Free Republic

California’s water use jumped dramatically in March, state officials said Tuesday, as one of the driest stretches on record prompted a wave of homeowners to start watering their lawns earlier than usual in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pleas for conservation amid a severe drought. Newsom last summer asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15% compared to 2020 as climate change intensified a drought that threatened to drain the state’s reservoirs to dangerously low levels. Water conservation increased gradually through December, aided by some intense fall and early winter storms that reduced water demand. But the first three...

A 29-mile convoy through southern Oregon, followed by a rally, followed by a direct appeal to the White House, and a decision by the Department of the Interior. That’s what it took to open up irrigation water for farmers in southern Oregon last week. It all started with one of the biggest protests you probably didn’t even notice. In a June 9 press release, the Bureau of Reclamation announced that it had restored the 140,000-acre-feet of water originally promised to farmers in the Klamath Basin at the beginning of the season: Today, the Bureau of Reclamation confirmed the 2020 water...

One of the reasons for the explosive growth in the sales of bottled water in the past two decades (the average American now drinks nearly 30 gallons of commercial bottled water per year, up from 1 gallon in 1980), is the disappearance of public drinking water fountains. In a recent Huffington Post piece and in the book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, I recount the disappearance of public water from major sports venues, such as the new stadium at Central Florida University (built with no water fountains at all), the removal of water fountains...

ULM, Ark., Nov. 5 — Rice farmers like John Kerksieck are on the brink of draining one of Arkansas' biggest aquifers dry. That alone is troublesome, in a state that gets almost 50 inches of rain a year. But even more confounding — since these Southern farmers will not be the last to find themselves in such a pickle — is the question of what to do about it. Most of the farmers want the government to send them replacement water from the White River. The Army Corps of Engineers and the state support a plan to spend more than...