The U.S. and Canada prepare to renegotiate the 50-year-old Columbia River Treaty.
Water
Posted inArticles
Colorado’s river economy worth $9 billion
Outdoor recreation businesses say state water plan must do more to protect rivers.
Posted inArticles
More pesticides are permeating urban streams
But rural rivers are getting cleaner, a new study says.
Posted inArticles
Diversion plans for the Gila would have major impact, critics say
Small and medium-sized flows could be most affected.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
A dam difficult job
California’s drought through the eyes of a water manager.
Posted inArticles
Shaken and stirred in California’s recent earthquake
How seismic events can make drought impacts worse.
Posted inArticles
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 inGoat
How much money is a healthy ecosystem worth?
For the 95,000 or so people in and around Bellingham, Washington, the water bill they pay every other month includes a charge called the “watershed acquisition fee.” It’s currently $24.81 per bill, and the city uses this money to strategically purchase land to protect Lake Whatcom and its watershed—the source of the city’s water supply. […]
Posted inGoat
Summer rains in a drought-plagued state
How much does a monsoon season relieve drought?
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How much water goes into your food?
Growing everyday food items requires a surprising amount of water.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The prickly pear as California crop
Can an overlooked succulent help salvage toxic soils?
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 inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Fracking without fresh water
A Texas oil company looks for other ways to supply its water needs.
Posted inGoat
Glacier tourists to get a dose of climate education in Alaska
What a melting glacier can teach cruise ship passengers.
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
Was the fatal thunderstorm in California a climate phenomenon?
The weather of Venice Beach, California, where I live, is for the most part stable, and almost always predictable. No sudden squalls appear out of the southwest to chase skateboarders off their concrete ramps; never do we hear the civil-defense sirens warning of an approaching tornado. Living here, swimming and surfing at the beach a […]
Posted inGoat
Colorado water users gird for first statewide plan
Last year, 14 years into a regional drought, forecasts predicted that as many as 2.5 million Coloradans could be without sufficient water supplies by 2050. And yet the state still had no official plan to deal with its looming water crisis. In response to the troubling situation, Governor Hickenlooper issued an executive order: Colorado needed […]