Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Even for the state’s water wizards, it can be tough to get a handle on how California’s natural and extremely unnatural water systems fit together. But a series of maps published by the nonprofit Water Education Foundation helps make a normally arcane world accessible […]
Water
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
The Royal Squeeze
For nearly a century, the Imperial Valley’s wastewater has kept the Salton Sea alive. Now, the push to make California more watertight may threaten this wildlife haven – and Imperial’s agricultural economy.
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Drought unearths a water dinosaur
Colorado’s Front Range reaches for a share of the Colorado River
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
River’s end
The numbers are impressive: 25 million people depend on the Colorado River, which falls 14,000 feet in its 1,700-mile journey, and is home to 20 power plants, 10 major dams and 80 diversion channels. Over the past year, the humanities councils of seven Western states have worked together on Moving Waters: The Colorado River and […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
EPA puts cleanup in local hands
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – It’s hard to imagine that an issue as sprawling and contentious as the effort to clean up a century of mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin could fit into a glass of water (HCN, 3/4/02: EPA wants to supersize Idaho Superfund site). But that’s the image that came walking […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Mi rio, mi agua
TEXAS Tension over Rio Grande water – or the lack of it – is rising to an all-time high. Under the terms of a 1944 treaty, Mexico owes the U.S. almost 1.5 million acre-feet (456 billion gallons) of water – a debt the country amassed over the last decade of drought. The shortage is leaving […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
The sod squad wants to soak you
Look out, you water scofflaws – it’s “water-efficiency month,” and enforcement agencies across the West will not look lightly upon water-wasting infractions. Water cops are tossing out tickets that range from a slap on the wrist (and a free how-to-conserve-water brochure) for leaky faucets, to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Salty solution for Bay wildlife
CALIFORNIA If all goes according to plan, the San Francisco Bay will be home to the nation’s second-largest coastal wetland restoration project – good news in a state that has lost 90 percent of its coastal wetlands to development. Agricultural giant Cargill Corporation announced that it will sell almost 12,300 acres of salt ponds to […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Southwest drought desiccates fish before farmers
Agencies let Rio Grande and Pecos rivers dry up despite minimum-flow agreements
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Re-opening Glen Canyon’s floodgates
Six years after an experimental flood, enviros want more
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
A sonnet to a problem river
The Pecos River begins its 900-mile run high in the Sangre de Cristo Range of the Colorado and Northern New Mexico Rocky Mountains, and descends through New Mexico’s lowlands “of Western myth and solid American values,” as Emlen Hall writes in High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River. Finally, the author […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Spilling salt into rivers
COLORADO The Southern Ute tribe has turned a spotlight on a plan to dump water from coalbed-methane wells into a southern Colorado river. Tribal leaders recently scolded state officials for failing to consult with them before issuing a permit that will allow two coalbed-methane wells to spill water into the Florida River. Usually, the poor […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Dredging up debate
OREGON Keeping the Port of Portland competitive means dredging the Columbia River so bigger ships can float through, at least according to Port officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who want to deepen the river from 40 to 43 feet. They say the extra depth would save the Port from sinking into obscurity, […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Researchers scramble to understand one of the West’s most neglected ecosystems
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Suburbanites compete for the lake’s freshwater
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Great Salt Lake’s fate largely turns on three rivers that flow out of the Wasatch and Uinta mountains. But as population booms along the Wasatch Front and water-use rates remain among the highest in the nation, development pressure is mounting on the Bear, Weber […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Can the tide turn for Walker Lake?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Walla Walla Basin sidesteps a water war.” SCHURZ, Nev. – Robert Quintero, the chairman of the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council, apprehensively surveys the sun-baked view of his tribe’s 360,000-acre reservation near the Nevada-California […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Water threat inspires a rare alliance
Proposed power plants could draw down aWashington/Idaho aquifer
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Drought pinches Colorado River reservoirs
California’s ‘surplus’ water not in jeopardy, yet
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
In California, no water project is too big
In a state like California, where half the population relies on water that has been pumped hundreds of miles across deserts or thousands of feet over mountains, you might think it difficult to devise a plan nutty enough to draw jeers. Yet an Alaska company has managed to do just that. At first blush, I […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
A dusty lake is plumbed halfway back to life
The dry bed of Owens Lake has a primal, wind-wracked sort of gestalt. With the Sierra crest towering almost 11,000 feet to the west and the blazing eye of the sun high overhead, it’s easy to believe you’re standing on the salt-rimmed edge of the sky. Owens Lake hasn’t actually been a lake for three-quarters […]