The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that there was a 14% dip in hydropower in the U.S. this year. The vast majority of that decline is in the West. Less moisture and higher temps meant lower reservoir levels and decreased the ability to get energy from hydro dams. While utilities have long prepared for droughts, they’re becoming more frequent due to climate change.
Emergency water releases from reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell have begun to preserve the nation’s second-largest reservoir’s ability to generate hydroelectric power.
The government is expected to issue its first water shortage declaration for the river, which supplies more than 40 million people. That will mean hardships for farms, recreation and Indian tribes.
A Colorado analysis found farmer suicide rates rise in tandem with increased drought. Experts say a big challenge is that there are few counsellors and many guns in rural areas.
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP) — State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on notice that the continuing drought means a "substantial cut" in deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year.
Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the American Southw
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It's grim news for the western U.S. The latest maps show most of the southern half of the region is mired by drought, with the most extreme conditions centered over parts of Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.
Two major cyclones and a prolonged drought in 2019 are a reminder that Mozambique's residents are on the front lines of climate change. And they do not have all the resources they need.
After a year with good snowpack levels in the Rocky Mountains, some would say parts of the West are clear of the historic drought that lasted nearly two decades.
The Colorado River is short on water. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at a slate of proposed water projects in the river’s Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Two states in the U.S. West have work to do on a plan to combat the shrinking supply of Colorado River water that 40 million people depend on but that's threatened by a prolonged drought, a federal official said Friday.
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and state legislative leaders said Friday that approving a drought contingency plan before the end of January is their No. 1 priority during the annual session starting next week.
Water managers in the West met in Las Vegas last week for an annual conference, and on their agenda was figuring out how to deal with Lake Mead dropping to historically low levels.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Back-to-back California storms blanket the Sierra Nevada in snow, more than twice the snowpack level compared to this time last year, with winter still nearly two weeks away.
At the same time last year, the Sierra snowpack was 47 perce
