Amid Dire Colorado River Outlook, States Plan to Tap Their Lake Mead Savings Accounts

A complex and arcane water banking program in the lower Colorado River basin, adopted in 2007 and later amended, was designed to incentivize water conservation, prevent waste, and boost storage in a waning Lake Mead.

The program has already proved its worth, lifting Lake Mead dozens of feet higher than it otherwise would have been and nurturing collaboration among states that will need to work together to surmount daunting challenges of water availability. In the next two years, the program will be tested in another way, becoming a small but important source of water for Arizona and California even as the lake continues to fall to levels that haven’t been witnessed in several generations.

HotSpots H2O: When War Destroys Water Systems, Children Suffer the Most

When water and sanitation networks are destroyed during armed conflict, children are harmed the most, according to a UN agency report. 

UNICEF’s latest Water Under Fire report, released last Monday, details both the short-term and long-term effects of war and the loss of infrastructure on this generation’s children, a list of ills that includes displacement and risk of disease. The report also calls on international actors to better enforce wartime guidelines and law, and on warring parties to establish unobstructed humanitarian access during conflict. 

Above all, the report demands an end to the destruction of water systems that innocent civilians depend on.

In Colorado River Basin, Groundwater Is Disappearing Much Faster than Lake Mead

Satellite data show that between 2004 and 2013, as a powerful drought held fast and river flows plummeted, the majority of the freshwater losses in the Basin — nearly 80 percent — came from water pumped out of aquifers.

The decrease in groundwater reserves was a volume of water equivalent to one and a half times the amount held in a full Lake Mead, according to a 2014 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Donate to Circle of Blue | Forward to a Friend | More Water News at Circle of Blue

Circle of Blue | 800 Cottageview Drive, Suite 1042 | Traverse City, MI 49684 | US +1.231.941-1355