[LWVNM Action] Fw: Preparing for a water crisis in the American West
Judy Williams
jkwilliams24 at gmail.com
Thu May 29 19:45:46 MDT 2025
I do get this, but thanks. Judy
On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 12:16 PM Richard Mason via Action <
action at mailman.swcp.com> wrote:
> Just in case you do not get NM In Depth
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> *From:* Trip at New Mexico In Depth <nmindepth at 12751787.mailchimpapp.com>
> *To:* "polirich at aol.com" <polirich at aol.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 28, 2025 at 08:15:18 PM MDT
> *Subject:* Preparing for a water crisis in the American West
>
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> The Midweek*By Trip Jennings*
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> Preparing for a water crisis in the American West
>
>
> Hello Richard,
>
>
> *Groundwater is rapidly declining in the Colorado River Basin, satellite
> data show, *read the headline.
>
> The words topped a news story
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=e3d5bf2c0f&e=abe34880ce>
> published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times
> by Ian James, who has reported on water in the West for years.
>
> The news is not good.
>
>
> “Scientists at Arizona State University examined more than two decades of
> satellite measurements and found that since 2003 the quantity of
> groundwater depleted in the Colorado River Basin is comparable to the total
> capacity of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir,” James reported.
>
> The overpumping of groundwater could have huge consequences for the seven
> Western states that rely on the Colorado River Basin, including New Mexico.
>
>
>
> “As surface water becomes less dependable, the demand for groundwater is
> projected to rise significantly,” James said of one of the study’s
> predictions. The study was published
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=c351ea635b&e=abe34880ce>
> in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Groundwater is a crucial
> buffer … but it is rapidly disappearing due to excessive extraction.”
>
> Surface water refers to the streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs that are
> vital to irrigation, water going to households and businesses, wetlands and
> wildlife. It is measured as annual runoff, or the amount of rain and
> snowmelt drainage left after the demands of nature, evaporation from land,
> and transpiration from vegetation have been supplied, according to the U.S.
> Geological Survey.
>
>
> Groundwater, on the other hand, refers to water in aquifers below the
> surface of the Earth, and is “one of the Nation's most important natural
> resources,” the Geological Survey explains. “Groundwater is the source of
> about 37 percent of the water that county and city water departments supply
> to households and businesses (public supply). It provides drinking water
> for more than 90 percent of the rural population who do not get their water
> delivered to them from a county/city water department or private water
> company.”
>
>
> In short, as rainfall and snowmelt decrease in the coming years,
> exacerbated by the effects of climate change, we will need to lean more on
> groundwater to keep our way of life possible.
>
>
> “If groundwater remains unprotected in large swaths of the southwestern
> U.S. and continues to disappear, it will dramatically limit food
> production,” Jay Famiglietti, the study’s senior author and science
> director for ASU’s Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, told James.
> “Groundwater is critically important in desert states like Arizona and
> desert cities like Phoenix and Tucson, and if it disappears, then it
> becomes an existential crisis.”
>
>
> New Mexico has experienced its shares of water woes, too, including a legal
> battle with Texas
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=3ec9158063&e=abe34880ce>over
> how much water each state is entitled to under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact.
>
>
> Looming over all this is the increasing aridification of the American West
> and “hotter climate extremes; drier soil conditions; more severe drought;
> and the impacts of hydrologic stress on rivers, forests, agriculture, and
> other systems,” according to a 2020 study
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=5028108fcf&e=abe34880ce>
> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
>
>
> The study the LA Times reported on is not so much a surprise as it is
> unsettling.
>
>
> Not a surprise because news organizations, including New Mexico In Depth,
> have covered
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=580ea977bf&e=abe34880ce>
> water and the effects of climate change for years. Here are a few of the
> stories we’ve reported over the past decade: New Mexico’s changing forests
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=1ad74d2cce&e=abe34880ce>,
> the strain on the Gila River
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=3b64e04953&e=abe34880ce>
> in southern New Mexico, the battle over whether to dam it or let it run
> wild
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=f4dad5ca0d&e=abe34880ce>
> and the stresses on the Rio Grande amid a withering drought.
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=e849fff455&e=abe34880ce>(Research
> shows that the last quarter century has likely been the driest in western
> North America in 1,200 years.) We did a year-long project in 2015-2016
> called At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=13b57e00fb&e=abe34880ce>
> .
>
>
> In other words, depleting water resources connected to climate change is
> not new news.
>
>
> Unsettling because it reminds all of us in the American West and Southwest
> there are serious challenges to our way of life.
>
>
> *NUMBER OF THE WEEK*
> 12
>
> As in 12 centuries, which is how long since it’s been this dry in the
> American West, according to research.
>
>
> What I’m consuming
>
>
> *We Exposed Fraud at Enron and WorldCom. Don’t Let History Repeat Itself.*
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>
> Whistleblowers at Enron and WorldCom, whose "spectacular falls revealed
> two of the largest accounting fraud scandals in American history," are
> sounding the alarm against a proposal by Republican lawmakers to eliminate
> the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a watchdog Congress created
> after those scandals to protect against accounting fraud and audit failure.
> I reported on the effects of Enron’s bankruptcy on Connecticut, which lost
> $200 million, in the early 2000s and saw how spectacular corporate
> implosions can affect all of us.
>
>
> *Egyptian archaeologists discover three tombs in Luxor*
>
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=76483601c2&e=abe34880ce>I’ve
> always been interested in the ancient world and Egypt was home to one of
> the earliest complex civilizations in human history.
>
>
> *The Magnetic Fields: Tiny Desk concert*
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=1c4d860805&e=abe34880ce>
> No one does melancholy mixed with humor quite like the Magnetic Fields.
> The song I Don't Want to Get Over You still makes me laugh while cringing
> at remembering long-ago breakups. And the Book of Love just makes me
> wistful and inspired.
>
>
>
> <https://nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&id=25b1770163&e=abe34880ce>
> Read the story we did with the High Country News on Indigenous students
> graduating from high school
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