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SAN DIEGO -- A landmark accord that ended decades of acrimony over how Southern California gets its water is in jeopardy. A California appeals court is considering whether to overturn a 2003 pact that created the nation's largest farm-to-city water transfer and set new rules for dividing the state's share of the Colorado River. If a lower court ruling stands, consequences could ripple to six other Western states and Mexico, which also rely on the 1,450-mile river that flows from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. ... In January 2010, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee gutted the...

At a recent symposium held by the Center for American Progress, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar seemed to welcome decreasing water levels in the Colorado River, gleefully reporting that the decrease of 20% would cause conservatives to finally join them in addressing climate change. He quipped, “The seven [western] states ... are a bastion of conservatism. They recognize ... that the water supplies of the Colorado River are directly related to the changing of the climate.” But are decreasing water levels in the Colorado River related to climate change or are they caused by an increased demand for water from a...

Less than a mile downstream from one of the nation's best-known engineering marvels, the Hoover Dam, a second is taking shape. A soaring 1,900-foot span across the gorge created by the Colorado River on the Arizona-Nevada border should be completed this fall, eliminating much of a sometimes hourlong bottleneck as traffic creeps over the dam on the key route between Phoenix and Las Vegas. When it is scheduled to open in November, motorists will cross the longest bridge of its kind in the western hemisphere, with towering concrete columns that rise above a twin rib arch beneath them. "It's pretty...

Book Review: Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West ( University of California , 2008). By Wayne Lusvardi American newspaperman Louis Malcolm Boyd once wrote “there are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.” Recently, the world has begun to learn about the dealings of the first type but we still seem to be living in a bubble about the second. In this case, the second type is not a table pool player but James Lawrence Powell’s apocalyptic new book, Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future...

PHOENIX - For the third time since 1996, officials plan to unleash a manmade flood in the Grand Canyon next month in an effort to restore an ecosystem that was altered by a dam constructed on the Colorado River decades ago. The Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963 upstream from the Grand Canyon, permanently changed the Colorado River, transforming it from a warm, muddy, unpredictable force of nature into a cooler, clearer, tightly controlled water-delivery system. Without spring floods to flush the system and help rebuild beaches and fish habitat, native species suffered even as non-native fish thrived. The shift...

PALM SPRINGS - The flamboyant mayor of Las Vegas may have opened up a multistate water war last week, when he said "no one is going to allow us to go dry" and vowed to go after Southern California's water, it was reported today. Mayor Oscar Goodman's comments come as officials from Wyoming to Mexico contemplate the prospect of a shriveling Colorado River, where global climate changes might dry up much of the vast water supply for people from Tucson to Tijuana, and Denver to Los Angeles. Goodman reportedly said last week that farmers in California "will have their fields...

PHOENIX – Climate change and a growing demand for water could drain two of the nation's largest manmade reservoirs within 13 years, depriving several Southwestern states of key water sources, scientists warn. Researchers at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said last week that there's a 50 percent chance that lakes Mead and Powell will dry up by 2021, and a 10 percent chance the lakes will run out of usable water by 2013. ~~snip~~ Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border and the West's largest storage reservoir, and Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, have been hit hard by a...

Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, could go dry by 2021, a new study finds. The study concludes that natural forces such as evaporation, changes wrought by global warming and the increasing demand from the booming Southwest population are creating a deficit from this part of the Colorado River system. Along with Lake Powell, which is on the border between Arizona and Utah, Lake Mead supplies roughly 8 million people in the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego, among others, with critical water supplies. The system is...

The Colorado River, water lifeline of the West, is more vulnerable to deep and long-lasting droughts than was previously thought, according to a sweeping new scientific report. That's not exactly welcome news as Albuquerque and Santa Fe are shifting to Colorado Basin water to replace dwindling groundwater supplies .... By 2008, the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County water utility plans to begin adding Colorado River water, piped across the Continental Divide, to drinking water supplies. The new report echoes a warning government scientists have been sounding for more than a century: that persistent droughts— years with subpar rain— are a natural feature of...

Water in the western United States can be more valuable than gold and is often fought over more than property lines and politics. "Water can be a confusing issue, but it all stems from the fact that in the West, water is scarce," Pokrandt said. "Water law is really the law of scarcity. This is a chance for people to get their most basic questions answered." A study to be completed next week examines the possibility of diverting water from the Yampa River below Maybell for users on Colorado's Front Range. Such studies often raise more questions than they answer,...

It's 10-feet wide and extends 70-feet from where it's anchored to the rock. It has a deck made of tempered glass. That's a description of a new $30 million structure being built in the Grand Canyon that's expected to draw thousands... The Hualapai Indian Tribe's "Glass Walkway," a structure that will be suspended over the edge of the canyon some 4,000 feet above the Colorado River. It will be higher than any of the world's tallest free-standing skyscrapers. The walk way is horseshoe shaped, and its glass bottom will allow you to look straight down between to the canyon floor....

A controversial proposal to build what would be the largest desalination plant in the nation along the Huntington Beach coastline was approved early today after months of raucous debate. The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 to approve permits for Poseidon Resources Corp. to build a $250-million desalination facility next to the AES power station on Pacific Coast Highway at the city's southern edge. The desalination plant would produce as much as 50 million gallons of fresh water daily by tapping ocean water already pumped into the power station to cool the huge electrical facility. The plant still...

Representatives from the seven Colorado River states will take one last shot... If the states fail to come to an agreement, the best-case scenario has the Interior Department moving ahead and impose its own water-use guidelines on the states by the end of 2007. The worst-case scenario is a courtroom standoff that drags on for years, putting water supplies at risk if drought returns. "If we don't have a plan to address shortages and we get to shortages, then we have chaos,"... "That's not good for any state. I don't think there's an immediate risk ... but shame on us...

Compromise: The accord would divvy up the basin's water during dry years Representatives of the seven Colorado River Basin states announced Friday they have reached a tentative agreement about how the river will be managed during water shortages. The deal culminates a year of sometimes stormy negotiations between upper basin states Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, plus California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin over how the river's precious resource should be shared. The stakes are enormous. Interior Secretary Gale Norton late in 2004 gave the seven basin states until February to submit a joint proposal for an...

ESCALANTE, Utah - In the early 1960's, the nation's environmental movement cut its baby teeth on a fierce battle to stop construction of dams along the Colorado River. Two proposed dams were never built, but Glen Canyon dam, located in an unprotected area, was completed in 1963. Over the next 17 years, water backed up for 186 miles, forming Lake Powell and inundating Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of side canyons. The defeat was deeply felt. David Brower, who was executive director of the Sierra Club, called the death of Glen Canyon the greatest disappointment of his life. Edward...

Original Post: A comment to the rafters of the Colorado - Are you friends to Lake Powell??? Message: This just a breif comment to the rafters of the Colorado below Lake Powell - it is time you guys realized that if Lake Powell where not in place your life would be much different, different but not better. By the fact that Lake Powell regulates a constant flow providing assurance that your precious river will be raftable (even in the grasp of a all time historic drought) seems to have escaped many of you. Other rivers are not so Lucky -...

LAS VEGAS — The drought gripping the West could be the biggest in 500 years, with effects in the Colorado River basin considerably worse than during the Dust Bowl years, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday. "That we can now say with confidence," said Robert Webb, lead author of the new fact sheet. "Now I'm completely convinced." The Colorado River has been in a drought for the entire decade, cutting an important source of water for millions of people across the West, including Southern California. Environmental groups said the report reinforces the need to figure out a better...

AGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip. Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm. Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the...

<p>There's an old saying in the water world: "In the East, people take water for granted. In the West, people take it from each other."</p> <p>On Friday, leaders of four Southern California agencies signed a Colorado River water pact that, depending on your point of view, either represents a break from that legacy or a new chapter in hardball politics.</p>

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Thursday that farmers in a desert region of California are wasting Colorado River water and should receive less from the drought-stricken waterway next year.The bureau's unprecedented examination found that the 400 or so farmers in the state's southeastern corner should lose 275,900 acre-feet of water, or 9 percent of Imperial County's current allotment.The county, the state's poorest, pours about 1 trillion gallons of Colorado River water across sun-baked fields to produce $1 billion in food every year. It uses about 70 percent of the state's share of the river,...