Report outlines risks that mine will deplete aquifer and contaminate groundwater.
Rivers & Lakes
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Duwamish River to get $342 million more for cleanup
The EPA’s order aims to undo decades of industrial pollution to Seattle’s only river.
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New Mexico commission votes to divert Gila River
Decision greenlights contentious multi-million dollar diversion project.
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Commission to decide on Gila River’s fate
Approval for a diversion expected Monday despite broad criticism.
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
An expedition along the imperiled Rio Grande
The river’s future may include longer droughts, larger floods and shrinking snowpack.
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Watershed moment
The U.S. and Canada prepare to renegotiate the 50-year-old Columbia River Treaty.
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Colorado’s river economy worth $9 billion
Outdoor recreation businesses say state water plan must do more to protect rivers.
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Diversion plans for the Gila would have major impact, critics say
Small and medium-sized flows could be most affected.
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Shaken and stirred in California’s recent earthquake
How seismic events can make drought impacts worse.
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New Mexico delays controversial Gila vote
Many unanswered questions remain about proposals to divert the state’s last undammed major river.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
The Latest: Ruptured tailings pond spills waste in Canada
Backstory In the remote northwestern corner of British Columbia, next to Alaska, plans for large mining and hydropower projects have sounded alarm bells on both sides of the border. Critics, mostly environmentalists and tribes, warned that Canada’s resource rush threatens rivers that support a vital wild salmon fishery in both countries, and that the race […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Idaho’s sewer system is the Snake River
As Big Ag flourishes, this massive waterway suffers.
Posted inGoat
Is Canada’s massive mine waste spill a sign of things to come?
From behind a screen of trees, it comes as a dull roar: A gray churn of water and debris that overtops roads, snaps trunks, carves chunks of earth from banks as if they were butter. It looks like a flash flood, something you’d see coursing from the mouth of a redrock wash in Utah, a […]
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 inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Summer swimming in a Washington lake
When I was a kid, I swam all summer in backyard pools and at the city park, lessons in the morning, wildness all afternoon. My bare feet grew calluses, my hair turned brittle green, my shoulders got broad, my Lycra suits disintegrated. And then I left home. I’ve lived in this mountain town for a […]
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 […]
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What’s killing the Yukon’s salmon?
An ecological mystery in Alaska has scientists and fishermen baffled and alarmed.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
River of no return
Seattle’s Duwamish has been straightened, dredged and heavily polluted. Can a Superfund cleanup bring it back to life?
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Will our ‘dam nation’ free its rivers?
A new film explores a growing movement to remove dams that have outlived their usefulness.
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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 […]