As adjacent Western states, California and Nevada share similar
issues related to drought and limited water resources. Both
states are participants in the 1922 Colorado River Compact and
the 2003 and 2007 Quantification Settlement Agreements to
allocate Colorado River deliveries. Also, about two-thirds of
Lake Tahoe lies in California and one-third in Nevada, and the
two states have formed a compact to work together on
environmental goals for the lake.
The Walker Lake Working Group, grassroots, non-profit
organization working to restore Walker Lake, invites you to
attend a Rehydration Celebration on Saturday, September 23. The
event takes place at Walker lake’s Monument Beach, 12 miles
north of Hawthorne, Nevada. This free event runs from 10 a.m.
to 2 p.m. There is cause for celebration. With record snowpack
and runoff in the Walker Basin, Walker Lake has risen a
whopping 15 feet. Historically, upstream agricultural
diversions in Nevada and California dropped the lake 180
vertical feet and placed it on the brink of ecological
collapse.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have
created a searchable atlas that compiles regional research and
efforts to deal with water scarcity and drought. The map,
called the Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas, was developed by
the agency’s Southwest and California Climate Hubs and so far
contains 183 case studies from Arizona, California, New Mexico,
Nevada and Utah. … The map offers a range of case studies,
many of them related to agricultural and ranching practices,
crop choice, and irrigation methods. Silber-Coats hopes it can
be a resource for agricultural professionals and advisers, like
cooperative extension workers.
Some states in the arid West are looking to invest more money
in water conservation. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico
have agreed to re-up a water conservation program designed to
reduce strain on the Colorado River. Those states, which
represent the river’s Upper Basin, will use money from the
Inflation Reduction Act to pay farmers and ranchers to use less
water. The four states are re-implementing the program amid
talks with California, Arizona, Nevada and the federal
government to come up with more permanent water reductions by
2026.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has banned evaporative
cooling in new commercial buildings because the systems are one
of largest consumers of water in Clark County. The ban went
into effect this month but does not apply to businesses that
applied for building permits before then. … Evaporative
cooling is the second-largest consumptive use of water in
Southern Nevada, behind outdoor irrigation. It uses about 10
percent of the region’s annual allotment of water from the
drought-stricken Colorado River. Conserving water is
paramount in Nevada as officials continue to address the
challenges of a hotter, drier climate and overuse of the river.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA) today [9/15] announced the immediate
availability of $4.575 million in “quick release” Emergency
Relief funds for use by the National Park Service, the Forest
Service, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The funds will
offset costs of repair work needed for roads, trails,
parking areas, and other infrastructure as a result of flood
damage caused by Tropical Storm Hilary in Death Valley National
Park and other federal lands in California and Nevada last
month.
Burning Man is a spectacle every year. But this year’s
event garnered international attention when nearly 70,000
attendees were trapped in the desert following a storm that
created exceptionally muddy conditions, rendering travel on the
Black Rock Playa — the ancient lakebed where the event is held
— virtually impossible. … But Burning Man creates an
unnatural situation on the playa, especially during periods of
rain. The normal cycle — rainfall, standing water and
evaporation and infiltration — was interrupted by thousands of
festival attendees walking, riding and driving across the
playa. … This year’s event likely caused changes that
will take a long time to restore, and it could change the way
the playa absorbs rain in the future.
By changing the climate, humans have doubled the magnitude of
drought’s impact on the availability of vegetation for
herbivores, including livestock, to eat in the greater Four
Corners region, according to a study published this summer in
the journal Earth’s Future. This is because increasing air
temperatures and increasing levels of evaporative demand – or
more water being soaked up into the atmosphere – stresses the
grasses and shrubs that livestock and many other herbivores
rely upon. Emily Williams, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at
the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of
California Merced, was the lead author of the study. At the
time, she was a doctoral student at the University of
California Santa Barbara.
Cities and economic development organizations could start
saying no to incoming businesses seeking tax abatements and
grants if they consume too much water and won’t bring enough
economic benefits to Southern Nevada. The Southern Nevada Water
Authority is nearly finished developing its new “water
investment tool,” which ranks businesses on a scale from one to
five based on how much water they would annually consume. The
Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Las
Vegas Global Economic Alliance partnered with the water
authority to develop the ranking system over the last year and
a half.
Nevada and the other Colorado River basin states are laying out
their goals for the future of the river that supplies water to
some 40 million Americans in the Southwest. States, cities,
farmers, tribes, environmental groups and more submitted
comments this month to the Bureau of Reclamation as part of the
lengthy process for rewriting the rules that govern how the
river and its major dams and reservoirs will be managed in the
coming decades. The ideas run the gamut: from California
farmers with the oldest and most senior rights calling for the
new rules to follow the longstanding priority system, to calls
for the federal government to evaluate retrofitting — or even
decommissioning — Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell in order to
protect water levels at Lake Mead.
There’s a saying used in Washington to describe the woes of
conserving large sums of Colorado River water amid one of the
worst droughts in the history of the Western United States. It
was supposedly coined by the man who oversees Nevada’s largest
water agency. “Here’s the fundamental problem: We have a
19th-century law and 20th-century infrastructure in a
21st-century climate,” says John Entsminger, the general
manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority. It’s a phrase
he and others began to use throughout negotiations between the
seven states dependent on the Colorado River for its water
before they reached a tentative deal in May to conserve roughly
3 million acre-feet of water through 2026.
Population growth and climate change are stretching America’s
water supplies to the limit, and tapping new sources is
becoming more difficult each year—in some cases, even
impossible. New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Colorado are
facing the nation’s most significant strains on water supplies.
But across the entire American Southwest, water stress has
become the norm. … Farmers use the vast majority of
water withdrawn from the Colorado River to irrigate
crops—and 70 percent of that is for crops like
alfalfa and hay used to feed cattle. The river also supplies
drinking water to 40 million people in the Southwest,
and in 2022, Lake Mead—which the Colorado feeds—shrank to
its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s.
On a cloudy day on a crop farm north of Reno, Nev., Zach
Cannady tilts his head toward the sky and smiles. That’s
because it’s starting to rain, which wasn’t in the forecast.
… Cannady owns Prema Farms, a stone’s throw into California,
tucked in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. It grows a
colorful mix of crops – carrots, kale, peppers, onions, melons
and more. And harvests have been strong recently thanks to wet
winters and more frequent rain. But Cannady, who has a wife and
two kids, knows that can change fast in farming.
A research effort tracking water scarcity around the world
shows California, Arizona and other Western states are
experiencing water stress at high levels similar to arid
countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The analysis by
researchers with the World Resources Institute found that all
seven states that rely on the Colorado River face high or
extremely high water stress. Arizona ranked first for the most
severe water stress in the country, followed by New Mexico and
Colorado, while California ranked fifth.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this 24×36
inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson River, and
its link to the Truckee River. The map includes Lahontan Dam and
Reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming areas in the basin.
Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and geography, the
Newlands Project, land and water use within the basin and
wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan Basin
Area Office.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and the country of Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch
map, which is suitable for framing, explains the river’s
apportionment, history and the need to adapt its management for
urban growth and expected climate change impacts.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Nevada Water provides an
overview of the history of water development and use in Nevada.
It includes sections on Nevada’s water rights laws, the history
of the Truckee and Carson rivers, water supplies for the Las
Vegas area, groundwater, water quality, environmental issues and
today’s water supply challenges.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This issue of Western Water examines the challenges facing state,
federal and tribal officials and other stakeholders as they work
to manage terminal lakes. It includes background information on
the formation of these lakes, and overviews of the water quality,
habitat and political issues surrounding these distinctive bodies
of water. Much of the information in this article originated at
the September 2004 StateManagement Issues at Terminal Water
Bodies/Closed Basins conference.
