• WATER SECURITYAs the Rio Grande Runs Dry, South Texas Cities Look to Alternatives for Water

    By Berenice Garcia

    Many of the solutions are costly, putting them out of reach for small towns. But the region’s most populous cities are getting innovative.

  • WATER SECURITYAlbuquerque Made Itself Drought-Proof. Then Its Dam Started Leaking.

    By Jake Bittle

    El Vado is an odd dam: It’s one of only four in the United States that uses a steel faceplate to hold back water, rather than a mass of rock or concrete. The dam, which is located on a tributary of the Rio Grande, has been collecting irrigation water for farmers for close to a century, but decades of studies have shown that water is seeping through the faceplate and undermining the dam’s foundations. Cities across the West rely on fragile water sources — and aging infrastructure.

  • WATER SECURITYResearchers Spot Potential Hazard with Private Well Water Treatment

    While arsenic is a naturally occurring element, it is a known human carcinogen and dangerous to human health. Systems designed to treat arsenic in private well water may be malfunctioning and endangering the health of people who count on them to keep their water safe.

  • WATER SECURITYBreaching Snake River Dams Could Drop Reservoirs, Groundwater Levels by 100 Feet

    By Tim Clouser, The Center Square

    As the Biden administration attempts to gain support for breaching hydroelectric dams in Washington, state and federal agencies are preparing for a study on the potential implications. 

  • WATER SECURITYU.S. Supreme Court Blocks the Texas’s Rio Grande Water Deal with New Mexico

    By Alejandra Martinez and Berenice Garcia

    Water law experts say the Supreme Court’s recent decision will set a precedent for the federal government to intervene in water conflicts between states moving forward.

  • WATER SECURITY‘Time for a Reckoning.’ Kansas Farmers Brace for Water Cuts to Save Ogallala Aquifer.

    By Kevin Hardy and Allison Kite

    in this region of Kansas where water is everything, they’ll have to overcome entrenched attitudes and practices that led to decades of overpumping. After decades of local inaction, Kansas lawmakers are pushing for big changes in irrigation.

  • WATER SECURITYAs Reservoirs Go Dry, Mexico City and Bogotá Are Staring Down ‘Day Zero’

    By Jake Bittle

    In Mexico City and Bogotá, reservoir levels are falling fast, and the city governments have implemented rotating water shutoffs as residents are watching their taps go dry for hours a day. Droughts in the region have grown more intense thanks to warmer winter temperatures and long-term aridification fueled by climate change. In South Africa in 2018, Cape Town beat a climate-driven water crisis, and the way it did it holds lessons for cities grappling with an El Niño-fueled drought.

  • WATER SECURITY‘Grey Infrastructure’ Can’t Meet Future Water Storage Needs

    By Rob Jordan

    A new study maps how energy and food systems depend on stored water to generate hydropower and feed irrigation. Dams and reservoirs won’t be able to meet the demand in coming decades.

  • WATER SECURITYPeak Water: Do We Have Enough Groundwater to Meet Future Need?

    By Brendan Bane

    Though vast stores of groundwater persist below Earth’s surface, the climbing cost of accessing it is on track to significantly reshape the geography of trade and drive users toward alternative water sources.

  • WATER SECURITYAddressing the Colorado River Crisis

    Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the Southwest was top of mind for participants and attendees at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference.

  • WATER SECURITYTexas Delegation Urges Congress to Withhold Aid to Mexico Over Water Treaty Dispute

    By Matthew Choi

    A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers are demanding appropriators withhold funds for the country until Mexico lives up to its end of a 1944 water treaty that requires it to send 1.75 million acre-feet to the U.S. every five years.

  • WATER SECURITYFor the Colorado River and Beyond, a New Market Could Save the Day

    By Krysten Crawford

    The Colorado River, “the lifeblood of the West,” is in trouble. Decades of overuse and drought have sharply reduced its water supply, threatening an ecosystem that supports 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. Stanford economist Paul Milgrom won a Nobel Prize in part for his role in enabling today’s mobile world. Now he’s tackling a different 21st century challenge: water scarcity.

  • WATER SECURITYIn a First, California Cracks Down on Farms Guzzling Groundwater

    By Jake Bittle

    In much of the United States, groundwater extraction is unregulated and unlimited. This lack of regulation has allowed farmers nationwide to empty aquifers of trillions of gallons of water for irrigation and livestock. In many places, such as California’s Central Valley, the results have been devastating. California has just imposed a first-of-its-kind mandatory fee on water pumping by farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin, one of the state’s largest farming areas.

  • WATER SECURITYProblems with Glen Canyon Dam Could Jeopardize Water Flowing to Western States

    By Kyle Dunphey

    Without upgrades to the Glen Canyon dam’s infrastructure, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s ability to get water downstream to the lower Colorado River basin as required by the Colorado River Compact could be in jeopardy. This may be, in the words of concerned groups, “the most urgent water problem” for the Colorado River and the 40 million people who rely on it.

  • WATER SECURITYWhere Did All the Water Go? New Study Explores Water Use in the Colorado River Basin.

    By Kyle Dunphey

    The final 100 miles of the Colorado River is a shell of its former self — nearly 10 miles wide at the turn of the century, farmers had more water than they knew what to do with. Now, a weave of concrete canals brings water to sprawling industrial farms situated in the Mexicali Valley, with much of the natural riverbed dry and the wildlife sparse. Where did all the water go?