Post by abbey1227 on Jun 11, 2021 14:49:15 GMT
NBC News
The West is the driest it's been in 1,200 years — raising questions about a livable future
Ben Kesslen Fri, June 11, 2021, 5:53 AM
Trees are dying. Riverbeds are empty. Lake Mead's water level dropped to its lowest point in history, and Utah's governor asked residents to pray for rain.
Water is increasingly scarce in the Western U.S. — where 72 percent of the region is in "severe" drought, 26 percent is in exceptional drought, and populations are booming.
Insufficient monsoon rains last summer and low snowpacks over the winter left states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada without the typical amount of water they need, and forecasts for the rainy summer season don't show promise.
This year's aridity is happening against the backdrop of a 20-year-long drought. The past two decades have been the driest or the second driest in the last 1,200 years in the West, posing existential questions about how to secure a livable future in the region.
It's time to ask, "Is this a drought, or is it just the way the hydrology of the Colorado River is going to be?" said John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
A parched Sin City
Greater Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, home to more than 2.2 million people, and it gets just over 4 inches of rain in a good year.
Around 90 percent of the water comes from Lake Mead, the reservoir on the Colorado River formed by the Hoover Dam, which is currently 36 percent full.
The drought has been so persistent that the Southern Nevada Water Authority and many other groups in the region have spent the last 20 years preparing for a drier future.
"It isn't sneaking up on us," Entsminger said. "Since 2002, our population has increased close to 50 percent, about 750,000 people in the last 19 years or so, and over that same time our aggregated depletions from the Colorado River have gone down 23 percent."
The good news, he said, is that per capita water consumption is down by 40 percent. Indoor water is recycled in southern Nevada, where residents are paid to replace grass with drip-irrigated landscaping.
The West is the driest it's been in 1,200 years — raising questions about a livable future
Ben Kesslen Fri, June 11, 2021, 5:53 AM
Trees are dying. Riverbeds are empty. Lake Mead's water level dropped to its lowest point in history, and Utah's governor asked residents to pray for rain.
Water is increasingly scarce in the Western U.S. — where 72 percent of the region is in "severe" drought, 26 percent is in exceptional drought, and populations are booming.
Insufficient monsoon rains last summer and low snowpacks over the winter left states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada without the typical amount of water they need, and forecasts for the rainy summer season don't show promise.
This year's aridity is happening against the backdrop of a 20-year-long drought. The past two decades have been the driest or the second driest in the last 1,200 years in the West, posing existential questions about how to secure a livable future in the region.
It's time to ask, "Is this a drought, or is it just the way the hydrology of the Colorado River is going to be?" said John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
A parched Sin City
Greater Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, home to more than 2.2 million people, and it gets just over 4 inches of rain in a good year.
Around 90 percent of the water comes from Lake Mead, the reservoir on the Colorado River formed by the Hoover Dam, which is currently 36 percent full.
The drought has been so persistent that the Southern Nevada Water Authority and many other groups in the region have spent the last 20 years preparing for a drier future.
"It isn't sneaking up on us," Entsminger said. "Since 2002, our population has increased close to 50 percent, about 750,000 people in the last 19 years or so, and over that same time our aggregated depletions from the Colorado River have gone down 23 percent."
The good news, he said, is that per capita water consumption is down by 40 percent. Indoor water is recycled in southern Nevada, where residents are paid to replace grass with drip-irrigated landscaping.
That is one of the region's many ways of confronting a 21st century Colorado River with significantly less water than it had a century ago.
Have Nevada and California ever explained WHY they want to steal water from other states?......... instead of just desalinating salt water on their own doorsteps?
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