Each year, nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon, most traveling to the South Rim where they spend as much time looking for a parking place as they do looking at the canyon. Only a few venture below the rim on a trail. Another 22,000 people a year see the canyon from the bottom […]
Water
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
A crisis brews on the Colorado
With water supplies dwindling, states getan order to share the pain
Posted inWotr
Here’s hoping the drought is not over
Since Christmas, an almost continuous stream of Pacific moisture has raced over Colorado and much of the West, dumping rain in the valleys and heavy snows in the mountains. The sun and crystalline blue skies I brag about to my non-Western friends and relatives have only made rare appearances in the narrow seams between storms. […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Californians put their money where their meter is
California reached a conservation milestone in September, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, signed a bill requiring all homes in the state to use water meters by 2025. Existing California law requires water meters on all houses built since 1992, but most utilities charge a flat rate, rather than using the meters to charge by […]
Posted inWotr
See a river through a child’s eyes
I live in Colorado near a river called the Cache La Poudre, French for powder cache. During the last school year, I was thrilled to take part in several field trips with my daughter’s fourth-grade class. Each time the children learned more and more about this local river. Twelve times during the school year we […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Dams will stand, salmon be damned
The Bush administration’s new salmon plan offers a whole new spin on the Endangered Species Act
Posted inWotr
The Hoopa’s fight for a river is a lesson for us all
The Hoopa Indians of Northern California are a tenacious people. In the mid-19th century, when the U.S. Army tried to drive them out of their villages along the Trinity River, the Hoopas waited them out, camping in the nearby hills until the soldiers gave up and left. One hundred years later the government started draining […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
A water-and-wilderness bill kicks up dust in Nevada
Critics say an economic development initiative could suck desert springs and rural counties dry
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Failure of leadership, not a lack of water, dooms the Klamath River
Unfortunately, it’s business as usual in the Klamath River watershed, where all the conditions are in place for yet another fish kill similar to the one that claimed at least 34,000 salmon in the fall of 2002 (HCN, 6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). It’s another dry year, with the same low river flows, and water […]
Posted inWotr
Another fish kill on the Klamath seems to be coming
Unfortunately, it’s business as usual in the Klamath watershed, where all the conditions are in place for yet another fish kill similar to the one that occurred in the fall of 2002. It’s another dry year, with the same low flows in the river that caused the deaths of at least 34,000 salmon two years […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
A Thirst for Growth
For decades, Sierra Vista, Arizona, has pumped groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. Now, to save the Southwest’s last free-flowing river, the city’s leaders must confront an age of limits.
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Death of the San Pedro: Not if, but when
Note: this is a sidebar to a main story about the political struggles over protecting the San Pedro River. New evidence has surfaced that pumping in the Sierra Vista area may already be reducing groundwater flow to the San Pedro River. Water levels in seven monitoring wells on U.S. Army property have dropped by roughly […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Truce holds on the Platte River
Environmentalists and farmers take a leap of faith for the sake of staying out of the courtroom
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
An antidote to despair
Chip Ward’s first book, Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West, was decidedly grim, detailing his fight to keep the deserts of Utah from becoming a dump for toxins ranging from radioactive waste to defunct biochemical weapons. His new book, Hope’s Horizon, gives us a brighter view of recent environmental battles, taking an […]
Posted inWotr
The return of the Colorado River — almost
As our rafts bounced through what was supposed to be the last rapid on the Colorado River before its transition to the slack water of Lake Powell, we were surprised to hear the rumble of whitewater downstream. The half-mile-long Imperial Rapid, submerged for three decades, had re-surfaced. The natural draining of the nation’s second largest […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Wanted: Leak-proof dumps
Until the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that Wyoming was so arid that landfills didn’t need liners to prevent leaks. As a result, at least 21 of the state’s currently operating and closed municipal landfills are now leaking dangerous chemicals, such as nitrates, chlorides, pesticides and dry-cleaning solvents, into groundwater. The number could be even higher; […]
Posted inWotr
Free advice for tourists traveling West
The West’s drought has made us so desperate for moisture, we go outside to sweat. Even sagebrush, a Western icon, is in danger. Experts estimate that 600,000 acres is dead or dying in Utah alone. But come West, Podnuh! Step up to that gas pump, pretend that nozzle is a Colt .45, and pump away […]
Posted inWotr
Lake Powell: When drought becomes opportunity
Drought is a rude reminder that in any given year the interior West is but a storm or two from that hydrological tipping point where farming, ranching and the presence of cities become not merely ill-advised but — impossible. The region is being reminded of this now in a big way: Five consecutive years of […]
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
As dams fall, a chance for redemption
I am sitting next to a 200-foot high concrete apparition. Matilija Dam, not far from the California coast, sits astride the narrow canyon of the Ventura River amid the velvet green foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. At the entrance to the dam site, razor wire conspicuously adorns the top of a fence, just above […]
Posted inWotr
The terrifying saga of the West’s last big dam
The war on terror has a new front in southwestern Colorado. Outside the fast-growing city of Durango, the government has allocated $2 million for terrorism security at the Animas-La Plata Dam construction site. How will that money specifically ward off al-Qaida operatives and increase homeland security? “If I tell you too much, I’d have to […]