Tag archives for colorado river
Once a Smelly Nuisance, Mexicali’s Wastewater Now Brings Life to the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 9, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. If there is one place that transforms wastewater from trouble-maker to life-saver it’s the site of Las Arenitas sewage treatment plant in the Mexican state of Baja California. There, nasty urban wastewater that once made a smelly health hazard of the New River near…
Tapped Out: How Will Cities Secure Their Water Future?
Posted by Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia in Water Currents on May 8, 2013 
Today, global demands for food, energy, and shelter are putting unprecedented pressure on the resources of the planet. Water is at the heart of this crisis. In fact, more than half of the world’s cities are already experiencing water shortages on a recurring basis – based on findings from a study that I published, along…
Bringing New Life to the Colorado Delta’s Fisheries
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 23, 2013 This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. The Colorado River sustains more than 30 million people and vast areas of farmland. But with no flow reaching the delta and the sea in most years, those last in line for the river in Mexico are suffering. For the fishing town of…
A Water Bank Helps Revive Colorado Delta Willows and Wetlands
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 23, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. In the delta community of Miguel Alemán, situated along the Colorado River corridor that forms the border between Mexico and Arizona, we arrive at an unlikely enterprise in this parched environment: a tree nursery. A few thousand cuttings of willow, mesquite, and cottonwoods…
Returning the Colorado River to the Sea
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 22, 2013 This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Once teeming with life and spanning some two million acres, the delta of the Colorado River ranked among the planet’s greatest desert deltas. But more than half a century of damming and diverting the river’s flow to supply the burgeoning farms and cities…
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It is a river that goes by many names – Red. Grand River Red. The Canyon Maker. And today it is the Most Endangered River in the country. American Rivers released our annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers report today, listing the Colorado River at #1 because demand for water is outstripping supply. Outdated water management…
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Departing Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar shared a few thoughts at his exit ceremony about the keystone accomplishments of his four years and three months in office, and called out restoration of the Colorado River Delta as his signature achievement in water management (see our ongoing series on the delta): “The fourth keystone I spoke…
Colorado River, Meet the Sea
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 12, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Walking the mudflats of the Colorado River Delta in northwestern Mexico, my feet touch silt and sediment that originated in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, hitchhiked with floodwaters through the Grand Canyon, and then, over the millennia, settled out here as the river slowed…
Posted by On March 27, an estimated 15,000 young people gathered in Washington State’s KeyArena for We Day Seattle, an event “to celebrate the power of youth to create positive change in their local and global communities.” We Day Seattle marked the first time the program came to the U.S., although it has been well known in…
Landmark Cooperation Brings the Colorado River Home
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 5, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Standing at Morelos Dam, the last in the long line of dams on the Colorado River, and the only one in Mexico, it’s hard not to feel that we humans have betrayed this great river. It has traveled 1,350 miles from its headwaters,…
The Accidental Wetland in the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 2, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Traveling south from the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, we stop about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the Upper Gulf of California. It feels like the middle of nowhere. We’re surrounded by vast stretches of cracked, dried-out mudflats layered with…
Now that a red flag has been raised by the Colorado River Basin Study – a federal and state cooperative analysis published in late 2012 – that there will be water shortages across much of the U.S. Southwest, the handwringing has started. Our cities, farms, and rivers face a slow-motion disaster; what are we going…
Revival in the Colorado River Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on March 22, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. So intimate was her connection to the river that as a girl she conditioned her hair with the soft mud from its channel bottom. Her family fished in the waters and hunted in the dense forests of cottonwoods and willows that spread across the…
For World Water Day, Cooperation Brings More Benefit Per Drop
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on March 22, 2013 
Rivers pay no mind to political boundaries. If unimpeded by dams and diversions, they flow naturally from mountain headwaters to the sea, crossing borders both within and between countries as if political maps did not exist. If the world is to meet growing food, energy, and consumer demands over the coming years while sustaining the…
In a recent volley between Phoenix and Los Angeles, newspapers in those two arid cities pointed fingers at each other over who has the least sustainable water supply. In the L.A. Times, opinion writer William deBuys asserted: If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix. Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The…
A crew of recent grads from Colorado College have shared their epic paddle down the Colorado River in a new video Mirror River. It’s the story of a 113-day adventure told in three minutes, featuring the river’s famed canyons and rapids, all the way from Wyoming down to Mexico. And it ends (spoiler alert) with…
As Drought Persists in the West, Time to Prepare for Summer Shortages
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on February 25, 2013 
Drought, drought, and more drought seems to be what’s in store for most river basins in the West, including the Colorado, the lifeline for 30 million people. Back in late November, I wrote about how NOAA’s seasonal drought outlook for mid-November to late February indicated the persistence of dryness in most of the Colorado River…
The Colorado River may have cut the Grand Canyon, but for much of its course the river is no longer so mighty. Most of the time, the Colorado no longer even reaches the sea. The moisture the Colorado River brings to an arid part of the United States and a piece of northern Mexico has sustained generations…
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By Rod Parnell of Northern Arizona University The American Southwest faces water challenges, and few easy solutions are in sight. Demand for water is increasing rapidly: as the primary water resource in the Southwest, the Colorado River (see map) sustains seven U.S. states and Mexico, including major – and fast-growing – cities like Los Angeles,…
The inauguration of President Barack Obama for his second term was viewed by millions and will be remembered in the history books. There is a lot at stake in this presidency; there always is. But I sat up and took notice when I heard Richard Blanco, the inaugural poet, read “One Today,” the work…
A Christmas Present for the Colorado River
Posted by Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia in Water Currents on January 5, 2013 
Just days before Christmas, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released the results of a comprehensive study of the Colorado River basin’s water situation. The “Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study” assessed a Christmas tree of more than 150 different proposals for balancing the water budget of the Colorado River. One of those…
Grabbing the Colorado From the “People of the River”
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on December 19, 2012 
The sadness of their story is written in the deeply lined, yet fiercely proud faces of the tribal elders.
For at least a thousand years, a native Indian clan called the Cucapá – the “people of the river” – fished and farmed in the delta of the Colorado River of northwestern Mexico. Their lives were keyed to the river’s natural rhythms. Each spring, after melting snows from the Rocky Mountains sent floodwaters down through the delta, the Cucapá planted beans, melons, and squash in soils newly fertilized by the river’s nutrient-rich sediment. They harvested a grain called nipa, a salt-loving plant that tastes much like wild rice. And they fished for corvina, a type of sea bass, and often ate fish three times a day.
Historical accounts suggest that four hundred years ago as many as 5,000 Cucapá were living in the delta. Today, perhaps 300 remain. Theirs is a culture at risk of extinction – and the primary reason is the colossal 20th-century grab of the waters of the Colorado River.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation today released a much-awaited federal study of the Colorado River, focused on water available for farms, cities, and the businesses that depend on a flowing river. Population growth and climate change have stressed the Colorado River to the point where demand for water exceeds supply, reservoirs sit half-empty, and flows…
With Drought Looming, Colorado River Basin Needs Solutions
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on November 29, 2012 If early forecasts pan out, the Colorado River Basin could be in for yet another year of intense drought. On NOAA’s seasonal drought outlook map for mid-November to late February, the entire basin is shaded in dark brown, signaling the anticipated persistence of drought conditions through most of the winter. That could again wreak havoc…
Since 1960, when the gates were closed on the newly built Glen Canyon Dam, the Colorado River has only rarely flowed to the sea, and the river’s delta started to fade. Water users in the United States saw Lake Powell, the reservoir behind the dam, as a bounty for booming cities in the desert. …
