
A simmering revolt against groundwater cutbacks in California
New agencies find making sustainability plans is hard, but easier than persuading growers to accept them.
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New agencies find making sustainability plans is hard, but easier than persuading growers to accept them.
Is California “dammed out?” Or could increasing reservoir capacity help the state ride out the new era of aridification?
With grant support, a Klamath Falls, Oregon, newspaper sought “kernels of solutions” for a divided community’s problems with drought and resource depletion. The lead reporter reflects on his experiences.
When a historic drought gripped California and the Bay Area, water managers came together to keep drinkable water in the homes of vulnerable areas in Marin and Contra Costa Counties. Two veterans of those efforts describe the dramatic process, and consider lessons it offers for today’s imminent drought.
Three months after the first market trades of California water futures, a conversation about economic forces and an essential material for life.
What has been done and what still needs to be done to untangle physical, financial and political barriers blocking fair access to clean drinking water in California?
Farmers, large and small, are beginning to grapple with what the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act means for them. Many expect to see cutbacks on pumping once the program is fully implemented in 2040.
With new rules coming into effect, farmers and municipalities using groundwater must either find more water to support the aquifers or take cropland out of use. To ease the pain, engineers are looking to harness an unconventional and unwieldy source of water: the torrential storms that sometimes blast across the Pacific Ocean and soak California.
New rules and new technology are giving farmers and managers a better look at groundwater supplies.
The fraught statewide conditions that led to passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014? They afflicted Ventura decades earlier.
Lake Mead on the Colorado River has become an hourglass of shrinking water supplies. Can lower-basin states turn back the clock?
From multiple tongues came multiple terms for how water flows, and how it works in the West.
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Associate editor
Geoff McGhee specializes in interactive data visualization and multimedia storytelling. He is a veteran of the multimedia and infographics staffs at The New York Times, Le Monde and ABCNews.com. MORE »
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Syler Peralta-Ramos is a member of the Stanford class of 2020. He has lived in Wilson, Wyoming his whole life and developed a keen interest in nature photography and conservation from a young age, inspired by the multitude of photographers that congregate in the Teton region as well as his parents who also share a love for photography.
‘& the West’ is published by the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, which is dedicated to research, teaching, and journalism about the past, present, and future of the North American West.
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