For workers with the Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation,
creating new fish habitat as part of the restoration of Prairie
Creek in their ancestral territory is more than just a job. …
This is the second year the construction corporation and the
Yurok Fisheries Department have been working on restoring the
ecological integrity of Prairie Creek. The five-year $25
million restoration project includes redirecting the creek away
from U.S. Highway 101 and getting as close as possible to
recreating its original condition after being used as a lumber
mill for decades.
The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is calling on Santa Clara
County to stop a project they say will destroy hundreds of
acres of sacred land. A private company wants to build a sand
and gravel mining plant there and will need the county’s
approval to do it. It’s not just the tribe that’s against
this project. The tribe has the support of San Jose Mayor
Sam Liccardo, the ACLU and environmental groups like Green
Foothills. They all say the risks far outweigh the benefits and
once the damage is done, there’s no turning back. …
[E]nvironmentalists also say digging pits hundreds of feet into
the soil will have devastating effects on the groundwater table
and interrupt the migration patterns of animals that live
there.
On Tuesday evening, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed
Yurok Tribe’s Forestry Department Director Dawn Blake to the
State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. … Dawn is
an enrolled Hoopa Tribal member and Yurok descendant with a
Master of Science degree in natural resources. … Ranging from
wildlife research to prescribed burning, Dawn is well-versed in
all aspects of modern forest management. As the Yurok Forestry
Director, she manages more than 70,000 acres of Yurok-owned
forest for the benefit of current and future generations of
Yurok people. She oversees the Tribe’s 15,000-acre Old-Growth
Forest and Salmon Sanctuary on Blue Creek, a critically
important tributary of the Klamath River.
Tribal scientists had hoped that the incoming fall run of adult
chinook salmon would escape the devastating effects of August’s
debris slide on the Klamath River, which killed tens of
thousands of fish. But they were disappointed. The salmon,
which were gathering at the estuary at the time of the debris
slide, migrated upstream early to spawn and found themselves
trapped in toxic waters. … What the river really needs,
according to Karuk Tribal Fisheries Field Supervisor Kenneth
Brink, is a good springtime flow to flush out the debris. But
spring, of course, isn’t coming anytime soon. There is water
behind Iron Gate, the Klamath’s lowermost dam, but toxic algal
blooms have made it hazardous to salmon, too.
Colorado and three other Upper Colorado River Basin states
have, for the first time in history, embarked on a series of
formal meetings to find a way to negotiate jointly with some of
the largest owners of Colorado River water rights: tribal
communities. The states, which include New Mexico, Utah,
Wyoming and Colorado, began meeting with six tribes several
weeks ago, according to Rebecca Mitchell, director of the
Colorado Water Conservation Board who also represents Colorado
on the Upper Colorado River Basin Commission.
U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, both
Democrats, introduced legislation last Thursday to
formally recognize the Tule River Tribe’s reserved water
rights. Senate Bill 4870, which also quantifies the
amount of water from the south fork of the Tule River that
Tribe has rights to and provides up to $568 million in funding,
was referred to the Senate Committee on Indian
Affairs. The legislation would finalize a
multi-decade effort by the Tule River Tribe to provide clean
drinking water As California and the West continue to
experience a historic megadrought, the bill would help provide
water security to Tule River citizens “now and for generations
to come,” Padilla said in a statement today.
The compact — essentially an interstate treaty — set the rules
for apportioning the waters of the river. It was a crucial step
in construction of Hoover Dam, which could not have been built
without the states’ assent. The compact stands as a landmark in
the development of Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix and
other Western metropolises. But it is also a symbol of the
folly of unwarranted expectations. That’s because the
compact was built on a lie about the capacity of the Colorado
River to serve the interests of the Western states — a lie that
Westerners will be grappling with for decades to come.
-Written by Los Angeles Times columnist Michael
Hiltzik.
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
Starting this month, California’s tourism bureau is trying
something it’s never tried before: nudging travelers toward the
state’s tribal lands, many of which haven’t historically hosted
large numbers of sightseers, in hopes of benefiting from a
largely untapped resource of rich cultural history. A new
promotional campaign called “Visit Native California”
represents the bureau’s first effort to spotlight the cultural
heritage of some of the 109 federally recognized tribes here
and help them gain a foothold in the state’s immense tourism
market. It comes at a time when several tribes and Indigenous
communities are just beginning to build new tourism businesses.
Making good on a promise to replace the word “squaw” from
America’s landmarks and places, the U.S. Board on Geographic
Names has announced the renaming of at least 650 geographic
features. “Squaw,” which originated from the
Algonquian language, was once used to refer to a native woman,
but now is considered derogatory and racist by Native Americans
and others. … Of the 650 new name changes, 80
are in California, at least four are in Fresno County, and one
is in Tulare County. … Five Fresno county lakes and
streams have been changed including “Squaw Valley Basin” which
will now be known as “Yokuts Basin.”
Faced with deep cuts to the water supply, and angry that other
states are not doing their share, tribes and local governments
in Arizona are increasingly talking about backing off earlier
offers to give up some water. The Gila River Indian Community
said in August that it will begin storing
water underground “rather than contributing them to system
conservation programs for Lake Mead.” Officials in Phoenix,
Scottsdale, Tucson, Peoria and Glendale are considering
following suit, asking to get their full allotment of water
instead of financial compensation they might have received for
reducing their take from the system…. But a spokesperson
for the California Natural Resources Agency said the state has
long been working for years to conserve Colorado River water
and that it is continuing to do so.
The Bureau of Reclamation, in coordination with PacifiCorp,
will increase water releases from Link River Dam to the lower
Klamath River in support of the Yurok Tribe’s boat dance as
part of its World Renewal Ceremony on Sept. 11 near Weitchpec,
California. Water released at Link River Dam will increase from
700 cubic feet per second to approximately 1,500 cfs beginning
Sept. 8 with flows at Iron Gate Dam increasing from
approximately 1,000 up to 2,100 cfs on Sept. 9. These increased
flows will take about 48 hours from Iron Gate Dam to reach the
ceremony site downriver. Releases at Iron Gate Dam will begin
gradually decreasing on Sept. 10 with flows throughout the
Klamath River returning to previous levels by Sept. 16.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the San Luis Rey
Indian Water Authority celebrate the signing of a funding
agreement that provides $15 million in direct financial
assistance to Tribal communities. As California experiences a
third consecutive year of drought – and plans for the
possibility of a fourth dry year to come – many communities
face challenges in accessing clean, safe drinking water. This
funding will help advance water infrastructure projects that
will improve water for families, enhance water supply
reliability, and upgrade existing water infrastructure on
Tribal lands.
A few times a year, fed by snowmelt and monsoon storms, the
normally dry Grand Falls swells into a raging wall of muddy
water. The 180-foot seasonal waterfall has become something of
a destination for road trippers, van lifers, and influencers in
recent years. But for generations, Grand Falls and the Little
Colorado River that feeds it have watered livestock, supported
medicinal plants, and sustained Native peoples. Grand Falls,
called “Adahiilíní” in the Diné (Navajo) language, is located
on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. For Herman Cody and his niece
Radmilla Cody, it is the place they call home. “We’re all a big
family living along that river,” Herman said.
An irrigation district has urged the Ninth Circuit to overturn
a decision that it couldn’t step into the Yurok Tribe’s suit
over the U.S. government’s refusal to release water for a river
ceremony.
Every spring and fall, Chinook salmon make their way from the
Pacific Ocean into the Klamath River, in Northern California.
Historically, their black-speckled bodies would swim upstream,
around the Cascade and Klamath mountain range and into the
Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, before spawning in its major
tributaries. Since time immemorial, local tribes—the
Klamath, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, and Yurok—fished these waters.
The Chinook formed a vital part of the tribes’
culture, economy and food security. Since the early 20th
century, Chinook salmon numbers in the Klamath River—once
the third-largest salmon-producing river in the
United States—have fallen by more than 90 percent,
according to federal statistics.
The Yurok and Karuk tribes have blown the whistle on ranchers
in Northern California who are defying state orders to curtail
water usage by diverting flow from the Shasta River, imperiling
already endangered salmon of the Klamath tributaries. The
tribes say the diversion led to a 37% decrease in Shasta River
flows, from 58 cubic feet per second to 36 in two hours on Aug.
17. The Shasta River Water Association’s diversion came days
after a fire-induced mudslide killed tens of thousands of fish
in a 60-mile reach of the Klamath River.
Amid historic drought in the Colorado River Basin, the Gila
River Indian Community is taking a drastic step to protect
their own water resources. In a statement last week, Governor
Stephen Roe Lewis announced the tribe—located just south of
Phoenix—would stop voluntarily contributing water to an
important state reservoir. “We cannot continue to put the
interests of all others above our own when no other parties
seem committed to the common goal of a cooperative basin-wide
agreement,” the statement reads.
During the summer, CapRadio’s Insight host Vicki Gonzalez found
herself traveling up Highway 101 through the Lost Coast and up
into Del Norte County — the heart of California’s redwood
forests. Parts of Del Norte and Humboldt County make up the
home of the Yurok tribe — the largest in the state with land
that extends up the coastline along the longest wild and scenic
river in California, the Klamath River. The tribe is
undergoing an economic revival and redevelopment in restoring
priceless cultural traditions that are at a risk of being lost.
One of the traditions being revitalized is hand-carved canoes
made from redwood trees.
Navajo Nation residents in pickup trucks rumbled along dusty
dirt roads in the ethereal painted desert of Monument Valley in
August to a well where they fill up water tanks, sometimes
multiple times a day. The well spigot in the dirt parking lot
next to a shuttered post office in Goulding, Utah, is just up
the road from modern lodges that house tourists visiting the
valley, one of the most iconic settings for Western movies.
… The Navajo, or Diné, have heard for decades the
promise of running water in their homes. Many have yet to see
it, and they don’t expect it to arrive any time soon.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time was
in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium and
its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in Clear
Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of Lake
County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental director
for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic cyanobacteria.
Just 290 spring Chinook migrated up the Klamath River this
year. While significantly below the longterm average, it was
the highest number since 2016, and a sign the population is
somewhat bouncing back after only 95 migrated upriver in 2021.
Shortly after those numbers were finalized, torrential rains in
the McKinney Fire area washed a slurry of ash, mud and debris
into the river. … But, representatives of the Karuk Tribe say
it appears the species dodged a bullet. When debris flowed into
the Klamath River, adult Chinook had already completed their
migration to tributaries nearby.
Nearly 300 wild spring Chinook salmon made the 85-mile trip to
cool mountain waters for spawning this year, up from a mere 90
last year. While still far below, according to the Karuk Tribe
and Salmon River Restoration Council, the numbers were at least
moving in a positive direction. But soon after the count was
complete, disaster struck in the form of flash floods that sent
torrents of “silt, wood and other debris” into the South Fork
of the Salmon River in early August, “dropping the dissolved
oxygen in the water to dangerous levels, and threatening all
species of fish in the river,” a news release from the tribe
and council states.
Native people have lived in the Southwestern U.S. for millennia
and have traditional ways to manage water that have worked for
them. When settlers arrived, they upended that system. Now,
tribes in the Colorado River Basin are trying to elevate
indigneous approaches to water management. University of
Arizona doctoral candidate Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan is finishing
a dissertation on the history of land and water in the San
Xavier District, part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, just south
of Tucson. Some of her research has taken her to the Santa Cruz
River. On a quiet stretch tall trees, made archways and
provided shade from the sun.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
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
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
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.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
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
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
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
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
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
The American River, with headwaters
in the Tahoe and Eldorado national forests of the Sierra Nevada,
is the birthplace of the California Gold Rush. It currently
serves as a major water supply, recreational destination and
habitat for hundreds of species. The geologically diverse
North, Middle and South forks comprise the American
River or the Río de los Americanos, as it was called during
California’s Mexican rule.
This 109-page publication details the importance of protecting
source water – surface water and groundwater – on reservations
from pollution and includes a step-by-step work plan for tribes
interested in developing a protection plan for their drinking
water. The workbook is designed to serve as a template for such
programs, with forms and tables for photocopying. It also offers
a simplified approach for assessment and protection that focuses
on identifying and managing immediate contamination threats.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 30-minute DVD explains the importance of developing a source
water assessment program (SWAP) for tribal lands and by profiling
three tribes that have created SWAPs. Funded by a grant from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the video complements the
Foundation’s 109-page workbook, Protecting Drinking Water: A
Workbook for Tribes, which includes a step-by-step work plan for
Tribes interested in developing a protection plan for their
drinking water.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
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
Water Rights Law, recognized as the most thorough explanation of
California water rights law available to non-lawyers, traces the
authority for water flowing in a stream or reservoir, from a
faucet or into an irrigation ditch through the complex web of
California water rights.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
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.
The Coachella Valley in Southern California’s Inland Empire is
one of several valleys throughout the state with a water district
established to support agriculture.
Like the others, the Coachella Valley Water District in Riverside
County delivers water to arid agricultural lands and constructs,
operates and maintains a regional agricultural drainage system.
These systems collect drainage water from individual farm drain
outlets and convey the water to a point of reuse, disposal or
dilution.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
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.
