The interference of climate change with the planet’s water cycle is a well established fact. New analyses suggest that in many places, runoff responds more sensitively than previously assumed.

Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.

Many people are familiar with flash floods – torrents that develop quickly after heavy rainfall. But there’s also such a thing as a flash drought, and these sudden, extreme dry spells are becoming a big concern for farmers and water utilities.

In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.

With mountain snowpacks shrinking in the western U.S., new Berkeley Lab study analyzes when a low-to-no-snow future might arrive and implications for water management.

Many of the cities of the American southwest would not exist were it not for dams. Dams come with a cost, but removing them without offering alternatives is a folly, Edward Ring writes. If the proponents of dam removal would simultaneously support practical new infrastructure solutions, then rewilding America’s rivers could happen without impoverishing the farms and cities that depend on water,” Ring writes. “There is naïveté, and also nihilism, in fighting to remove the building blocks of civilization without facing the realities of energy and water economics.”

The megadrought gripping the western states is only part of the problem. Alternative sources of water are also imperiled, and the nation’s food along with it.

A mounting water supply crisis in scorching far-South Texas has left local governments pressed to respond. Two major cities, Brownsville and McAllen, rolled out watering restrictions in recent weeks, but leaders in the South Texas city of Laredo are reluctant to impose substantial restrictions on watering lawns even as water supplies near record lows.

Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate change are causing this crisis across the U.S. Southwest. To achieve a meaningful reduction in water use, states need to focus on the region’s biggest water user: agriculture.