Colorado River
Posted inArticles
It’s time to let Lake Powell go
In today’s ‘new normal,’ there is simply not enough water to maintain both Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Posted inNovember 23, 2015: Water Hustle
Water hustle
Did one of Nevada’s top water regulators try to cash in on the drought?
Posted inOctober 12, 2015: The Rise of Lisa Murkowski
The Colorado River’s desalination plant is on its last legs
The obscure Paradox Valley Unit keeps the Colorado River’s salinity levels in check for farmers, but causes quakes upstream.
Posted inArticles
Colorado’s water plan: an end to mega projects?
The latest draft of the plan sets strict guidelines for approving new diversions over the Rocky Mountains.
Posted inArticles
Lake Mead watch: As the Colorado dries up, will tourism?
What dropping water levels could mean for the region’s recreation economy.
Posted inArticles
Should the Bureau of Reclamation be abolished?
Former Reclamation Commissioner Daniel Beard tells how defunct water policy, and the bureau itself, contribute to drought.
Posted inArticles
A progress report on the Colorado River pulse
Researchers are sifting through the impacts of last spring’s release.
Posted inArticles
Cities look to farms for help in Colorado River drought
West’s biggest water agencies finalize a major agreement to boost Lake Mead levels.
Posted inArticles
Dispatch from a young farmers confab
How better dirt can conserve water, save farming and help feed the West.
Posted inArticles
Colorado’s river economy worth $9 billion
Outdoor recreation businesses say state water plan must do more to protect rivers.
Posted inGoat
To protect hydropower, utilities will pay Colorado River water users to conserve
Here’s a sure sign that your region’s in drought: you stop paying your utility for the privilege of using water, and the utility starts paying you not to use water instead. Outlandish as it sounds, that’s what four major Western utilities and the federal government are planning to do next year through the $11 million […]
Posted inGoat
Colorado River Basin groundwater levels drop even faster than reservoirs
When Lake Mead is full it’s the largest reservoir in the U.S., capable of holding two years’ worth of water from the Colorado River. But the Southwest has been trapped in a 14-year drought, and the states Mead feeds – Nevada, Arizona and California – are thirsty. The reservoir is now only about half full […]
Posted inArticles
Will our ‘dam nation’ free its rivers?
A new film explores a growing movement to remove dams that have outlived their usefulness.
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
The Latest: Colorado River Delta update
BackstoryOver the last 50 years, the Colorado River has rarely reached its mouth in the Sea of Cortez. The giant dams on its main stem and the water demands of some 35 million people have largely dried out its vast delta, which once sustained cottonwood and willow forests and armies of fish and birds. But […]
Posted inArticles
Map of Colorado River pulse moving toward Sea of Cortez
Update May 16: The Colorado River has now reached the delta for the first time since the 1990s. Conservationists will study environmental effects of the pulse for years to come. Update May 13 from Karl Flessa: “Image taken Monday May 12. Tidal waters in foreground, Colorado River in background. Connection will likely take place on […]
Posted inArticles
Will the Colorado River reach the Gulf of California once more?
Photographs of the historic water pulses.
Posted inGoat
Four women joyride the flood that will revive the Colorado River Delta
The guides warned us, of course. Or they sort of did. It was sometime after the river outfitter’s shuttle van had passed through the latticework of gates and fences that guards the steep, hairpinned road to the boat-launch at the base of the Hoover Dam, and possibly right before we realized that we had left […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
New Hope for the Delta
During the worst drought in more than a century, the Colorado River may flow to the sea once more.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
How does the Colorado River drought stack up?
It’s one of the worst of the millennium.