Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A resolute effort in Arizona, California, and Nevada to reduce Colorado River water use is slowing the decline of Lake Mead and delaying mandatory restrictions on water withdrawals from the drying basin.
In Colorado, rivers flow not only down mountain slopes but beneath them, across them, and through them.
Does California have too much water? Seriously. Because our actions are sending peculiar messages.
Los Angeles, known for its extensive freeway system and broad boulevards, fast food, car culture, lawn-filled suburbs and smog, is getting serious about sustainability—and the effort includes local and sustainable food and agriculture.
Let’s be clear from the outset: I’m no fan of conventional desalination.
It’s hard to find solutions that confront water depletion, climate change and rural poverty all at once, but an innovative scheme being piloted in the Indian state of Gujarat does just that.
Some will say it’s too difficult to up-end long-held water habits, practices and entitlements. But those difficulties are certain to pale next to those wrought by empty reservoirs and dry wells.
Ethiopia’s plans to build Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Nile have sparked tensions with Egypt, which depends on the river to irrigate its arid land. But after years of tensions, an international agreement to share the Nile’s waters may be in sight.
The records show that efficiencies can indeed foster per-capita decreases in consumption, but it may come as a surprise to many that, at the community level, the drive to enhance efficiency usually results in an increase in overall water consumption!
The timing might seem odd, even self-destructive. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive order calling for his southern California city to cut its water imports by half within a decade.
When residents in Denver, Colorado Springs and other cities on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains turn on their sprinklers to irrigate lawns, they rarely think about the fate of fish in the headwaters of the Colorado River on the other side of the Continental Divide.
A new study has estimated that collectively the world’s large cities, defined as those with at least 750,000 people, move 504 billion liters (133 billion gallons) of water a day a cumulative distance of some 27,000 kilometers.
