Stats for nerds
3recommend
4mentions
3people
2022–2024years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The problem isn't activists, it's the climate. The Colorado River system has been in a drought for 20 years, and for all we know it'll be in a drought for 100 more. (It's not clear to me this is anthropogenic, my impression is that it's a natural cycle of drought exacerbated by global climate change, but it's beside the point.)
Read up on the Colorado River Compact. Where the Water Goes by David Owens is a very accessible primer. The tl;dr is that the water was portioned out to the Western states (including Arizona) during an unusually wet period, and we're now in a period of drought. They simply didn't understand this in 1922. With the advent of dendrochronology, we now understand that this river system is prone to droughts that can last hundreds of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_me...
- If anyone wants to dive deep into the water rights and history of hydrology + politics in the Colorado River Basin, I highly recommend Where the Water Goes by Davin Owen. The books starts at the headwaters near Rocky Mountain National Park and follows the river down to the Gulf of California. It addresses every major issue, water right and major construction project along the way.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317824/where-the-wa...
- Add to that list "Where the Water Goes" by David Owen.
- So there is another book called Where the Water Goes. In that book the author talks about how if the Salton Sea does disappear the accumulation of dust, fertilizer and other less than great chemicals may be picked up by winds and significantly reduce air quality for the region. So we're between a rock and a hard place at this point.
