Southern Californians are currently experiencing a phenomenon they call June Gloom, when the humid, hazy air that usually hangs out just above the ocean blows inland and lingers, trapped by a warm layer above it. Oh, what the good people of New Mexico would have given in recent years for that brand of gloom. Instead, […]
Water
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The Latest: After a long battle, agreement for the Klamath
BackstoryTo protect endangered fish during 2001’s drought, federal officials shut off irrigation water in Oregon and California’s Klamath Basin, costing agriculture millions. The next year, farmers got their water – along with a massive salmon die-off that infuriated Klamath tribes. Tribal members and farmers remained at odds until 2004, when federal rulings prompted dam-owner PacifiCorp […]
Posted inGoat
Congress considers largest dam removal in U.S. history
This week, Congress is looking at a bill that even a few years ago seemed wildly, laughably improbable: an authorization to spend $250 million to implement a reworked version of the historic 2010 Klamath River agreements. The Senate bill is a mere 42 words long, but it seeks nothing less than to seal the fate […]
Posted inWotr
A protected river is still vulnerable to oil spills
In every stage of life, I’ve lived near railroad tracks. The haunting sounds of night trains with their short-blast-long-howl whistles and steady rumble have always been grounding and comforting to me. I used to love watching gritty, graffiti-clad train cars pushing forward to get an important job done somewhere to my east or west. The […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Excerpt from “The Ogallala Road”
An author returns to a family farm in Kansas to explore drought and depletion.
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Rain watch
What to expect from the likely El Niño summer across the West.
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Peak water
Bigger reservoirs and deeper wells won’t end California’s water crisis
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Drought watch
Drought is dehydrating much of the West, with several states in their third or fourth consecutive year. Southern Oregon, California, southern Utah and western Nevada already have extremely low streamflows and will likely get drier in coming months. Nevada and New Mexico reservoirs were at less than a quarter of their normal levels for early […]
Posted inGoat
Will big snowpack bring floods to Colorado Front Range?
Planners gird for more woes after major snows.
Posted inWotr
The Colorado River’s reunion with its usually bone-dry Delta
They kissed. Like two long-lost lovers who had been cruelly kept apart for 20 years, the Colorado River and the Sea of Cortez finally embraced. The historic reunion occurred this May as the United States and Mexico worked together to restore the Colorado River Delta. The “pulse flow” of water raced down from Lake Mead, […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
A long-submerged town becomes visible
Water recedes under drought conditions and reveals a lost California community.
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
How we export our water to Asia
A precious resource leaves the West in the form of alfalfa hay.
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 inGoat
Restore fish to Oregon’s Sandy River Basin: Just add trees
On the evening of January 16, 2011, a soaking-wet Sunday in northwest Oregon, the Sandy River, engorged by snowmelt and hurricane-level rainfall, leapt its banks. The river tore through neighborhoods on the slopes of Mount Hood, devoured cars and trucks, and left hundreds without power or phone service. Lolo Pass Road was transformed into the […]
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
Dispatch from Mexico: a historic pulse of water to restore the delta
Just south of the Mexican border town of Los Algodones, last Thursday dawned with a whipping breeze. Maintenance workers hustled to sweep, shovel dust and repaint the yellow speed bumps in the road alongside Mexico’s main Colorado River dam, named for the patriot José María Morelos, who was executed by Spain in 1815 for his […]
Posted inArticles
The future of the Sacramento Delta hangs in the balance
But few Californians seem to grasp what is at stake.
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 […]