On the Water Front

It’s Colorado River Day — a time to celebrate a dedicated stream of water funding

Colorado River

To mark Colorado River Day today, it seems fitting to celebrate Colorado’s 10-year journey to dedicating $50+ million a year to fund water projects and support the resource that makes Colorado so special: its water. And I’d like to briefly highlight three very different projects that have benefited from this vital new funding stream.

It started with the first Colorado Water Plan.

While drinking water utilities and large agricultural districts can often tap ratepayer fees to fund millions if not billions of dollars of improvement and maintenance projects, the same has not historically been the case for Colorado’s beloved rivers and streams. In 2015, the first Colorado Water Plan highlighted the urgent need to fill a gap for reliable, dedicated funding to support rivers, restoration, recreation, and aging agricultural infrastructure.

Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights makes creating a new funding stream extremely challenging, but a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision provided a new opening by eliminating a ban on state-based sports betting. In 2019, thanks in part to a bipartisan campaign supported by EDF, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and a host of other water users, Colorado voters approved Proposition DD, which legalized sports betting and dedicated the tax revenues from it specifically to fund water projects.

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Revisiting the first OpenET Applications Conference: how satellite-based data is transforming water, farm, and forest management 

This spring, hundreds of scientists, engineers, water managers, farmers and ranchers gathered in New Mexico to share and learn about how OpenET data is being used to advance water resources management. OpenET has radically improved access to data on evapotranspiration (ET) — or how much water plants and other vegetation consume. The result has been a flood of new applications of ET data in land and water management. 

This year’s convening in New Mexico was a first-ever chance to take stock of all the ways people are using OpenET. The conference cut across a wide range of geographies and sectors and revealed a quickly emerging, dynamic community of practice centered on the platform.  Read More »

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Revisiting a centuries-old approach to farming that embraces water scarcity.

As discussions at COP28 wrestle with climate impacts on global food and water security, we hear from a Hopi farmer on his thriving practice of dry farming and his hopes for shared learning in Dubai.

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The arid climate of the Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona receives a mere 8.5 inches of annual rainfall. For perspective, the yearly United States average is 30 inches. Despite this severe aridity, for over 3,000 years, the Hopi people have stewarded an extraordinary agricultural tradition centered on dry farming.

Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is an Indigenous Resiliency Specialist at the University of Arizona and a leading practitioner of Hopi dry farming — a form of agriculture that eschews irrigation in regions with limited water moisture. As a 250th-generation Hopi dry farmer, his ongoing traditional practices are a  testament to the power of cultural values and the potential of climate-adaptive farming. These ongoing Hopi farming practices defy modern notions of crop needs and vulnerability in areas with limited irrigation and water supply. Read More »

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Learning from shared scarcity: the Colorado River, the Yellow River and the world

One of the largest rivers in the world struggles to reach the ocean. Spread across a huge slice of a continent, its basin supports millions. Yet the weight of its work to irrigate and power booming farms and cities in an increasingly arid zone is straining the river to a breaking point. For many working in the western water space, this describes the Colorado. A river whose over-work and over-allocation, despite its fundamental role in sustaining life for half a continent, seems in many ways singular.  

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The Phoenix area can no longer grow on groundwater. What does this mean for Arizona?

Last week Governor Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) released a new analysis of groundwater in the Phoenix metro area. News broke around the country with headlines questioning the viability of future development in the region. But, what does this new analysis actually mean for Arizona? Let’s dive in. 

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EDF and partners launch interactive Grand Canyon website

A new website from EDF, American Rivers, and Four Corners Mapping provides a special look at the Grand Canyon through an educational, interactive journey. The interactive tool invites people to take a tour through the Grand Canyon and learn how the complexities of the Colorado River crisis impact the Grand Canyon and its surrounding communities and ecosystems through words, images, and short videos.  Read More »

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