 | | Downstream of Lake Mead, the Colorado River flows into Lake Havasu, a reservoir on the California-Arizona border. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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| Use of Colorado River water in the three states of the river’s lower basin fell to a 33-year low in 2019, amid growing awareness of the precarity of the region’s water supply in a drying and warming climate.
Arizona, California, and Nevada combined to consume just over 6.5 million acre-feet last year, according to an annual audit from the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees the lower basin. That is about 1 million acre-feet less than the three states are entitled to use under a legal compact that divides the Colorado River’s waters.
The last time water consumption from the river was that low was in 1986, the year after an enormous canal in Arizona opened that allowed the state to lay claim to its full Colorado River entitlement. |
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The volume of Covid-19 news can be overwhelming. We've started a live blog, updated throughout the day, to help you sort through it. It's a library for how water, sanitation, and hygiene connect to the pandemic, both in the US and globally.
Featured Covid-19 + water coverage from this week include: |
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Aid operations to offset the deprivations of war are at risk of collapse in Yemen as funding falters, the United Nations warned last week.
At a June 2 conference, international donors pledged $1.35 billion, but the UN warned that the commitments are not enough to prevent the shuttering of several aid services.
The civil war in Yemen has raged for five years, and has left around 24 million citizens reliant on some degree of aid. Many Yemenis suffer from chronic shortages of food, water, and other basic needs. Several illnesses, including cholera and diarrhea, are common in the country. There is also fear that Covid-19, which has infected 728 Yemenis and killed 164 so far, will begin to spread rapidly. With limited testing, the true extent of the disease’s penetration into the country is unknown. |
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What's Up With Water - June 15, 2020
For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud.
This week's episode features coverage on Australia,where the government of New South Wales is postponing plans to expand a desalination plant that supplies water to Sydney.
For news in the United States, a study says that confidence in tap water has critical health and economic implications.
Additional U.S. coverage explores how a major federal trial that is underway could end water fluoridation in the United States.
Finally, this week's featured Circle of Blue story reports on how efforts to protect salmon in the Pacific Northwest could affect the region’s dams. You can listen to the latest edition of What's Up With Water, as well as all past editions, by downloading the podcasts on iTunes, following Circle of Blue on Spotify, following on iHeart Radio, and subscribing on SoundCloud. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | Water from the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California in this photo taken on May 23, 2014. The short-term flush of water, which took place over eight weeks, had lasting ecological and social effects. Photo courtesy of Francisco Zamora/Sonoran Institute |
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| On March 23, 2014, the gates were opened wide at Morelos Dam on the U.S.-Mexico border near Yuma, Arizona. For the next eight weeks, water pitched into the dry bed of the Colorado River, wetting its delta like the spring floods that coursed through braided channels before the river was dammed.
Authorities called it a pulse flow. River communities in Mexico, some with teenagers who had never seen water between the banks, called it a blessing. |
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