Mother Jones
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Science papers don’t generate much in the way of headlines, so you’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of one called “Groundwater Depletion During Drought Threatens Future Water Security of the Colorado River Basin,” recently published by University of California, Irvine, and NASA researchers.
But the “water security of the Colorado River basin” is an important concept, if you are one of the 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River for drinking water, a group that includes residents of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, and San Diego. Or if you enjoy eating vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach over winter. Through the many diversions, dams, canals, and reservoirs the river feeds as it snakes its way from the Rockies toward Mexico, the Colorado also provides the irrigation that makes the desert bloom in California’s Imperial Valley and Arizona’s Yuma County—source of more than two-thirds of US winter vegetable production.
Read this article:
40 Million People Depend on the Colorado River. Now It’s Drying Up.
