Hundreds of new dams could mean trouble for our climate
▻http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-could-mean-trouble-our-climate
Sediment trapped behind dams, such as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, can become a feeding ground for #microbes that burp #methane.
Explore the River - Killing the Colorado - ProPublica
▻https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/explore-the-river
The Colorado River — the most important water source for 40 million people in the West — is draining. For a century, seven states engineered ways to wring ever more water from the river, defying all natural limitations. But now, the very water laws and policies that shaped progress are rendering the West more vulnerable to drought and less fit to adapt to climate change. Discover how the nation helped turn the Colorado into an artificial system by engineering water projects that now exacerbate instead of solve the problem.
Video : we are killing the Colorado.
▻https://www.facebook.com/propublica/videos/vb.13320939444/10153373104299445/?type=2&theater
How federal dollars are financing the water crisis in the West
▻https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/arizona-cotton-drought-crisis
https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/assets/photos/stangel_mediumAZ_39-1b4412791165a1eb3a578d2a55df0178a6b7a08353a125c209b0b4994261f6b2.jpg 
https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/assets/photos/stangel_mediumAZ_56-79f8621236e0089c42b0dd2914958d7277c2675b7b95900c641ca1143ed42db6.jpg 
https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/assets/photos/stangel_mediumAZ_10-de4d1c3827e1a43f6bb994f4f32c6c8dc031e6af71d0b8bcce444ca3785aa9f2.jpg 
Ground water is depleting in the Colorado River Basin - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/28/colo-a28.html
Ground water is depleting in the Colorado River Basin
By Stuart Winter
28 August 2014
A recent study of water loss in the Colorado River Basin since late 2004, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has determined that 75 percent of the loss came from underground sources. Seven western US states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California) rely on the Colorado River and its tributaries for water for both individual use and agriculture. It is estimated that agriculture by itself currently uses approximately 60 percent of Colorado River ground water.
Huge water pulse to bring Colorado river back from dead
▻http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129602.800-huge-water-pulse-to-bring-colorado-river-back-from-dead
On 23 March, it will begin its journey back from the dead. In an ecological experiment unprecedented in US history, seven states and two countries have signed an agreement to unleash a huge pulse of water designed to bring the river’s dwindling delta back to life.
[...]
To try to bring back this lost ecosystem, Flessa and his team are planning to release a one-time, 130-billion-litre pulse of water.
The water that will make up the pulse is currently being slowly released from behind the Hoover, Davis and Parker dams. It will collect behind the most southerly dam on the river, the Morelos, which sits on the Mexico-US border and normally diverts the last of the Colorado toward agricultural land.
The experiment isn’t just remarkable for its scale. It is also the first time water has crossed the US-Mexico border for environmental purposes – the result of years of negotiations between Mexican and US water authorities, as well as a host of NGOs. “As far as I know there has never been an agreement to deliver water for biological purposes,” says Michael Cohen of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. “It’s been in the works for arguably 20 years.”
Hormone-disrupting chemicals found in water at fracking sites
▻http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-fracking-health-20131217,0,5154343.story
Water samples collected at Colorado sites where hydraulic fracturing was used to extract natural gas show the presence of chemicals that have been linked to infertility, birth defects and cancer, scientists reported Monday.
The study, published in the journal Endocrinology, also found elevated levels of the hormone-disrupting chemicals in the Colorado River, where wastewater released during accidental spills at nearby wells could wind up. [...]
The process [of fracking] is exempt from some regulations that are part of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and energy companies do not have to disclose the chemicals they use if they consider that information a trade secret. [...]
Over the last three years, researchers have assessed more than 700 chemicals that could be used in the fracking process and estimated that about 100 are known or suspected EDCs [endocrine-disrupting chemicals]. [...]
Research into fracking’s possible effects on public health is in its early phase, and Nagel and other scientists said the study was a first step that warranted follow-up work
Construction of Hoover Dam
►http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/10/11/construction-of-hoover-dam
September 30, 2011 marked the 76th anniversary of the dedication of Hoover Dam. The dam straddles the border of Arizona and Nevada in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River and was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Rising 726.4 feet from its foundation, Hoover Dam was constructed in five years, beginning in 1931 and completed in 1936. Take a look back at its construction and history.
