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Tag: Colorado River

  • Study finds manmade whitewater parks in Colorado may inhibit fish migration

    A new study by Colorado Parks and Wildlife researchers suggests man-made whitewater parks that create “play waves” for kayakers and other recreationists are having a negative impact on fish passage.

    Colorado’s rivers are well-loved by both whitewater enthusiasts and anglers. Yet, as whitewater parks have been constructed throughout the state, researchers say the potential impacts on fish and anglers have not always been taken into consideration.

    Ryan Spencer

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  • Romer and Ritter: Keep Shoshone flowing by letting the Colorado River District purchase Xcel’s rights

    Romer and Ritter: Keep Shoshone flowing by letting the Colorado River District purchase Xcel’s rights

    As governors of the great state of Colorado, dozens of issues crossed our desks every day demanding attention and action. Among the most challenging was water, in large part because in Colorado water touches most every other issue: growth, economic opportunity, our all-important agriculture sector, landscapes, open spaces, environment, quality of life, tourism and recreation. Water is the cornerstone of the health and well-being of every household in the state.

    Add to all that the complexities of our system of water allocation and water courts and you begin to understand what a challenge water policy in Colorado was when we served and why it remains so today.

    From the governor’s office at the Capitol, we were always looking for shared interests and common ground on water. It’s rare to find some policy or project that has broad support from a diverse set of interests. So when something like that comes along, it’s important to get behind it.

    That’s why we support the Colorado River District’s efforts to secure and permanently protect the water rights associated with the Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant in Glenwood Canyon. For over 100 years, the company which we now know as Xcel Energy, has owned these water rights (among the most senior on the Colorado River). Xcel used this water to produce hydroelectric power and then returned all the water to the river.

    Years ago, the Colorado River District started thinking about how to protect these rights, and through careful planning, analysis, and discussions with hundreds of stakeholders from every part of the state, has assembled an impressive coalition that supports the District’s purchase of these water rights for $99 million. Xcel Energy’s subsidiary, the Public Service Company of Colorado, has been a strong and willing partner in putting this transaction together for the benefit of the state.

    A broad-based coalition of West Slope interests – including counties, cities, elected officials, water conservancy districts, water providers, conservationists, recreation groups, and businesses – has raised over $55 million so far.

    Joining the majority of our Congressional delegation and a bipartisan group of state legislators, we also support the River District’s application to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s (USBR) Upper Colorado River Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation funding opportunity, known as Bucket 2E. The River District is putting the finishing touches on its application package, due by Nov. 22. If successful, these dollars will go a long way to fill the remaining funding gap.

    Beyond the proposal to the USBR, additional work remains to bring this historic opportunity to fruition. For example, the River District is working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board on a beneficial instream flow use to the water rights so that the river’s historical flows would always be preserved.

    In addition, as noted above, like every other water transaction in Colorado, this will have to go through water court, to make sure that other entities and water rights are not harmed by this transaction.

    Finally, the remaining funding, beyond any federal support received, needs to be secured in the next couple of years.

    Roy Romer, Bill Ritter Jr.

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  • Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will lose same amount of Colorado River water next year as in 2024

    Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will lose same amount of Colorado River water next year as in 2024

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will continue to live with less water next year from the Colorado River after the U.S. government on Thursday announced water cuts that preserve the status quo. Long-term challenges remain for the 40 million people reliant on the imperiled river.

    The 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) river is a lifeline for the U.S. West and supplies water to cities and farms in northern Mexico, too. It supports seven Western states, more than two dozen Native American tribes and irrigates millions of acres of farmland in the American West. It also produces hydropower used across the region.

    Years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have meant less water flows in the Colorado today than in decades past.

    The Interior Department announces water availability for the coming year months in advance so that cities, farmers and others can plan. Officials do so based on water levels at Lake Mead, one of the river’s two main reservoirs that act as barometers of its health.

    Based on those levels, Arizona will again lose 18% of its total Colorado River allocation, while Mexico’s goes down 5%. The reduction for Nevada — which receives far less water than Arizona, California or Mexico — will stay at 7%.

    The cuts announced Thursday are in the same “Tier 1” category that were in effect this year and in 2022, when the first federal cutbacks on the Colorado River took effect and magnified the crisis on the river. Even deeper cuts followed in 2023. Farmers in Arizona were hit hardest by those cuts.

    Heavier rains and other water-saving efforts by Arizona, California and Nevada somewhat improved the short-term outlook for Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which is upstream of Mead on the Utah-Arizona border.

    Officials on Thursday said the two reservoirs were at 37% capacity.

    They lauded the ongoing efforts by Arizona, California and Nevada to save more water, which are in effect until 2026. The federal government is paying water users in those states for much of that conservation. Meanwhile, states, tribes and others are negotiating how they will share water from the river after 2026, when many current guidelines governing the river expire.

    Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources and the state’s lead negotiator in those talks, said Thursday that Arizonans had “committed to incredible conservation … to protect the Colorado River system.”

    “Future conditions,” he added, “are likely to continue to force hard decisions.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin contributed from Santa Ana, Calif.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Citizen scientist measured Colorado snowfall for 50 years. Two new hips help him keep going.

    Citizen scientist measured Colorado snowfall for 50 years. Two new hips help him keep going.

    GOTHIC — Four miles from the nearest plowed road high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a 73-year-old man with a billowing gray beard and two replaced hips trudged through his front yard to measure fresh snow that fell during one mid-March day.

    Billy Barr first began recording snow and weather data more than 50 years ago as a freshly minted Rutgers University environmental science graduate in Gothic, near part of the Colorado River’s headwaters.

    Bored and looking to keep busy, he had rigged rudimentary equipment and each day had jotted the inches of fresh snow, just as he had logged gas station brands as a child on family road trips.

    Unpaid but driven by compulsive curiosity and a preference for spending more than half the year on skis rather than on foot, Barr stayed here and kept measuring snowfall day after day, winter after winter.

    His faithful measurements revealed something he never expected long ago: snow is arriving later and disappearing earlier as the world warms. That’s a concerning sign for millions of people in the drought-stricken Southwest who rely on mountain snowpack to slowly melt throughout spring and summer to provide a steady stream of water for cities, agriculture and ecosystems.

    “Snow is a physical form of a water reservoir, and if there’s not enough of it, it’s gone,” Barr said.

    So-called “citizen scientists” have long played roles in making observations about plants and counting wildlife to help researchers better understand the environment.

    Barr is modest about his own contributions, although the once-handwritten snow data published on his website has informed numerous scientific papers and helped calibrate aerial snow sensing tools. And with each passing year, his data continues to grow.

    “Anybody could do it,” said the self-deprecating bachelor with a softened Jersey accent. “Being socially inept made me so I could do it for 50 years, but anyone can sit there and watch something like that.”

    Two winters ago, Barr’s legs started buckling with frustrating frequency as he’d ski mellow loops through spruce trees looking for animal tracks — another data point he collects. He feared it might be his last year in Gothic, a former mining town turned into a research facility owned by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, where he worked full time for decades and is now a part-time accountant.

    “I was running out of time to live here,” he said. “That’s why I went through the hip replacements to prolong it.”

    Two hip replacement surgeries provided an extended lease on high-altitude living. Barr cross-country skied more this past December than he did the entire previous winter.

    “Unless something else goes wrong, which it will, but unless it’s severe, I think I can last out here a while longer,” he said.

    A lot could go wrong. As Barr sat on a bench beside at the research lab on an unseasonably warm March day, a heavy slab of snow slid off the roof and launched the bench forward, nearly causing him to fall.

    Not all risks are avoidable, but some are. If the ski track is too icy, he’ll walk parallel in untracked snow to get better footing. He grows produce in a greenhouse attached to his home, and most of his non-perishable goods — stocked the previous autumn — are organic. He wears a mask when he’s around others indoors.

    “I can’t get a respiratory disease at this altitude,” he said.

    For Barr, longevity means more time for the quiet mountain lifestyle he enjoys from his rustic two-room house heated by passive solar and a wood stove. He uses a composting toilet and relies on solar panels to heat water, do laundry and enable his nightly movie viewing.

    When he eventually retires from the mountains, Barr hopes to continue most of his long-running weather collection remotely.

    He has been testing remote tools for five years, trying to calibrate them to his dated but reliable techniques. He figures it will take a few more years of testing before he’ll trust the new tools and, even then, fears equipment failure.

    For now, he measures snow in his tried and true way:

    Around 4 p.m., he hikes uphill from his home to a flat, square board painted white, and sticks a metal ruler into accumulated snow to measure its depth. Next he pushes a clear canister upside down into the snow, uses a sheet of metal to scrape off the rest of the snow, then slides the sheet under the canister to help flip it over. He weighs the snow, subtracting the canister’s weight, which lets him calculate the water content.

    So far, manual measuring remains the best method, scientists say. Automated snow measurements introduce a degree of uncertainty such as how wind spreads snow unevenly across the landscape, explained Ben Pritchett, senior forecaster at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

    “Nothing replaces observing snow in person to understand how it’s changing,” Pritchett said.

    But Barr’s data collection has always been unpaid volunteer work — and that complicates any succession plan when he eventually leaves his home in Gothic.

    “If environmental science were funded like the way we fund cancer research or other efforts, we would absolutely continue that research and data collection,” said Ian Billick, executive director for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. “It would be super valuable.”

    The lab has winter caretakers who could ski the half mile (.8 kilometer) to Barr’s home to manually measure new snow at the same site with his same method, but someone would still need to foot the bill for their time.

    Barr is well aware that his humble weather station is just a snapshot of the Colorado River basin, and that satellites, lasers and computer models can now calculate how much snow falls basin-wide and predict resulting runoff. Yet local scientists say some of those models wouldn’t be as precise without his work.

    Ian Breckheimer, an ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, measures snow from space using satellites. Given the distance, Breckheimer needed on-the-ground data to calibrate his model.

    “Billy’s data provides that ground truth,” Breckheimer said. “We know that his data is right. So that means that we can compare all the things that we think we can see to the things that we know are right.”

    Brittany Peterson

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  • Another storm is coming to Southern California early next week. How big will it be?

    Another storm is coming to Southern California early next week. How big will it be?

    Southern Californians can brace for another round of wet weather, with a storm expected to hit the region early next week to cap off a month of historically wet weather.

    The slow-moving storm is expected to reach the Los Angeles area by Monday night or Tuesday morning before tapering off later Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. It’s projected to drop between a quarter of an inch and half an inch of rain in coastal areas and valleys and up to an inch in the mountains.

    The storm isn’t expected to pack the same punch as the storms earlier this month.

    “It’s considerably weaker,” said Mike Wofford, a NWS meteorologist in Oxnard. “This would be a light storm even in a fairly quiet winter pattern.”

    But because the ground is still saturated from the back-to-back historic storms earlier this month that triggered debris and mud flows, damaged homes and killed several people across the state, there’s still the risk of landslides in areas adjacent to hills. That includes the Santa Monica Mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains, the Rancho Palos Verdes area and anywhere in the Hollywood Hills.

    “Landslides can happen at any time now that the grounds are so wet,” Wofford said. “Any additional rain would make it worse. That’s something people will have to live with for a while until things dry out.”

    Downtown Los Angeles has received 17.79 inches of rain since the water year began on Oct. 1 and 12.56 inches in February alone, making it the fourth-wettest February since the weather service started keeping records in 1877. This February is also the wettest month in 26 years and is tied for the seventh-wettest month ever.

    To put things into context, downtown L.A. usually gets about 10 inches by this time in the typical water year and about 15 inches over a 12-month period.

    “If we didn’t get any rain between now and October, we’d be almost three inches above the normal for the entire year,” Wofford said. “That’s telling.”

    Following three years of severe drought, California is now experiencing one of its wettest years on record. Elsewhere in the state, the storms dropped enough snow on the Sierra Nevada to eradicate fears of a “snow drought” and build up the snowpack to 86% of normal for the date.

    California’s major reservoirs are also at 118% of their average levels for this time of year.

    “Some of the reservoirs had to do releases ahead of approaching storms so they can take in the water that falls,” Wofford said. “That’s not something we normally have to deal with in a typical winter.”

    Summer Lin

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  • Living in Phoenix Makes Perfect Sense

    Living in Phoenix Makes Perfect Sense

    In Phoenix, a high of 108 degrees Fahrenheit now somehow counts as a respite. On Monday, America’s hottest major city ended its ominous streak of 31 straight days in which temperatures crested past 110. The toll of this heat—a monthly average of 102.7 degrees in July—has been brutal. One woman was admitted to a hospital’s burn unit after she fell on the pavement outside her home, and towering saguaros have dropped arms and collapsed. Over the past month, hospitals filling up with burn and heat-stroke victims have reached capacities not seen since the height of the pandemic.

    “Why would anyone live in Phoenix?” You might ask that question to the many hundreds of thousands of new residents who have made the Arizona metropolis America’s fastest-growing city. Last year, Maricopa County, where Phoenix sits, gained more residents than any other county in the United States—just as it did in 2021, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

    At its core, the question makes a mystery of something that isn’t a mystery at all. For many people, living in Phoenix makes perfect sense. Pleasant temperatures most of the year, relatively inexpensive housing, and a steady increase in economic opportunities have drawn people for 80 years, turning the city from a small desert outpost of 65,000 into a sprawling metro area of more than 5 million. Along the way, a series of innovations has made the heat seem like a temporary inconvenience rather than an existential threat for many residents. Perhaps not even a heat wave like this one will change anything.

    My first morning in Phoenix, more than 20 years ago, the sun broke the horizon two miles up a trail in South Mountain Park, one of the largest municipal parks in the United States. I had arrived the previous night from Michigan, leaving behind the late-March dreariness that passes for spring in the Midwest for several months of research that would become my book, Power Lines. As the sun turned the mountain golden and I stripped down to short sleeves for the first time in months, I realized the Valley of the Sun’s charms.

    Outside the summer months, the quality of life in Phoenix is really quite high—a fact that city boosters have promoted stretching back to before World War II. They traded the desiccated “Salt River Valley” for the welcoming “Valley of the Sun.” Efforts to downplay the dangers of Phoenix’s climate go back even further. In 1895, when Phoenix was home to a few thousand people, a local newspaper reported that it had been proved “by figures and facts” that the heat is “all a joke,” because the “sensible temperature” that people experienced was far less severe than what the thermometers recorded. “But it’s a dry heat” has a long history, one in which generations of prospective newcomers have been taught to perceive Phoenix’s climate as more beneficial than oppressive.

    Most people surely move to Phoenix not because of the weather, but because of the housing. The Valley of the Sun’s ongoing commitment to new housing development continues to keep housing prices well below those of neighboring California, drawing many emigrants priced out of the Golden State. Subdivisions have popped up in irrigated farm fields seemingly overnight. In 1955, as the home builder John F. Long was constructing Maryvale, then on Phoenix’s western edge, he quickly turned a cantaloupe farm into seven model homes. Five years later, more than 22,000 people lived in the neighborhood; now more than 200,000 do. Even today, the speed of construction can create confusion, as residents puzzle over the location of Heartland Ranch or Copper Falls or other new subdivisions that include most of the 250,000 homes built since 2010.

    Even in the summer, you might not always notice just how harsh of a terrain Phoenix can be. Developers engage in a struggle to secure water rights, tapping groundwater aquifers, drawing water from the Colorado River brought to the city by aqueduct, and purchasing water from local farmers. Air-conditioning is the lifeblood of Phoenix, as much a part of the city as the subway system is in New York. In 1961, Herbert Leggett, a Phoenix banker, spoke of his normal summer day to The Saturday Evening Post: “I awake in my air-conditioned home in the morning … I dress and get into my air-conditioned automobile and drive to the air-conditioned garage in the basement of this building. I work in an air-conditioned office, eat in an air-conditioned restaurant, and perhaps go to an air-conditioned theater.”

    In the kind of air-conditioned bubbles Leggett described, it is actually possible for people like me, who work indoors, to forget the heat and oppression of Phoenix’s summer—that is, until we have to scurry across a parking lot or cross concrete plazas between buildings. Starting in late April, when high temperatures regularly hit over 90, many residents fire up their AC, using it until October, when highs once again drop into the 80s. At the height of summer, Phoenix becomes virtually an indoor city during the day. Remote car starters become valuable amenities for taking the edge off the heat. Runners wake before dawn to exercise, and dogs are banned from hiking trails in city parks on triple-digit days. With air-conditioning, the benefits of Phoenix outweigh the drawbacks for many residents.

    But this lifestyle comes with a cost. Electricity consumption has soared in Phoenix, almost doubling in the average home from 1970 to today. At the height of its operation, Four Corners Power Plant, only one of five such coal-fired power plants built north of Phoenix to help power the region’s growth, emitted 16 million tons of carbon annually, equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 3.4 million cars. Even today, with most coal-fired generation retired, Phoenix relies heavily on carbon-emitting natural gas for its electricity. Both the past and present of Phoenix’s energy worsens the very heat its residents are trying to escape.

    Air-conditioning protects most people, but especially as the heat intensifies, those without it are left incredibly vulnerable. Elderly women living alone, many of whom struggle to maintain and pay for air-conditioning, are particularly susceptible, accounting for the majority of indoor heat-related deaths. Unhoused people, whose population in Phoenix has increased by 70 percent in the past six years, suffer tremendously and make up much of the death toll. One unhoused man recently compared sitting in his wheelchair to “sitting down on hot coals.”

    This heat wave will end, but there will be another. Still, the horror stories of life in 115 degrees is hardly guaranteed to blunt Phoenix’s explosive growth. There are currently building permits for 80,000 new homes in the Phoenix metro area that have not yet commenced construction—homes that will require more water, more AC, and more energy.

    But in a sense, nothing about Phoenix is unusual at all. The movement from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space that Leggett described—and the massive energy use that makes it all run—is now typical in a country where nearly 90 percent of homes use air-conditioning. Clothing companies such as Land’s End advertise summer sweaters that “will come to your rescue while you’re working hard for those eight hours in your office, which might feel like an icebox at times.” And heat has claimed lives in “temperate” cities such as Omaha, Seattle, and Boston. Indeed, one 2020 study concluded that the Northeast had the highest rate of excess deaths attributable to heat.

    “Why would anyone live in Phoenix?” serves as nothing more than a defensive mechanism. It makes peculiar the choices that huge numbers of Americans have made, often under economic duress—choices to move to the warm climates of the Sun Belt, to move where housing is affordable, to ignore where energy comes from and the inequalities it creates, and, above all, to downplay the threats of climate change. In that way, Phoenix isn’t the exception. It’s the norm.

    Andrew Needham

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  • Not enough water to go around: Colorado River Basin, ravaged by drought, plans for a drier future

    Not enough water to go around: Colorado River Basin, ravaged by drought, plans for a drier future

    Not enough water to go around: Colorado River Basin, ravaged by drought, plans for a drier future – CBS News


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    Seven states and 30 Native American tribes lying in the Colorado River Basin prepare to make hard choices as water levels plummet due to a 23-year drought. Bill Whitaker reports.

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  • Arizona to halt some new home construction due to water supply issues

    Arizona to halt some new home construction due to water supply issues

    Phoenix, Arizona — The population of Arizona’s Maricopa County — which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area — skyrocketed by 15% in the last decade. But now, the county could see a troubling flatline.

    New construction that relies on groundwater will stop in some parts of the state after a report from the Arizona Department of Water Resources released earlier this month revealed Arizona’s booming population will outgrow its drought-stricken water supply if action isn’t taken.

    Specifically, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs announced earlier this month that the state will put the brakes on new home construction in the area surrounding Phoenix, but not within the city of Phoenix itself. 

    “This pause will not affect growth within any of our major cities,” Hobbs said in a news conference following the report’s release. 

    The new state plan will immediately impact the surrounding suburbs of Phoenix, which includes towns like Queen Creek. While projects permitted before the announcement will not be impacted, 9,000 undeveloped properties without a secure water supply will remain vacant. 

    “It’s been an issue that we’ve been dealing with in Arizona from the very beginning,” carpenter Rick Collins told CBS News of the water supply. “It’s how it works here. If we don’t have water, we can’t build these communities.”

    In Maricopa County alone, an estimated two billion gallons of water are used daily, according to numbers from the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s nearly twice as much use as New York City, which has about double Maricopa County’s population of approximately 4.5 million people.

    “Of course we have concern, our council has been looking forward into the future knowing that this day was going to come,” said Paul Gardner, wastewater director for Queen Creek.

    Gardner doesn’t see the region as in decline, but instead as “a community that is evolving.”

    That evolution means relying more on reclaimed wastewater projects and spending tens of millions of dollars to buy water from the Colorado River.
     
    However, climate change and growing demand across the West are also shrinking the Colorado River, which means the river as a water source could be cut off down the road. Last month, California, Arizona and Nevada reached a tentative agreement that would significantly cut their water use from the river over the next three years.

    Meanwhile, Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyle Center for Water Policy, said Arizona’s own plan to limit construction ensures there is enough water for all, as Arizona adapts to a world with less of it.

    “It is a proactive plan,” Sorensen said. “It is not reactive.”

    Jonathan Vigliotti


    Jonathan Vigliotti

    Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles. He previously served as a foreign correspondent for the network’s London bureau.

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  • 5/22: Prime Time with John Dickerson

    5/22: Prime Time with John Dickerson

    5/22: Prime Time with John Dickerson – CBS News


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    Jim Axelrod reports on debt ceiling talks, a deal reached to conserve water from the Colorado River, and Carmelo Anthony’s retirement.

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  • California, Arizona and Nevada reach deal to conserve Colorado River

    California, Arizona and Nevada reach deal to conserve Colorado River

    California, Arizona and Nevada reach deal to conserve Colorado River – CBS News


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    Three of the seven Colorado River states – California, Arizona and Nevada – have agreed to cut their water usage by 3 million acre-feet by 2026. Some 40 million people and more than two dozen Native American tribes depend on the Colorado River. CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy breaks down the details of the historic deal.

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  • 5/22: CBS Evening News

    5/22: CBS Evening News

    5/22: CBS Evening News – CBS News


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    Biden and McCarthy meet one-on-one as default deadline looms; The story behind Fort Moore’s new name

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  • Western states reach deal on saving Colorado River

    Western states reach deal on saving Colorado River

    Western states reach deal on saving Colorado River – CBS News


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    California, Arizona and Nevada have reached a deal to reduce use of the Colorado River to keep the key reservoir from running dry.

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  • Three states near deal on Colorado River water after decades of drought

    Three states near deal on Colorado River water after decades of drought

    Three states near deal on Colorado River water after decades of drought – CBS News


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    Colorado, Arizona and California may be on the brink of a major agreement to conserve water from the Colorado River, according to the Washington Post. Conrad Swanson, environmental and political reporter at the Denver Post, explains the issues at the heart of the deal.

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  • California to fill 100% of water requests from cities and farms after wet winter

    California to fill 100% of water requests from cities and farms after wet winter

    After historic levels of rain and snow this winter season, California expects to fill 100% of water requests from cities and farms for the first time since 2006, the state Department of Water Resources announced Thursday.

    Because the state’s reservoirs have nearly reached capacity, and the snowpack is beginning to melt, any contractor who needs water, and has the ability to store it, can have it, the department said.

    “Water supply conditions and careful management of reservoir operations during this extreme winter allows DWR to maximize water deliveries while enhancing protections for the environment,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “DWR is moving and storing as much water as possible to the benefit of communities, agriculture, and the environment.”

    The water supply will be delivered through the State Water Project’s 29 agencies, which serve 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

    The percentage of water allocation is determined monthly by the State Water Project based on the latest snow survey data, reservoir storage and spring runoff forecasts. The 100% forecasted allocation announced Thursday is based upon data from April.

    Last month, the U.S. Drought Monitor found that much of the state is free of drought and abnormal dryness.

    While this water allocation forecast is good news for cities and farmland across the state, Northern California is still struggling with its groundwater supply, the Department of Water Resources said.

    “Several water supply challenges remain in the northern part of the state and in over-drafted groundwater basins that are slow to recover,” the department said. “Millions of Californians rely on groundwater supplies as a sole source of water.”

    The announcement added that the dire state of the Colorado River Basin, which is a “critical water source for Southern California,” is in the middle of a 23-year drought.

    “Californians should continue to use water wisely to help the state adapt to a hotter, drier future.”

    Simrin Singh

    Simrin Singh is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

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  • In Colorado River talks, still no agreement about water cuts

    In Colorado River talks, still no agreement about water cuts

    Bureau of Reclamation issues recommendations to protect Colorado River system


    Bureau of Reclamation issues recommendations to protect Colorado River system

    00:37

    The Biden administration released an environmental analysis Tuesday of competing plans for how seven Western states and tribes reliant on the dwindling water supply from the Colorado River should cut their use but declined to publicly take a side on the best option.

    On one side is California and some tribes along the river that want to protect their high-priority rights to the river’s water, which they use for drinking and farming. On the other side are the other six states — Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — who say it’s time to come up with an approach that more fairly shares the river.

    The Interior Department did not say how states should get to deeper water cuts but defended its authority to make sure basic needs such as drinking water and hydropower generated from the river are met — even if it means setting aside the priority system.

    “Failure is not an option,” Interior Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau told The Associated Press.

    The 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) powerhouse of the West serves 40 million people across seven states, which span tribal land and Mexico, generates hydroelectric power for regional markets, and irrigates nearly 6 million acres (2,428 hectares) of farmland.

    Colorado River
    Water from the Colorado River diverted through the Central Arizona Project fills an irrigation canal on Aug. 18, 2022, in Maricopa, Ariz. 

    Matt York / AP


    A multi-decade drought in the West intensified by climate change, rising demand and overuse have sent water levels at key reservoirs along the river to unprecedented lows. That’s forced the federal government to cut some water allocations and to offer up billions of dollars to pay farmers and cities to cut back.

    Officials expect some relief this year from a series of powerful storms that blanketed California and the Western Rocky Mountains, the main source of the Colorado River’s water. But it’s not clear how that amount of precipitation is affecting negotiations. On Monday, Beaudreau denied that a sense of urgency had gone away after the winter storms, but gave no indication as to how the seven states should reach an agreement before August when the agency typically announces water availability for the following year.

    “The snow is great. It’s a godsend. But we’re in the midst of a 23-year drought,” Beaudreau said. He said states, Native American tribes and other water users recognized that it would be in no one’s interest to stall talks because of the winter’s healthy snowpack — which stands at 160% of the median in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

    In January, six of the seven U.S. states that rely on the Colorado River — Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — outlined how they would conserve significantly more water, but California disagreed with the approach and released its own ideas a day later.

    Both plans heeded a call last year from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the major dams in the river system, for states to propose how they would cut their water use by roughly 15% and 30% — in addition to existing water cuts agreed upon in recent years. Each achieves about 2 million acre-feet of cuts, which is at the low end of the requested cuts.

    An acre-foot of water is roughly enough to serve 2 to 3 U.S. households annually.

    The lengthy environmental analysis released by the Biden administration explores both options, as well as a third that includes taking no action. States, tribes and other water users now have until May 30 to comment before federal officials announce their formal decision.

    Beaudreau gave no indication of whether the department prefers one approach over the other.

    “Some of the commentary has depicted an us-versus-them dynamic in the basin,” Beaudreau said. “I don’t see that at all.”

    Colorado River
    A formerly sunken boat sits high and dry along the shoreline of Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on May 10, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. 

    John Locher / AP


    Arizona and California — on opposite sides of the divergent plans — are looking at how to develop “a true seven-state consensus in the coming months,” said JB Hamby, who chairs the Colorado River Board of California. “Ideally in this next 45-day period, if at all possible.”

    Among the main differences between the two plans is whether states should account for the vast amount of water lost along the Colorado River basin to evaporation and leaky infrastructure as it flows through the region’s behemoth dams and waterways.

    Federal officials say more than 10% of river water evaporates, leaks, and spills — yet Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico have never accounted for that loss.

    California disagreed with that approach. That’s because the state has senior rights to Colorado River water and because of its location, would lose a significant amount of water if such losses were counted. The further south the river travels, more water evaporates — meaning that if evaporation losses were counted, California, Arizona, and Mexico would stand to lose more than states further north.

    The Quechan tribe along the Arizona-California border also opposes that plan because of its priority water rights.

    “We’ve got senior water rights and last we checked, we still live in a priority-based system,” said Jay Weiner, the tribe’s attorney.

    The six states and California also disagree about when more water cuts should be triggered at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S. that serve as barometers of the river’s health.

    Arizona and Nevada have more junior water rights than California and supported a plan that shared water cuts amid worsening drought on a pro-rata basis. California has offered to voluntarily cut its use by 400,000 acre-feet, but the state wants bigger cuts from Arizona and Nevada. California officials have indicated they’ll pursue legal challenges if the federal government ignores its priority right to water.

    Reclamation also didn’t say how Mexico might contribute to the savings, but that discussions are ongoing. The country is entitled to 1.5 million acre-feet of water each year under a treaty reached with the U.S. in 1944. In recent years, Mexico has participated in water savings plans with the U.S. amid worsening drought in both countries.

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  • Colorado River Tops the List of the 10 Most Visited White Water Rafting Locations

    Colorado River Tops the List of the 10 Most Visited White Water Rafting Locations

    Press Release
    •

    Apr 5, 2023

    Visited Travel App Highlights the Most Visited White Water Rafting Spots Based on International Travelers


    TORONTO, April 5, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
     The travel app Visited by Arriving In High Heels Corporation has published a list of the top 10 white water rafting destinations in the world. Visited is a popular app that allows users to track travel, mark off where they’ve been, get a custom map of their travels, and discover new bucket list destinations. 

    According to users of the Visited app, these are the most popular white water rafting spots around the globe:

    1. Colorado River is the most-visited white water rafting destination in the world, with rolling rapids along the scenic river in the western U.S.
    2. Tara River entices adventurous travelers with white water rafting through Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina in Europe.
    3. Zambezi River in southeast Africa offers some of the best white water rafting in the world, with challenging class 3 to 5 rapids. 
    4. Snake River in the U.S. Pacific Northwest offers breathtaking views and accessible white water rafting that is suitable for all abilities. 
    5. Rio Pacuare in Costa Rica offers white water rafting through rainforests and canyons on the river that flows into the Caribbean Sea. 
    6. Neretva River flows through Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and features stunning views of the Dinaric Alps and class 3 rapids for all levels.
    7. White Nile in Africa offers thrilling white water rafting with class 4 and 5 rapids.
    8. Dobra River in Croatia has light to medium rapids for all levels of rafters.
    9. Cetina River in Croatia has beginner-friendly white water rafting and picturesque natural views.
    10. Shotover River on the South Island of New Zealand offers exciting white water rafting with class 3 to 5 rapids and rugged canyon views. 

    To see more travel lists with the most visited destinations around the world, get a customized travel map, and set travel goals, users can download Visited on iOS or Android. 

    Get the full Visited 2022 travel report for more travel stats with the most visited destinations based on over 1.5 million Visited users. To learn more about the Visited Travel Map and Inspiration App, visit https://visitedapp.com. 

    About Arriving In High Heels Corporation

    Arriving In High Heels Corporation is a mobile app company with apps including Pay Off Debt, X-Walk, and Visited, their most popular app.

    Source: Arriving In High Heels Corporation

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  • California floated cutting major Southwest cities off Colorado River water before touching its agriculture supply, sources say | CNN

    California floated cutting major Southwest cities off Colorado River water before touching its agriculture supply, sources say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    In a closed-door negotiation last week over the fate of the Colorado River, representatives from California’s powerful water districts proposed modeling what the basin’s future would look like if some of the West’s biggest cities – including Phoenix and Las Vegas – were cut off from the river’s water supply, three people familiar with the talks told CNN.

    More than 5 million people in Arizona are served by Colorado River water, which accounts for 40% of Phoenix’s supply. Around 90% of Las Vegas’ water is from the river.

    The proposal came in a session between states that was focused on achieving unprecedented water cuts to save the Colorado River – a system that overall provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in the West. For months, seven states have been trying to come up with cuts to keep the river system from crashing.

    As the river shrinks, talks to save it are increasingly pitting the longstanding senior water rights of farmers against explosive metropolitan growth.

    California was proposing following the “law of the river,” which gives farmers in major agricultural districts first dibs on water because they have a priority claim established before other districts’ rights – including Californian cities like Los Angeles, which receives around half of its water from the Colorado River.

    The eye-popping suggestion was met with strong and immediate pushback from other state officials at the negotiating table, the people familiar with the discussions said.

    John Enstminger, the general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority who was not present at this particular session, told CNN the proposal was a major concern for public health and safety in Western cities.

    “If you want to model cutting off most or all of the water supply of 27 million Americans, you can go through the exercise but implementing that on the ground would have the direst consequence for almost 10% of the country,” Entsminger said.

    Arizona’s top water official, Tom Buschatzke, wouldn’t comment on the closed-door discussion. But he told CNN Arizona officials would not contemplate entirely cutting their biggest cities and Native American tribes off Colorado River water.

    “I would not, even under a modeling scenario, agree or ask the federal government to model a scenario in which the Central Arizona Project goes to zero,” Buschatzke said. “I will not do that. The implications would be pretty severe if CAP went to zero. Severe for tribes, severe for cities, severe for industries.”

    One source familiar with the meeting disputed that California asked to model cutting other agencies and cities all the way to zero but stipulated that if California was to compromise to other states’ demands, it also wanted to see one of the options follow the river’s current strict priority system “as the default baseline.”

    US Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton last year called on the basin’s seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming – to figure out how to cut 2 to 4 million acre-feet of usage, or as much as 30% of their river water allocation. She vowed the federal government would step in if an agreement couldn’t be reached.

    The question is who bears the brunt of the unprecedented cuts needed to keep Colorado River flowing into America’s largest reservoirs. If the feds take a heavy hand, it could set the stage for a tense legal battle – all while the nation’s largest reservoirs continue to decline.

    Arizona’s perspective is that it thinks California will let them “dry up and blow away,” one source familiar with the meeting told CNN. California’s perspective, the source added, is: “We fought for a century to preserve our super-priority, why should we give it up now?”

    After six other Colorado River basin states released a proposal for water cuts on Monday, California’s water agencies presented a separate and more modest plan to federal officials on Tuesday.

    The state is proposing to conserve 400,000 additional acre-feet of water – around 130 billion gallons – per year from 2023 to 2026, according to the plan. Overall, it is seeking lower basin reductions of around 1 million acre-feet per year, with California contributing 400,000 acre-feet, Arizona contributing 560,000 acre-feet and Nevada contributing 40,000 acre-feet.

    It’s nearly identical to the plan the state proposed in October, and is less than 10% of the state’s water allocation. California receives the largest Colorado River allocation out of all the basin states.

    ‘Genuinely worried’: Why researcher fears Lake Mead could hit dead pool

    California’s proposal would kick in if Lake Mead reached an elevation of 1,000 feet and Lake Powell an elevation of 3,500 feet – precariously close to those reservoirs’ “dead pool” levels, when water is so low it will no longer flow through the dams.

    California’s proposal mentions “increasing cutbacks” if Lake Mead elevations further decline, but does not specify by how much.

    California’s plan “provides a realistic and implementable framework” that builds “on voluntary agreements and past collaborative efforts in order to minimize implementation delays,” JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board for the state and an Imperial Irrigation District board member, said in a statement.

    Adel Hagekhalil, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said in a statement the state was committed to cuts, but in “a way that does not harm half of the people who rely on the river – the 19 million people of Southern California.”

    “We must do it in a way that does not devastate our $1.6 trillion economy, an economic engine for the entire United States,” Hagekhalil said. “The proposal presented today by California does all of this by equitably sharing the risk among Basin states without adversely affecting any one agency or state. The plan presented yesterday, which shut out California, does not.”

    California’s proposal is less than the plan proposed on Monday by the six other basin states, which maxes out at 3.1 million acre-feet per year. That six-state model also accounted for the water lost to evaporation and leaky river infrastructure.

    The six-state plan also proposes being activated if Lake Mead levels are around 1,050 feet. Lake Mead is currently around 1,047 feet and had dropped to as low as 1,040 feet last summer.

    Multiple states told CNN that they are going to try to continue to get an agreement everyone can support, while acknowledging talks so far have been difficult.

    “We’re committed to continuing to work collectively as seven basin states,” said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

    Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water official, called the six-state proposal a “very positive outcome” and said he and others would try to keep conversations going with California.

    “I’m committed to continuing to work with all seven states,” Buschatzke said, adding additional conversations and negotiations would continue “over the next few months.”

    Still, the breakdown in agreement between California and the rest of the Colorado River Basin increases the prospect for federal officials to introduce their own cuts in the coming months. Buschatzke told CNN federal officials have not shared much with the states on what number of cuts they’re targeting.

    “They haven’t shared with us any cumulative ballpark,” he said. “I believe it’s imperative we know the ballpark at least, and eventually the specific number, because it will be less of a gap to close on the necessary reductions.”

    Correction: This story has been updated to correct the figures in California’s proposal for water cuts.

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  • Conferees told Colorado River action ‘absolutely critical’

    Conferees told Colorado River action ‘absolutely critical’

    LAS VEGAS — The first weeks of 2023 will be crucial for Southwest U.S. states and water entities to agree how to use less water from the drought-stricken and fast-shrinking Colorado River, a top federal water manager said Friday.

    “The coming three months are absolutely critical,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau told the Colorado River Users Association conferees ending three-day annual meetings in Las Vegas.

    “To be clear, the challenge is extraordinary,” Beaudreau said of a withering two-decade Western drought that scientists now attribute to long-term, human-caused climate change. “The science tells us it’s our new reality.”

    Beaudreau closed the conference with a call for water managers, administrators and individuals throughout the West “to develop solutions to help us all address the crisis.”

    The first deadline is next Tuesday, when the federal Bureau of Reclamation finishes taking public comment on an effort expected to yield a plan by summer about how to use at least 15% less river water split among recipients in seven Western U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes and Mexico.

    States have until the end of January to come to an agreement. A preliminary report is expected in the spring.

    At stake is drinking water for 40 million people; hydroelectric power for regional markets; and irrigation for farmers tilling millions of acres of former desert, producing most of the nation’s winter vegetables.

    Options range from voluntary agreements among competing interests to use less, to draconian top-down federal cuts in water deliveries — perhaps affecting cities including Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

    The problem was demonstrated again and again since Wednesday in new data and charts at workshops and panels: Less water flows into the river in the so-called Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming than is drawn from it by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.

    The states share water under an interstate agreement reached 100 years ago that overestimated the amount of water the basin receives annually, mostly through snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains.

    In recent years, as drought has progressed, interim agreements for Lower Basin states to share cutbacks have been enacted. Arizona farmers have been the most affected.

    But unrelenting drought has dropped the river’s largest reservoirs to unprecedented low levels. Combined, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona state line and Lake Powell formed by Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line were at 92% capacity in 1999. Today, they are at 26%.

    River water managers at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation warn that the surface level of Lake Powell could drop so low in the next few months that intakes to hydropower turbines at Glen Canyon Dam could go dry.

    The words “dead pool” surfaced this week as officials described the possibility that lake levels could shrink so much that neither dam would be able to release water downstream.

    Questions surfaced while ideas were floated including lining and covering canals — along with a call from the Las Vegas-area’s top water manager for at least an accounting of how much water is lost to seepage and evaporation.

    Most discussions, however, focused on conservation to keep water levels up at the two reservoirs.

    Last month, 30 agencies that supply water to homes and businesses throughout the region joined the Las Vegas area in restricting decorative lawns that no one walks on.

    This week, Upper Basin states announced a program to pay farmers to fallow fields so they would need less water.

    “I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty in this room, and in the basin, as we look at the river and the hydrology that we face,” said Camille Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner with the power to act if water users don’t.

    “If a solution is not developed by the basin, Commissioner Touton will figure it out for us,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona and a former astronaut who spoke fondly Friday of his view from space of the Colorado River flowing through the Grand Canyon.

    Delegates from Mexico and the International Boundary and Water Commission also were among speakers at the conference-closing at the Caesars Palace resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

    “There are a lot of questions; the what, the how,” Touton said, before ending — using Spanish and then English — with encouragement to, “let’s get this done together.”

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  • Colorado River water users convening amid crisis concerns

    Colorado River water users convening amid crisis concerns

    LAS VEGAS — Living with less water in the U.S. Southwest is the focus this week for state and federal water administrators, tribal officials, farmers, academics and business representatives meeting about the drought-stricken and overpromised Colorado River.

    The Colorado River Water Users Association conference, normally a largely academic three-day affair, comes at a time of growing concern about the river’s future after more than two decades of record drought attributed to climate change.

    “The Colorado River system is in a very dire condition,” Dan Bunk, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation water manager, declared during internet presentations streamed Nov. 29 and Dec. 2 that invited public comment about possible actions.

    “Flows during the past 23-year period … are the lowest in the past 120 years and (among) the lowest in more than 1,200 years,” Bunk told the webinar audience. The deadline for public submissions is Dec. 20 for a process expected to yield a final report by summer.

    Bunk said the two largest reservoirs on the river — Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona state line and Lake Powell formed by the Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line — are at unprecedented low levels. Lake Mead was at 100% capacity in mid-1999. Today it is 28% full. Lake Powell, last full in June 1980, is at 25%.

    Scientists attribute extended drought to warmer and drier weather in the West to long-term, human-caused climate change. The effect has been dramatic on a vast river basin where the math never added up: The amount of water it receives doesn’t meet the amount that is promised.

    Lake Powell’s drop last March to historically low water levels raised worries about losing the ability — perhaps within the next few months — to produce hydropower that today serves about 5 million customers in seven states. If power production ceases at Glen Canyon Dam, rural electric cooperatives, cities and tribal utilities would be forced to seek more expensive options.

    Reclamation water managers responded with plans to hold back more water in Lake Powell but warned that Lake Mead water levels would drop.

    Meanwhile, bodies have surfaced as Lake Mead’s shoreline recedes, including the corpse of a man who authorities say was shot, maybe in the 1970s, and stuffed in a barrel. He remains unidentified. The gruesome discoveries renewed interest in the lore of organized crime and the early days of the Las Vegas Strip, just a 30-minute drive from the lake.

    The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to determine how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. Despite deadlines, discussions have not resulted in agreements.

    Bureau officials use the image of pouring tea from one cup to another to describe how water from Rocky Mountain snowmelt is captured in Lake Powell, then released downriver through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. About 70% is allocated for irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of U.S. winter vegetables.

    The two lakes, combined, were at 92% capacity in 1999, Bunk noted. Today, they are at 26%.

    “Due to critically low current reservoir conditions, and the potential for worsening drought which threatens critical infrastructure and public health and safety … operational strategies must be revisited,” Bunk said.

    This year’s meeting of water recipients begins Wednesday at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. The event theme, “A New Century for the Colorado River Compact,” marks 100 years since a 1922 interstate agreement divvied water shares among interests in the seven states now home to 40 million people and millions of farmed acres.

    Agricultural interests got the biggest share. Native American tribes weren’t included and were referenced in one sentence: “Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes.”

    It wasn’t until 1944 that a separate agreement promised a share of water to Mexico.

    Today, tribes are at the table and a Mexico delegation is due to attend the conference. U.S. cities that receive river water include Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

    Many call conservation crucial. Among conference topic titles are “Messaging in a More Water-Challenged world” and “The Next 100 Years Begins Now.”

    “The ongoing drought is a stark reminder that water conservation is not just smart planning but an absolute necessity to save the life of the Colorado River,” Amelia Flores, chairwoman of Colorado River Indian Tribes, said ahead of the event. The tribal reservation in western Arizona includes more than 110 miles (177 kilometers) of Colorado River shoreline.

    “Whether it’s fallowing fields, upgrading irrigation canals, or modernizing farming methods,” Flores said, “decisions made now will have lasting consequences.”

    Throughout the river basin, warnings have increased and measures have tightened markedly in 2022.

    In April, water administrators in Southern California imposed a one-day-a-week outdoor watering limit on more than 6 million people.

    Last month, 30 agencies that supply water to homes and businesses throughout the region joined the Las Vegas area in restricting the planting of decorative lawns that no one walks on.

    Adel Hagekhalil, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California general manager, warned this month in a statement that another dry winter could force officials to make voluntary measures mandatory.

    The four states at the headwaters of the river — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — also recently announced they plan to ask Congress to let them use federal money through 2026 for a program dubbed “strategic conservation.” It would resurrect a 2015 to 2018 pilot program that paid farmers to fallow land to cut water use.

    Camille Touton, bureau commissioner, tempered a warning during the water webinars about federal intervention — she called it “moving forward on the initiation of administrative actions” — with a vow to “find a collective solution to the challenges that we face today.”

    Touton and two top Interior Department officials are scheduled to address the conference on Friday.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Brittany Peterson in Denver, Sam Metz in Salt Lake City and Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed to this report.

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  • Wells are running dry in drought-weary Southwest as foreign-owned farms guzzle water to feed cattle overseas | CNN

    Wells are running dry in drought-weary Southwest as foreign-owned farms guzzle water to feed cattle overseas | CNN


    La Paz County, Arizona
    CNN
     — 

    Workers with the water district in Wenden, Arizona, saw something remarkable last year as they slowly lowered a camera into the drought-stricken town’s well: The water was moving.

    But the aquifer which sits below the small desert town in the southwestern part of the state is not a river; it’s a massive, underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years. And that water is almost always still.

    Gary Saiter, a longtime resident and head of the Wenden Water Improvement District, said the water was moving because it was being pumped rapidly out of the ground by a neighboring well belonging to Al Dahra, a United Arab Emirates-based company farming alfalfa in the Southwest.

    Al Dahra did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

    “The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” Saiter told CNN. The farm was “pumping and it was sucking the water through the aquifer.”

    Groundwater is the lifeblood of the rural Southwest, but just as the Colorado River Basin is in crisis, aquifers are rapidly depleting from decades of overuse, worsening drought and rampant agricultural growth.

    Residents and farms pull water from the same underground pools, and as the water table declines, the thing determining how long a well lasts is how deeply it was drilled.

    Office manager Brianna Davis, left, chats with manager Gary Saiter, right, at Wenden Domestic Water Improvement District.

    Now frustration is growing in Arizona’s La Paz County, as shallower wells run dry amid the Southwest’s worst drought in 1,200 years. Much of the frustration is pointed at the area’s huge, foreign-owned farms growing thirsty crops like alfalfa, which ultimately get shipped to feed cattle and other livestock overseas.

    “You can’t take water and export it out of the state, there’s laws about that,” said Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty, a well-drilling expert. “But you can take ‘virtual’ water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.”

    Residents and local officials say lax groundwater laws give agriculture the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited water as long as they own or lease the property to drill wells into. In around 80% of the state, Arizona has no laws overseeing how much water corporate megafarms are using, nor is there any way for the state to track it.

    But rural communities in La Paz County know the water is disappearing beneath their feet.

    Shallow, residential wells in the county started drying up in 2015, local officials say, and deeper municipal well levels have steadily declined. In Salome, local water utility owner Bill Farr told CNN his well – which supplies water to more than 200 customers, including the local schools – is “nearing the end of its useful life.”

    And in Wenden, water in the town well has been plummeting. Saiter told CNN the depth-to-water – how deep below the surface the top of the water table is – has dropped from about 100 feet in the late 1950s to about 540 feet in 2022, already far beyond what an average residential well can reach. Saiter is anxious the farms’ rapid water use could push the water table too low for the town well to draw safe water from.

    La Paz County supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN getting the state to act on – or even acknowledge – the region’s dwindling water supply has been a “frustrating” yearslong battle which has left her community feeling “forgotten.”

    Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here,” Irwin said. “That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”

    In 2018, Saudi Arabia finalized a ban on growing thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay to feed livestock and cattle. The reason was simple: the arid Middle East – also struggling with climate change-fueled drought – is running out of water, and agriculture is a huge consumer.

    But vast dairy operations are a point of national pride in the Middle East, according to Eckart Woertz, director of the Germany-based GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies. So, they needed to find water somewhere else.

    “They have all their cows there and they need feeding. That feedstock comes from abroad,” Woertz told CNN.

    Groundwater gushes into a cement canal near the Fondomonte farm in Vicksburg, Arizona.

    Valued at $14.3 billion, the Almarai Company – which owns about 10,000 acres of farmland in Arizona under its subsidiary, Fondomonte – is one of the biggest players in the Middle East’s dairy supply. The company also owns about 3,500 acres in agriculture-heavy Southern California, according to public land records, where they use Colorado River water to irrigate crops.

    Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled.

    “It gives you that sense you’re closer to the source,” Woertz added. “The sense that you own land or lease land somewhere else and have direct bilateral access [to water] gives you a sense of maybe false security.”

    In the high desert of Arizona, emerald-green fields stretch for miles alongside dry tumbleweeds and Saguaro cactus.

    The Fondomonte-owned Vicksburg Ranch near Salome is massive. The company spent $47.5 million to buy nearly 10,000 acres of land there in 2014, and it leases additional farmland from the state.

    Bill Farr, owner of Salome Water Company, looks at his water pump and water storage tank. Farr supplies water to the entire town of Salome and has since 1971.

    Hay bales are stored at Al Dahra Farms in Wenden.

    Huge storage facilities were erected to hold the harvests. Rows of small houses were built for the farm’s workers, all surrounded by flowering desert shrubs. Tractor trailers filled with bales of alfalfa hay rumble down the highway, which local officials told CNN they had to repair because of the increased agricultural traffic.

    The alfalfa on the trucks is eventually shipped to feed cattle in Saudi Arabia.

    “They’ve definitely increased production,” Irwin said. “They’ve grown so much since they’ve been here.”

    Almarai was transparent about why it wanted the land, according to an article on the purchase from Arab News: The transaction was part of “continuous efforts to improve and secure its supply of the highest quality alfalfa hay from outside the Kingdom to support its dairy business.”

    “It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources,” Arab News added.

    Representatives of Fondomonte declined an interview request for this story, but Jordan Rose, the company’s Arizona attorney, provided a statement: “Fondomonte decided to invest in the southwest United States just as hundreds of other agricultural businesses have because of the high-quality soils, and climatic conditions that allow growth of some of the finest quality alfalfa in the world.”

    Rose added the farm installed “the most technologically advanced conservation oriented watering systems available on the market.”

    Cacti dot the hillsides outside of Salome, Ariz. on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022.

    Indeed, there is nothing illegal about foreign-owned farming in the US. And many American farmers use the West’s water to grow crops which are eventually exported around the globe.

    But amid the worst drought in centuries, residents and officials have questioned the merit of allowing countries, which themselves are running out of water, unlimited access to a resource as good as gold in the Southwest.

    Cynthia Campbell, water resources management adviser for the city of Phoenix, has been watching the La Paz County water situation with frustration.

    Phoenix currently gets most of its water from local rivers and the Central Arizona Project, which diverts Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. But it could use rural groundwater as a safety net in the coming years if the city’s primary sources are further restricted.

    That is, if there is any groundwater left by then.

    “We are literally exporting our economy overseas,” Campbell said. “I’m sorry, but there’s no Saudi Arabian milk coming back to Southern California or Arizona. The value of that agricultural output is not coming through in value to the US.”

    Despite the ever-looming water crisis, people are still drawn to small Southwest towns like Wenden and Salome because of the low home prices and the freedom of desert living.

    While housing costs in the country rocket upward, rural Arizona has remained a stubbornly affordable place to live. Homes cost between $30,000 and $40,000, and residential taxes paid to the county are below $300 per year, Saiter, the head of Wenden’s water district and a longtime resident, told CNN.

    “People are able to afford to live here, versus Phoenix,” Gary’s wife, De Vona Saiter, told CNN. Median incomes in the county are low, “but you can still have a beautiful life.”

    The Saiters’ house and rental properties around town – as well as De Vona’s mother Gloria Kaisor’s home down the street – are decorated with hand-drawn art, gardens and antiques.

    Kaisor is a longtime resident who first moved to Wenden with her family in the 1960s. After living in Phoenix for years, she gravitated back to the rural area.

    “This is home,” Kaisor said. “You don’t hear a noise. It’s quiet. I don’t want to be around a lot of people. You can do whatever you want.”

    Yet the impacts of living near a corporate farm are starting to pile up.

    Kaisor’s home was inundated with silty, wet mud this summer. Rainfall runoff from a recent monsoon flood carried it from the farm right into Wenden. Gary Saiter believes Al Dahra farm staff have rerouted natural waterways, forcing the rainfall into town rather than out into the desert washes.

    Kaisor and her neighbors’ fences are reinforced with sheet metal to try to stop mud and water from coming into their houses, but Kaisor was trapped in her house during a storm earlier this year.

    “The whole property was full of mud,” De Vona Saiter said.

    Saiter speaks with his neighbors in Wenden in late October.

    Hard mud remains caked onto paved streets, a remnant of the August flood that saw silt from Al Dahra fields wash into Wenden.

    Al Dahra did not respond to CNN’s questions for this story, including questions about its water usage, the uptick in residential flooding and potential rerouting of natural waterways.

    The company did provide a statement to the Arizona Republic for a story published in 2019: “Water resources in Arizona must be managed wisely in order to preserve our quality of life and to protect the state’s economic health,” Al Dahra said. “The company is fully committed to Arizona and plans to remain here for the long-term.”

    Living near the Al Dahra farm also brings more frequent and alarming drought-related impacts.

    When it gets windy, a “dirt wall” of soil and dust whips up from the alfalfa fields, exacerbating the Saiters’ allergies. And most noticeably, the ground is literally sinking as the water below the surface gets pumped out.

    The floor in De Vona’s shop has sunk a couple inches, she said, and the ground around one well casing has sunk about a foot; so much the wellhead needed to be cut and resized.

    With all of this, Gary Saiter doesn’t care if the farm is owned by a company overseas. The way he sees it, it doesn’t make much of a difference who owns the farm; he just wishes they were better neighbors.

    “I am kind of ambivalent about the Saudis,” Saiter said. “You can’t control where people sell stuff, and it’s going to go somewhere.”

    “I just don’t like the crops they’re growing and the water they’re pumping,” he added.

    Evidence of a sinking floor due to excessive groundwater pumping at Mas Paz, De Vona's shop.

    Kari Avila, superintendent and athletics director for Salome High School, believes the farms are providing local economic benefits. Rose, Fondomonte’s Arizona attorney, told CNN in an email the company is the fourth-largest employer in the county.

    “They employ a lot of people,” Avila told CNN. “If they weren’t farming it, someone else would be. A lot of people are upset it’s not Americans farming.”

    Avila praised the farms for their internship programs and career fairs. Last year, Al Dahra donated an irrigation pump and generator to water Salome’s high school fields, which had been drying up. Avila said the pump installation for the field was fast and took just a few weeks.

    But even as the companies are trying to invest in the area, many still question whether those benefits are worth it as water disappears.

    “It’s great,” Irwin, the La Paz County supervisor said, “but if you can’t turn your faucet on in five years, that sh*t’s not going to matter.”

    The reason some rural residents feel powerless about the fate of their groundwater is because they say Arizona’s state lawmakers have thus far not acted to protect it.

    The last time the state passed regulations around groundwater was in 1980, with a law creating certain zones in mostly urban areas, where officials had to ensure they were replenishing underground aquifers and not pumping them dry.

    The laws governing the so-called active management areas, or AMAs, are strong compared to groundwater laws in other Southwest states, said Kathleen Ferris, a former top state water official and senior researcher at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

    But “outside of the AMAs, not so much,” Ferris told CNN.

    About 80% of the state falls outside the active management areas, with no restrictions on how much groundwater can be pumped and no way to monitor it.

    “It can’t get any worse” than Arizona’s lack of regulation on rural groundwater, Ferris said. “Let’s put it that way.”

    High desert landscape next to to Al Dahra Farms in Wenden.

    Groundwater overflow from afternoon irrigation puddles on Al Dahra farmland.

    Water officials can measure whether water levels in the aquifers are going up or down, but because groundwater is so lightly regulated in rural areas, they don’t have enough data to answer a crucial question: Exactly how much water is left?

    “That is one of the challenges of our state; you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke, the director of the state’s Department of Water Resources. “We do the best we can with the data and estimated data that we have, but it really begs questions about how much benefit we can really provide.”

    As the West’s water crisis grows more intense, groundwater reform has become a flashpoint in this year’s election campaigns.

    Arizona attorney general candidate Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has seized on the state’s practice of leasing public land to corporate farms, including more than 6,000 acres leased to Fondomonte, according to the state land department.

    A recent investigation by the Arizona Republic found Fondomonte – the second-largest agricultural lessor of Arizona land – is paying the state a heavily discounted rate which does not take their water usage into account.

    Mayes said she thinks the leases violate the state constitution and has vowed to cancel them if she’s elected.

    “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Mayes told Irwin in September, standing outside Fondomonte’s farm. “We can get these leases canceled, and we should. We are essentially giving our water away for free to a Saudi corporation, and that has to come to an end.”

    Irrigation systems run as the sun sets near Salome.

    The Arizona State Land Department is studying the state’s water resources in western Arizona, department spokesman Bill Fathauer told CNN. But he added it does not have the authority to implement additional groundwater restrictions.

    “The comprehensive data determined from these studies will allow the Department to make an informed decision about not only future land use in these areas but also help determine what the future value of the land is as well,” Fathauer said in an email.

    The kind of sweeping water reforms Arizona needs must ultimately come from the state legislature, says outgoing state House member Regina Cobb, a Republican.

    For years, Cobb tried to advance bills to allow local officials to regulate their aquifers. The bills never got a committee hearing, Cobb said, never mind making it to the floor for a vote. CNN reached out to Gov. Doug Ducey and top Arizona lawmakers in the state House and Senate for comment; none responded.

    As the Colorado River shrinks and Arizona’s share of the water continues to be cut, Cobb told CNN the state’s approach to groundwater has been unthinkable.

    “Why are we allowing a foreign company to come into Arizona – which is drought-stricken right now – and have a sweetheart deal [on leases], when we are trying to conserve as much water as we can?” she asked.

    “It boggles my mind.”

    Read more:

    The Colorado River provides drinking water and electricity to 40 million people. As its supply dwindles, a crisis looms

    As California’s big cities fail to rein in their water use, rural communities are already tapped out

    The West’s historic drought is threatening hydropower at Hoover Dam

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