Blog: The very bad math behind the Colorado River crisis
California and Arizona are currently fighting each other over water from the Colorado River. But this isn’t new – it’s actually been going on for over 100 years. … To some extent, the crisis can be blamed on climate change. … But that’s only part of the story: The United States has also been overusing the Colorado for more than a century thanks to a byzantine set of flawed laws and lawsuits known as “the law of the river.” This legal tangle not only has been over-allocating the river, it also has been driving conflict in the region, especially between the two biggest users, California and Arizona, both trying to secure as much water as they can.