Environmental News For The Week Ending 24 April 2019 econintersect.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from econintersect.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Interstate water disputes are as American as apple pie. States often think a neighboring state is using more than its fair share from a river, lake or aquifer that crosses borders.
Climate stresses are raising the stakes. Rising temperatures require farmers to use more water to grow the same amount of crops. Prolonged and severe droughts decrease available supplies. Wildfires are burning hotter and lasting longer. Fires bake the soil, reducing forests’ ability to hold water, increasing evaporation from barren land and compromising water supplies.
States should put at least as much effort into reducing water use as they do into litigation, because there are no guaranteed winners in water lawsuits.
2:00PM Water Cooler 4/21/2021 | naked capitalism nakedcapitalism.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nakedcapitalism.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Luke Runyon / KUNC
Originally published on April 16, 2021 3:35 pm
The Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs are likely to drop to historically low levels later this year, prompting mandatory conservation by some of the river’s heaviest users.
The latest Bureau of Reclamation reservoir projections, which take into account river flows in a given year, show a likelihood that Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada stateline will dip below the critical threshold of 1,075 feet in elevation in May and remain below that level for the foreseeable future.
A first-ever official shortage declaration from the Department of the Interior is almost certain later this year. According to the terms of a 2007 agreement, a shortage is declared by the Interior Secretary after consulting with water users in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. An August report is used to forecast when Lake Mead will be below 1,075 feet at the start of a calendar year.
Interstate Water Wars are Heating Up Along with the Climate earthisland.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from earthisland.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.