AABP EP Awards 728x90

NOTEBOOK – ONE GOOD READ: Arizona to face the West’s first major water crisis in 2022

/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BR_web_311x311.jpeg

As Iowa and pretty much the central portion of the U.S. continue to get soaked in rain, here’s a story about not enough water. Next year, central Arizona farmers who have prospered for the past two decades using Colorado River water pumped to the state will lose 20% of that water when water shortage restrictions kick in. The Central Arizona Project, a vast 336-mile network of pumps, tunnels and pipelines that transports close to 500 billion gallons of water each year from the Colorado River, moves the water 3,000 feet uphill to Arizona’s densely populated central corridor, where 80% of the state’s residents live, as this BuzzFeed News article explains. “Some scientists and policymakers worry that using groundwater to compensate for shortages will lead the state back to the problem that CAP had temporarily solved: pumping the land dry.”