An April decision by Montana’s Supreme Court legally established something that the scientific community has long agreed upon: that groundwater is connected to surface water. In 1993, Montana state legislators ordered a moratorium on new water-rights applications for surface water in the over-allocated Upper Missouri River Basin — along with all groundwater “immediately or directly […]
Water
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Saving water from the sky
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands should come with a warning: Read it only at home, with tools handy, because what’s inside inspires action. Tucson author Brad Lancaster explores strategies to “plant” rainwater where it falls. He should know: Lancaster harvests more than 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year, transforming his one-eighth acre of urban desert into […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
City makes desperate bid for watershed
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news article, “Citizens unite against gas field chaos.” “This is your first time, isn’t it?” whispered a kindly Bureau of Land Management matron to an apprehensive Greg Trainor at a recent oil and gas lease auction in Denver, Colo. Trainor, who manages the water supply for Grand […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Pipeline and dam dreams
A new dam for Utah’s urban Wasatch Front and a pipeline for the fast-growing city of St. George got a boost in February, when the state Legislature approved a bill directing about $8 million a year to “preconstruction” work on the projects. The money, from state sales and use tax, will fund environmental studies and […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Columbia River dams revived
Tribes get shut out of new plan touted as good for fish
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
U.S. Department of Energy elbows in on Clean Water Act
Feds challenge Montana’s efforts to establish pollution controls for coalbed methane
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles
Salvation for the Northwest’s endangered salmon will come through further cuts in fishing, according to a senior White House official. James Connaughton, head of the Council on Environmental Quality, announced at Portland’s Salmon 2100 conference in January that salmon recovery will have to come through curbing fishing, along with upgrades to outdated hatcheries, which may […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Big dams, big battles
Like it or not, dams define the West. This is the birthplace of big dams — Hoover, Glen Canyon, Grand Coulee — and to a large extent, these monuments have written the history of our cities and our agriculture. These days, Westerners talk more about taking down big dams than about building new ones. But […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies Fred W. Rabe 146 pages, softcover: $29.95 Aquatic Ecosystems, 2006. Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies features dozens of color photographs, maps and sketches. But it’s not a travel guide to the approximately 8,000 high-elevation lakes speckling the region; instead of trails, biologist Fred Rabe describes geology, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Colorado River states reach landmark agreement
In severe drought, farms could become cities’ life support systems
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Trouble in the Delta
A water peace effort in California falls apart at the worst possible moment
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
The end of an era on the Colorado Plateau
As the Mohave power plant closes its doors, two Arizona tribes wonder what’s next
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Gray water, green living
NAME Brian Moore AGE 50 KNOWN FOR Conserving water by watering his garden with a homemade backyard shower and simple “gray water” plumbing. HE SAYS “We think of the countryside as (the place to live) off the grid, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. I’d like to demonstrate that it is possible […]
Posted inWotr
Cruising down a river
There is something liberating about the wide open vistas of a great river, something that encourages a person to break through the normal restraints of civilized society and expand outward — sometimes in ambitious directions, but as often as not along eccentric lines in isolated regions. I witnessed this even before I got out on […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
A bullet for the bearer of bad news
Biologists support salmon protection, and Congress yanks their funding
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Flood insurance crimps Western waterways
Federal program fosters development, damages rivers and wetlands
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Glen Canyon Dam will stand
Glen Canyon Dam isn’t coming down. That’s the final word from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on calls to dismantle the dam, drain Lake Powell and release the waters of the Colorado (HCN, 12/22/03: Being green in the land of the saints). Under orders from Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the agency must develop a drought-management […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
‘Water bank’ drags river basin deeper into debt
‘Win-win’ water solution only worsens tension over scarce resource
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Contaminated water can’t stop California sprawl
Rocket fuel ingredient and other pollutants now commonplace in groundwater
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
Judge leaves Front Range cities mile-high and dry
For more than 20 years, a private company has wanted to move water from Colorado’s Western Slope to sprawling Front Range cities hundreds of miles to the east. Now, a judge has put a kink in those transmountain water diversion plans. In 1984, a state water court granted Natural Energy Resources Company conditional rights to […]