By Robert Marcos

In a drier future, if Southern California’s municipalities lost all access to imported water, they’d need twenty to thirty new desalination plants – each producing 50 million gallons of water a day, to make up for the 2.6 million acre feet of water that the region’s 19 million residents currently use.¹

Unfortunately we know that desalination plants take far too long to build, require far too much energy, and at $3000 to $3600 per acre foot – the water they produce is far too expensive.² This is why the state’s official “water supply strategy” promotes the development of wastewater recycling and stormwater capture first, with desalination considered as a last resort.³

Wastewater Recycling

The recycling of wastewater is a favored solution because it treats water that’s already within the system. Wastewater recycling – also known as water reclamation, follows a multi-stage purification process that accelerates the Earth’s natural water cycle. It typically begins with primary treatment, where wastewater is held in settling tanks to allow heavy solids to sink and be removed. In secondary treatment, oxygen is added to aeration tanks to help naturally occurring microbes consume dissolved organic pollutants. The process then moves to tertiary treatment, involving fine-grained filtration through sand, coal, or membranes, followed by disinfection using chlorine or ultraviolet (UV) light to kill remaining pathogens. For potable (drinking) water applications, advanced systems may add reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation to remove trace chemicals and salts. This treated water is then distributed through a dedicated “purple pipe” system, separate from standard drinking water lines, for uses like landscape irrigation, industrial cooling, and groundwater replenishment.⁴

San Diego’s multi-year “Pure Water” wastewater recycling project is expected to cost over $5 billion, with Phase 1 alone costing approximately $1.5 billion and future phases projected to significantly raise the total expense. Phase 1 is expected to produce 30 million gallons of potable water daily, with the entire system potentially costing $5 billion or more.⁵

Stormwater capture

In a city like Los Angeles, stormwater capture is the process of collecting rainfall and urban runoff from open spaces, rooftops, and streets to either use directly or—more commonly—to allow it to soak into the ground to recharge local groundwater basins for future use. This is achieved through large-scale infrastructure like spreading grounds and dams, as well as community-level projects like rain gardens and permeable pavement. While the infrastructure itself is highly reliable—with the county currently capable of capturing enough water to serve millions of people during wet years—the overall supply remains inconsistent because it depends entirely on highly variable seasonal rainfall. For instance, capture totals can swing drastically from roughly 120 billion gallons in a record wet season to just 11.9 billion gallons in a dry one, making it a valuable but unpredictable supplement to the region’s imported water sources.⁶

The cost to create a stormwater capture system in Los Angeles varies drastically based on scale, ranging from $100 for a simple home rain barrel to over $70 million for massive regional infrastructure projects.⁷

by Robert Marcos

As record-breaking heatwaves and droughts become more frequent, natural sources of water that insects and wildlife have historically depended upon are drying up. In response a growing number of homeowners are transforming their yards into life-saving “hydration hubs”. In addition to serving the needs of animals these simple actions help people to move from regret to action and then even pleasure as they watch deer, opossums, bees, and other wild animals obtain lifesaving water.¹

Deer act as vital ecosystem engineers by managing plant growth and promoting biodiversity through their grazing habits. As they move across various habitats, they disperse seeds via their fur and waste, aiding in forest regeneration and the spread of native flora. Furthermore, they serve as a primary food source for large predators, while their carcasses provide essential nutrients to scavengers and the soil, maintaining a balanced and nutrient-rich food web.²

Opossums act as “nature’s sanitation workers” by providing essential pest control and waste removal services right in our backyards. As opportunistic scavengers, they keep neighborhoods clean by consuming overripe fruit, roadkill, and organic waste that might otherwise attract less desirable pests like rats or roaches. They also help maintain ecological balance by hunting common garden nuisances such as snails, slugs, and even venomous snakes, to which they have a natural immunity. Furthermore, their low body temperature makes them highly resistant to rabies, meaning they are far less likely to spread the disease than other urban wildlife.³

Pollinators like bees, butterflies, and bats are the silent backbone of our local ecosystems, facilitating the reproduction of nearly 80% of the world’s flowering plants and one out of every three bites of food we eat. By transferring pollen between blooms, they ensure the production of the fruits, seeds, and nuts that feed both humans and wildlife, while simultaneously maintaining the genetic diversity necessary for resilient landscapes. Beyond agriculture, their work supports the growth of oxygen-producing plants and provides the foundational habitat for countless other species, making their presence a direct indicator of a healthy, thriving environment.⁴

Red-tailed hawks are apex predators that maintain ecological balance by regulating the populations of small mammals, including rodents, rabbits, and squirrels. By controlling these populations, they provide free pest control for both urban environments and agricultural lands, which helps prevent overgrazing of vegetation and crop damage. Beyond their role as hunters, they are valuable indicator species; their presence and reproductive success reflect the overall health and biodiversity of the local ecosystem. Additionally, their large nests can provide secondary habitat for smaller bird species, such as house sparrows, while their opportunistic scavenging contributes to natural nutrient cycling.⁵

by Robert Marcos

I was dumbfounded to hear a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey say, “I wish we could date this water so we’d have a better idea where it came from”. We were standing alongside a tiny creek that led into Colorado’s White River, and the scientist was essentially wondering if the water in the stream came from rainfall, or had risen from a shallow aquifer. Generally rainfall would be “younger” and water from aquifers would be older – sometimes by many thousands of years. But how could anyone possibly determine the age of water?

Answer: by analyzing its chemical composition.

The USGS dates groundwater using chemical and isotopic tracers whose concentrations change in known ways over time in the atmosphere and then get preserved in recharging water. For young groundwater—typically less than about 50–70 years old—USGS commonly uses substances like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), and tritium and its decay product helium‑3. These are measured in specialized facilities such as the Reston Groundwater Dating Laboratory, which analyzes dissolved gases and transient tracers in samples from wells and springs. The key idea is that atmospheric histories of these tracers (for example, industrial production curves for CFCs or tritium from nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s–60s) provide a time stamp that can be matched to what is found in the water.¹

One example is tritium-based age classification – where a single measurement of tritium is used to classify groundwater as “modern” (recharged in 1953 or later), “premodern” (before 1953), or a mixture of the two. The year 1953 roughly marks the onset of elevated tritium from atmospheric nuclear testing, making it a convenient boundary between older, background conditions and post‑bomb‑pulse recharge. By comparing measured tritium to location‑ and time‑specific thresholds, USGS can quickly determine whether a sample reflects recent recharge that may carry contemporary contaminants or older water that has been isolated from the modern surface for decades or longer.

For slightly older water—hundreds to tens of thousands of years—USGS uses longer‑lived isotopic tracers such as radiocarbon (carbon‑14) dissolved in inorganic carbon. Radiocarbon decays predictably over time, so its remaining fraction in groundwater indicates how long it has been since the water equilibrated with atmospheric carbon at the surface. At even greater ages, other isotopes and noble gases may be used to extend the window into tens of thousands of years or more. No single method is perfect; each tracer has limitations, such as contamination from local sources, mixing of waters of different ages, or chemical reactions that alter concentrations. As a result, USGS often applies multiple tracers together and interprets them with groundwater flow models to better constrain age and understand the distribution of ages in a well or discharge area.

USGS dates groundwater because age is fundamental for managing water resources and assessing vulnerability to pollution. Age indicates how quickly water moves through the subsurface, how long it will take for land‑use changes to affect wells and springs, and whether contaminants like nitrates, pesticides, or per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) reflect current practices or legacy inputs. By linking age to contaminant trends, managers can judge whether improvement efforts will show benefits in years, decades, or even longer. Age information also supports sustainable yield estimates, helps distinguish short‑term variability from long‑term change, and reveals dependencies on very old water that may take thousands of years to replenish.

by Robert Marcos

The water in Amargosa Valley is a scientific oddity in that it serves as a living time capsule, and it supports life in one of our planet’s harshest environments. The Amargosa River flows underground for roughly 185 miles – surfacing only occasionally to create lush oases in the Mojave Desert.

Here are some remarkable aspects of this unique water system:

Ancient “Fossil Water”: Much of the groundwater in the Amargosa Basin is fossil water that was recharged during the last Ice Age, between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago. The water travels through a massive regional aquifer of limestone and dolomite rock from sources as far away as the Spring Mountains.¹

A “Bottomless” Cavern: The system feeds Devils Hole, a water-filled limestone cavern in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Divers have never found its bottom, but it has been explored to depths of over 500 feet.

Geological Sensitivity: The water level in Devils Hole is so precisely tuned to the Earth’s crust that it acts like a giant seismograph. Massive earthquakes thousands of miles away in Japan or Mexico have caused “tsunamis” several feet high inside this tiny desert pool.²

Extremophile Habitats: The valley’s springs support the Devils Hole pupfish, which has the smallest habitat of any vertebrate species on Earth. These fish survive in water that is 93°F and nearly devoid of oxygen, conditions that would be lethal to most other fish. The pupfish are closely monitored by an interagency group – consisting of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Scientists from these agencies frequently count the number of fish, collect their eggs, and are are undertaking captive rearing and “population augmentation” (which means they release captive-bred fish into the water in order to support the existing population, which is struggling).

Global Biodiversity Hotspot: Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is home to 26 endemic species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else on Earth. This high concentration of unique life, isolated in “islands of water” within the Mojave Desert, has earned the area the nickname “The Galapagos of the Desert”. The endangered fish include the Devils Hole pupfish, Warm Springs pupfish, Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish, and the Ash Meadows speckled dace. Several unique species of endemic plants include the Amargosa niterwortthe Ash Meadows milkvetch, the Ash Meadows blazingstar and Spring-loving centaury.³

Deep-Fault Thermal Springs: The heat in local thermal springs, such as those near Tecopa, is likely caused by deep water circulation along faults rather than a shallow volcanic heat source. The geothermally-heated water in the Amargosa Valley – including the water at Devils Hole, is heavily influenced by the region’s limestone and dolomite bedrock. As rainwater from the nearby Spring Mountains moves through deep underground fractures, it is heated by the Earth’s core and dissolves various minerals along the way.⁴

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

Water that’s banked in Lake Mead is officially called “Intentionally Created Surplus“, or ICS. The ICS allows major water users to store conserved or unused Colorado River water in the reservoir for their future use. It’s probably obvious to most of you but since Lake Mead serves as a reservoir for the lower basin, the ICS is primarily a program that serves water agencies in the lower basin.¹

As of April 12, 2026, Lake Mead’s water volume was 8.41 million acre-feet, or roughly 32% of its total capacity. But while writing this article we were made aware that we should subtract Lake Mead’s deadpool – which is estimated at 2.5 million acre feet of water that cannot be utilized because Hoover Dam’s water intake towers and turbines are physically positioned too high to draw that water.² Therefore the approximately 2.67 to 3.47 million acre feet of that water that’s currently banked represents somewhere between 44% and 58% of the 6 million acre feet of water that’s available in Lake Mead.

Here’s a list of the water agencies and the estimated amount of water that each of them have currently banked in Lake Mead –

Arizona: currently holds approximately 500,000 to 600,000 acre-feet in its dedicated ICS accounts.

California: As of May 2026, California has roughly 1.2 to 1.4 million acre-feet of water banked in Lake Mead through the ICS and other conservation programs. Major participants include the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Imperial Irrigation District, and the Palo Verde Irrigation District.⁴

Nevada: As of May 2026, Nevada has approximately 954,000 acre-feet of water banked in Lake Mead through the ICS program. This total represents a major portion of Nevada’s overall “water savings account,” which includes several different banking locations and programs.⁵

Gila River Indian Community: As of May 2026, the Gila River Indian Community has banked approximately 320,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead through the ICS program. The Community also contributed larger amounts of water to the reservoir through multiple conservation programs. Since 2019, the Community has contributed roughly 850,000 acre-feet to Lake Mead. This includes ICS, mandatory cuts, and “system conservation” water that remains in the lake permanently to boost elevation rather than being banked for future withdrawal. The Community committed to leaving 125,000 acre-feet per year in the reservoir for 2023, 2024, and 2025. These efforts, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, have collectively added about two feet to Lake Mead’s elevation. New agreements signed in late 2024 and 2025 involve infrastructure projects like lining irrigation canals that can save an additional 73,000 to 78,000 acre-feet over the next decade.⁶

Mexico: As of May 2026, Mexico has approximately 200,000 acre feet of water banked in Lake Mead through the ICS program and related binational agreements. Mexico was granted the right to store water in Lake Mead following a 2010 earthquake that damaged its irrigation infrastructure. By 2026, these stored volumes have stabilized at around 200,000 acre-feet as Mexico uses the lake as a buffer against shortages.⁷

by Robert Marcos

Last week the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, along with tribal leaders, offered to leave somewhere between 700,000 to a million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River system through 2027–2028. The states described it as more than 3.2 million acre-feet of savings by 2028 and a way to stabilize Lake Mead and Lake Powell while longer-term negotiations continue.¹

What caught my eye about this story is that Mexico – which by law had received 1.5 million acre feet of Colorado River water annually, was already conserving some of that water due to a previous agreement that promised to conserve 400,000 acre-feet between 2023–2026.²

Reportedly, farmers south of the border are unhappy with these arrangements. Farmers in Mexicali Valley said they feel frustrated with the mandatory Colorado River water conservation, and they reported that they’ve been “cheated” out of resources they desperately need to survive. While Mexico agreed to specific water reductions as part of a binational plan with the U.S., many farmers in the Valle de Mexicali have reached a breaking point due to unpaid compensation.³

The prevailing sentiment of farmers in Mexicali Valley is characterized by the following:

Financial Betrayal: Many farmers in Northern Baja’s district 14 agreed to leave thousands of acres of land fallowed in order to conserve Colorado River water – in exchange for $4.5 million dollars in direct payments. However, they claim the Mexican government failed to pay them, which has left these farmers without any income whatsoever.⁴

Opposition to New Water Laws: Recent sweeping changes to Mexico’s national water law have stripped long-held water rights away from farmers, consolidating control in the hands of the federal government. Farmers view this as a move to prioritize urban centers like Tijuana and Ensenada over agricultural needs.

Sovereignty Concerns: There is a strong feeling that the Mexican government is surrendering national sovereignty by complying with U.S. water demands while its own agricultural sector suffers from “death” through deprivation.

Escalating Resistance: Farmers have responded with aggressive protests, including blockading major trade routes at the U.S.-Mexico border with semi-trucks and seizing control of critical dams. Some have even threatened to “spill” their water or return to farming—even if unprofitable—just to prevent the government from redirecting it elsewhere.⁵

by Robert Marcos

In 2013 Southern California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was retired eleven years ahead of schedule. This was because of severe, premature wear in the tubes of its replacement steam generators that led to a radioactive leak and made the cost and regulatory uncertainty of a full repair unfeasible for its operators.¹ Worse, the closure occurred just after ratepayers in San Diego, Orange, and Riverside Counties had spent $1.88 billion for an overhaul of the plant.² A year later the California Public Utilities Commission approved a $4.7 billion settlement where ratepayers were made responsible for approximately $3.3 billion of the plant’s closing costs, to be paid over a 10-year period.³

Ratepayers continued to pay for “undepreciated net investments” in the retired nuclear plant—essentially paying off the remaining debt for construction and equipment that had not yet been fully depreciated before the early shutdown. Even after the shutdown, utilities were allowed to collect funds for maintaining safety and security at the retired site.⁴

The San Onofre debacle illustrates how utilities use regulatory “cost recovery” and “stranded asset” mechanisms to pass billions in losses from failed or retired facilities onto ratepayers. Nationally, this system allows investor-owned utilities to maintain profits even after large projects fail, as seen with coal plant retirements and canceled transmission lines.⁵

How Ratepayers get Soaked for closed power generation facilities

Utilities nationwide use several key tactics to recover costs from assets that no longer produce power:

Stranded Asset Recovery: When a plant like San Diego’s San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant shuts down prematurely, utilities often seek to recover their remaining “undepreciated investment”. For San Onofre, a controversial settlement originally placed $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion shutdown cost on ratepayers over 10 years.⁶

Guaranteed Returns on Failed Investments: Utilities typically enjoy built-in profit margins (often around 9-10%) on their infrastructure investments. Even after a plant is shuttered, they may continue to collect these returns. In the San Onofre case, regulators eventually reduced the shareholder return to less than 3% for the retired assets, which still left customers paying for the principal investment.

Replacement Power Costs: When a major facility goes offline, utilities must buy electricity from elsewhere. Ratepayers often bear these “purchased power” costs. San Diego and Southern California customers saw estimated costs of $350 million to $1.1 billion just for replacement electricity following the San Onofre outage.

Decommissioning Surcharges: Long-term cleanup and waste storage costs are frequently funded through special ratepayer-backed accounts. Decommissioning San Onofre is estimated to cost $4.7 billion, much of which was pre-funded by customers during the plant’s operating years.

The “Uneconomic Dispatch”

This model extends beyond nuclear power to fossil fuels and infrastructure:

Coal Plant “Uneconomic Dispatch”: Utilities nationwide continue to run expensive coal plants that cannot compete with cheaper gas or renewables because they can recover fuel and operation costs from customers. This “uneconomic dispatch” cost U.S. consumers an estimated $24 billion from 2015 to 2024.

Securitization: Some states use “securitization”—issuing low-interest bonds to pay off a utility’s remaining investment in a closed plant. While this can lower customer bills compared to standard utility returns, it still ensures the utility is paid in full for a non-working asset.

Failed Infrastructure: Similar to the faulty steam generators at San Onofre, ratepayers have been held responsible for abandoned projects like PG&E’s scrapped transmission line to Canada ($20 million) and Duke Energy’s retired Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida ($1.3 billion in bonds).

Vertical agriculture using shipping containers that recycle fish water is a method known as containerized aquaponics. This system creates a closed-loop, symbiotic ecosystem where fish and plants mutually benefit one another within a highly controlled environment.¹

How the Recirculating System Works

The process mimics natural pond ecosystems through a cycle of nutrient exchange. Fish (typically tilapia, catfish, or trout) are raised in tanks at the base of the container. They produce waste rich in ammonia as they are fed. Beneficial bacteria in the system’s biofilters convert this toxic ammonia into nitrites and then into nitrates, which serve as a natural fertilizer for plants. This nutrient-rich water is pumped upward to irrigate rows of plants stacked vertically in trays or towers. As the plants absorb the nutrients, they act as a natural filter, cleaning the water. This purified water is then gravity-fed or pumped back down to the fish tanks to begin the cycle again.²

Key Components in a Shipping Container Farm

Housed in standard 20-or 40-foot containers, these units include specialized technology to maintain the ecosystem.
Climate Control: HVAC systems regulate temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels regardless of external weather.
LED Lighting: Tailored light spectrums simulate sunlight and optimize plant growth year-round.
Automation & Sensors: Smart systems monitor pH levels, oxygen saturation, and nutrient flow, often allowing for remote management via smartphone.
Renewable Energy: Some modular units, like those from FarmPod, use solar panels to power pumps and lights, making them off-grid capable.³

Benefits and Efficiency

Water Conservation: These systems use up to 90–95% less water than traditional soil-based farming because the water is constantly recycled.
High Yield in a small footprint: A single container can produce the equivalent of 1 to 4 acres of traditional farmland output.
Urban Adaptability: Because they are modular and mobile, they can be placed in parking lots, on rooftops, or in urban “food deserts” to provide hyper-local produce.
Chemical-Free: The closed-loop nature eliminates the need for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, producing organic-quality crops and fish simultaneously.⁴

by Robert Marcos

In 2022, University of California Davis published the results of a three-year study on covers crops, which was carried out on ten commercial farms and research sites in California’s Central Valley. The study examined the impact of winter cover cropping on soil health and water retention in irrigated agricultural systems with a focus on almond and tomato crops, which are two of the most common crops grown in the region.¹

Three cover crop systems were included in the study and then compared with adjacent control fields that were left bare, at the same site. The systems included: 1) a cover crop in processing tomato fields; 2) a cover crop planted in between rows of almond trees; and 3) allowing whatever native vegetation was available to grow in between the almond tree rows. The planted cover crops were a mix of legumes, grasses, and brassicas.

The results were impressive. Researchers found that the cover crop fields had higher levels of soil organic matter, soil nitrogen, and microbial activity, indicating improved soil health. In addition, the cover crop fields had higher levels of water infiltration and retention, meaning that they were better able to hold onto water during periods of drought or water stress. The researchers found that the cover crops did not compete with cash crops for water, and that the same amount of water used in the control fields without cover crops was able to support the same amount of crop yield in the cover crop fields. In one case in Davis, there was heavy rainfall at one point during the study. The water loss via evapotranspiration was greater in the bare control plot, showing that use of cover crops improved water retention.

The study provided important evidence of the benefits of winter cover cropping in California’s Central Valley, particularly for improving soil health and reducing water usage in agricultural systems. The findings suggest that cover crops can help farmers make more efficient use of their water resources, potentially reducing the need for additional irrigation, and providing environmental benefits such as reduced erosion and improved water quality.

Top 5 Cover Crops for use in the Western US

For the Western United States – including the arid regions of California, Arizona, and Nevada, the best nitrogen-fixing cover crops are selected for their drought tolerance and ability to thrive in either high heat or mild winters.²

1. Cowpea: Best For: Summer heat in low-elevation deserts. Highly drought-tolerant with a taproot that can reach up to eight feet deep to access water. It thrives when temperatures exceed 100° F and can fix roughly 100–175 lbs of nitrogen per acre. The ‘Iron Clay’ variety is widely recommended for use in the Southwest.
2. Alfalfa: works best for long-term soil restoration. Often called the “queen of forages,” alfalfa is a perennial legume with deep roots that break up subsoil and reach nutrients deep in the earth. It is one of the most powerful nitrogen fixers, capable of producing 250–500 lbs of nitrogen per acre.
3. Crimson Clover: Used as winter cover in the Southwest or for spring cover in the north. A fast-growing annual that establishes quickly in the fall to provide winter protection. It is frequently used in mixtures with radish to improve soil structure while fixing roughly 70–150 lbs of nitrogen per acre.
4. Hairy Vetch: is excellent as a winter-hardy coverage and weed suppression.
   Why It Works: It grows slowly in the fall but resumes vigorous growth in the spring, creating a thick mat that smothers weeds. It is known for high nitrogen fixation (over 100 lbs per acre) and performs well in the cooler, non-agricultural environments of the West.
5. Lablab: works best during the summer-to-fall transition in Arizona. Lablab is specifically noted for its performance in the hot weather of central Arizona. It produces high biomass and can contribute 50–200 lbs of nitrogen per acre. Unlike some other summer legumes, it continues vegetative growth late into the year without flowering immediately, offering more flexible termination dates for growers.

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

They say that bad news will travel around the world three times while good news is still putting its shoes on, which is exactly how I feel about this news about our water use: Our transition from coal-fired power generation to wind and solar has turned out to be one of the most effective ways to conserve our nation’s fresh water.

Transitioning from coal-fired power generation to renewable wind and solar has significantly reduced water consumption, and has provided critical relief to water-stressed regions. While coal plants once competed directly with agriculture and municipalities for freshwater, the shift to renewables allows billions of gallons of water to remain in local ecosystems and aquifers.¹

The electric power sector uses a large amount of water, mostly for cooling. Thermoelectric power plants (including natural gas, nuclear, and coal plants) boil water to create steam, which spins a turbine to generate electricity. The steam leaving the turbine must be cooled back into water to be used to generate more electricity. Plants withdraw water from nearby rivers, lakes, or oceans and pass that water through the steam leaving the turbine. That process cools and condenses the steam back into water. In 2021, 73% of the utility-scale electricity generated in the United States came from thermoelectric power plants.²

Traditional coal-fired power plants are incredibly water-intensive – requiring approximately 19,185 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, (primarily for cooling), while wind and photovoltaic solar power generation requires no water – except for periodic washing to remove dust and bird droppings. Nationally, replacing the remaining coal fleet with wind and solar could decrease electricity-related water consumption by over 99%, potentially making 2.6 billion cubic meters of water available for other uses each year.³

Environmental benefits

Protecting Local Ecosystems: Retiring fossil fuel plants directly restores local river health. For instance, some subbasins are projected to see a 57% increase in annual streamflow by 2050 as plant withdrawals cease, benefiting local agriculture and wildlife.

Efficiency Gains: The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the changing energy mix—led by the rise of renewables—is responsible for roughly 80% of the downward trend in water withdrawals by the electric power sector.

Climate Resilience: This is a critical shaft for drought-prone regions. In the American West, moving to low-water energy sources leaves much-needed freshwater in its natural environment.

Regional Shifts in Water Stress

The impact of this transition has been most visible in arid regions where coal production and cooling previously dominated local water use. Coal plants in states like Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico have historically consumed enormous volumes of surface water from the Colorado River and other critical basins. Retiring these plants is projected to significantly curtail annual water withdrawals, with some rivers seeing a net increase in streamflow of up to 57% by 2050.⁴

In Texas and California replacing fossil fuel generation with wind and solar PV can decrease water consumption by over 98%. This shift is particularly impactful in Texas, which has seen the largest absolute reduction in coal generation in the U.S. over recent years.⁵

In China a transition toward renewables in northwestern regions (like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang) has been essential for alleviating “extremely high” water stress. Research shows that closing coal mines in these areas leads to a rapid restoration of Terrestrial Water Storage, increasing water availability by an average of 18.8 mm per year through groundwater recovery.⁶

by Robert Marcos

A landmark 2015 USGS study revealed that overall water consumption in the United States had declined even though our population had increased. A study in 2025 showed that that downward trend has continued. Scientists involved in the study reported that the decline has been driven by significant efficiency gains in the power and manufacturing sectors, and by improved household conservation.¹

The EPA reported that municipal efforts to conserve water have been paying off. This includes the use of water saving faucets, toilets, and showers, plus the recycling of waste water. Meanwhile – due to climate change, other parts of the world have seen their demand for fresh water rise by as much as 40%.²

Detailed Comparison of Water Use (2015 vs. 2025)

Total Withdrawals: In 2015, the U.S. withdrew approximately 322 billion gallons per day, the lowest level reported since 1970. By 2025, total withdrawals have continued to stabilize or decline despite population increases, largely driven by significant reductions in thermoelectric power and industrial sectors.³

Wastewater Reuse: A major shift in the decade leading to 2025 was the rapid expansion of the municipal wastewater reuse market. Total reuse capacity was projected to increase by 61% by 2025, with potable reuse (treatment to drinking water quality) rising from 15% to 19% of total reuse capacity.⁴

Residential Consumption: The average American used 82 gallons per day at home in 2015. By 2025, widespread adoption of EPA WaterSense certified fixtures has allowed typical families to reduce this consumption by at least 20% through more efficient toilets, faucets, and showerheads.⁵

Positive developments in major sectors

Power generation: Electrical power generation has reduced the use fresh water by shifting from coal to renewables, like wind and solar, which require little to no water, and by implementing dry-cooling technologies. These improvements have dropped U.S. water withdrawal intensity from 14,928 gal/MWh in 2015 to 11,857 gal/MWh in 2020, as the energy mix shifts toward less water-intensive sources.⁶

Agricultural irrigation: Farmers have improved water efficiency by transitioning from flood irrigation to advanced pressurized systems, like drip and micro-irrigation. These systems deliver water directly to the plant’s root zone, significantly reducing losses from evaporation and runoff. Additionally, many operations now utilize precision agriculture technologies, including soil moisture sensors and GPS-guided machinery, to apply water only when and where it is needed based on real-time data. Complementary land management practices like conservation tillage (no-till) and the use of cover crops further enhance water retention by improving soil health and reducing surface evaporation.⁷

Industrial/Mining: The mining industry is conserving fresh water primarily by transitioning to closed-loop recycling systems that treat and reuse process water multiple times within a facility. Many companies are also adopting thickened tailings technology, which removes more water from waste streams before disposal, and utilizing alternative sources like desalinated seawater or treated municipal wastewater. Additionally, the shift toward dry stacking—where waste is filtered into a sandy substance—significantly reduces the water lost to evaporation or seepage in traditional storage ponds.⁸

Geographic and Economic Shifts

Regional Demand: By 2025, regions like the Southwest and Colorado River basin faced increased pressure due to drought, leading to a 16.9% decline in specific sectors like golf course irrigation through aggressive management.

Investment: The market for municipal reuse and wastewater infrastructure reached an estimated $11 billion by 2025, with Florida and California accounting for over 80% of this activity.

Note about groundwater use estimates

While researching this article I was concerned the accuracy of ground water use estimates. It’s widely-known that most wells are not metered and that many farmers, ranchers, and land owners, are opposed to metering the groundwater they pump. But it appears that the USGS estimates ground water use with highly sophisticated satellite technology like those below.

Satellite Monitoring Methods

GRACE, (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment): These twin satellites “weigh” the Earth by measuring minute changes in gravity caused by the movement of water. By subtracting surface water and soil moisture from total water storage, scientists can estimate changes in deep groundwater.

InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar): This radar technology measures millimeter-level changes in land elevation. When aquifers are over-pumped, the ground above them often sinks (subsidence), which InSAR detects and uses to infer water level declines.

Landsat: This program monitors land surface characteristics, such as crop health and heat. The USGS uses this to map evapotranspiration, which helps estimate how much groundwater is being pumped for irrigation.
Satellite Telemetry: This is the most common operational use of satellites. The USGS equips thousands of physical wells with instrumentation that transmits real-time water level data directly to USGS ground stations via satellite.

by Robert Marcos

There’s a 33-to-1 disparity in the cost of Colorado River water that’s being utilized by the residents of San Diego, versus the residents of Brawley – both of which are in Southern California and are just 97 miles away from each other. The disparity stems from differences in two primary areas: water rights and conveyance. San Diego’s municipal water rates – which are the fourth highest for a major city in the United States, are also inflated by the city’s massive investment in recycling and desalination.

Brawley’s Senior Water Rights

Residents of Brawley are served by the Imperial Irrigation District, which holds some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River, in particular among major users. The IIDs rights predate the 1922 Colorado River Compact and fall under “present perfected rights” which make them an exceptionally high-priority. The IID holds rights to approximately 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, making them the largest single user of Colorado River water.¹

It’s also worth noting that the IID pays nothing for the 3.1 million acre feet of water they’re entitled to. They do however pay multiple-millions of dollars for the operation and maintenance of California’s Imperial Dam, and the All-American Canal. Farmers and residents of the Imperial Valley pay only $20 per acre-foot for the water itself, since they only need to cover local delivery costs.² Meanwhile San Diego, which does not have senior rights must buy water at market rates. Beginning in 2026 San Diego pays the Metropolitan Water District $671 per acre-foot of water—33 times what Brawley pays for the same water.

Infrastructure and Transportation

The city of Brawley is adjacent to the All-American Canal, so it requires a minimal amount of infrastructure to move the water into town. Whereas San Diego’s imported water utilizes two large canal systems: The Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct from the State Water Project, and the Colorado Aqueduct that travels 242 miles from Lake Havasu in the east. San Diego – in the face of chronic drought and the increased stress of climate change on imported water sources, has made long-term commitments to making water conservation a permanent way of life. Historically dependent on importing up to 90% of its water from the Colorado River and Northern California, the region is now aggressively diversifying its water portfolio to ensure sustainability: aiming to reduce demand through mandated restrictions, turf replacement programs, and widespread public education.

San Diego is preparing for a drier future

San Diego has launched massive and innovative infrastructure projects, most notably the “Pure Water San Diego” program which aims to produce nearly half of the city’s water locally by 2035, with the use of advanced water purification technology that will convert recycled wastewater into high-quality drinking water.

In 2015 the region pioneered the use of desalination with the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which is the largest desalination plant in the United States. The plant produces up to 54 million gallons of high-quality drinking water per day, which is about 10% of the water San Diego needs, at a cost of about $3,800 per acre foot.

But the stability that these projects promise comes at a high price. Residents who were already frustrated with high energy bills now face skyrocketing water bills too. Water rates in San Diego have seen steep increases, with projections showing a 14.7% hike in 2026, followed by another 14.5% in 2027. These are largely to pay for the Pure Water program in addition to higher costs for imported water. Residents and critics have expressed frustration that water rates could rise by 44% over four years, causing many to question the rising cost of living in the region.

by Robert Marcos

Residents in the San Diego region currently pay between $3,707 and $5,179 per acre-foot of water¹, making San Diego’s municipal water the fourth most expensive in America – after San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.²

For years San Diego relied almost entirely on a single source of municipal water: the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. However, a severe drought in the early 1990s exposed the region’s vulnerability. This crisis sparked a multi-decade strategy by the San Diego County Water Authority to diversify its portfolio, effectively trading lower costs for long-term supply reliability.³

To break its dependence on Los Angeles, San Diego secured its own water rights through massive, high-cost agreements. This included a historic 2003 deal with the Imperial Irrigation District in the Imperial Valley, where the city pays farmers to conserve water and send it west. This “ag-to-urban” transfer, combined with paying to line the All-American Canal to prevent seepage, provided a secure but significantly more expensive supply than traditional imported water.⁴

The region further increased costs by investing in “drought-proof” technology, most notably the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which opened in 2015. While it provides about 10% of the region’s water, it is the most expensive source in the portfolio, costing roughly $2,700 per acre-foot—far higher than imported Colorado River water. San Diego is also currently building the multi-billion dollar Pure Water recycling system to turn wastewater into drinking water, adding another layer of heavy infrastructure debt to monthly bills.⁵

Paradoxically, San Diegans’ success in water conservation has also contributed to rising rates. Because the Water Authority built massive infrastructure based on much higher population and demand projections, it must now spread the fixed costs of those debts and maintenance across fewer gallons of water sold. When residents use less water, the price per gallon must increase to cover the billions in outstanding loans for dams, pipelines, and treatment plants.⁶

Today the cumulative effect of these investments has made San Diego’s water rates among the highest in the country, with total bills projected to rise over 60% by 2029. While other California cities face potential shortages during droughts, San Diego often has a surplus; however, the cost of that security is borne entirely by local ratepayers through a complex “chain reaction” of wholesale price hikes and debt service.⁷

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

For decades, the desert town of Borrego Springs – in eastern San Diego County, thrived upon what appeared to be an unlimited supply sunshine and groundwater. Lacking an alternative supply of water this isolated community was entirely dependent on the prehistoric groundwater that was lying beneath it. This finite resource acted as the lifeblood for two competing interests: a flourishing agricultural sector and a steady expansion of residential and resort development.¹

The valley’s economic foundation was laid by industrial-scale agriculture. Beginning in the mid-20th century, farmers realized that the high water table and intense desert sun created perfect conditions for citrus, grapes, and nursery crops. Water was pumped aggressively to transform the arid landscape into a lush production hub. At its height, agriculture accounted for roughly 70% of the valley’s water consumption, providing the jobs and revenue that initially put Borrego Springs on the map.

Parallel to the farming boom, the town marketed itself as a serene, upscale getaway, leading to significant residential growth. Developers built golf courses, luxury resorts, and sprawling retirement communities that promised a “green” lifestyle in the middle of the desert. These amenities required massive amounts of groundwater to maintain verdant fairways and private pools. For years, the abundance of the aquifer made it easy to ignore the fact that the community was growing far beyond the environment’s natural recharge rate.²

However, the “golden age” of water use eventually hit a breaking point as the aquifer began to rapidly decline. Decades of extracting more water than the earth could replace caused the water table to drop by more than 100 feet in some areas. As the ground sank and the cost of pumping from deeper depths rose, the sustainability of the valley’s twin economies came into question. The very resource that invited growth became the primary limiting factor for its future.³

Today, Borrego Springs stands as a cautionary tale of desert over-extraction. Under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the community has been forced to implement drastic water reductions, leading to the fallowing of many farms and strict mandates for residents. While the groundwater once fueled a dream of limitless desert prosperity, its depletion now dictates a new era of conservation, proving that growth without replenishment is ultimately a race toward an empty well.⁴

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

The Salton Sea is a paraodox for a multitude of reasons. The most striking is that the Salton Sea can exist only as long as the Imperial Valley continues to drain 1.3 million acre feet of salt and pesticide-laden runoff into it, annually. That’s exactly how much the Sea loses to evaporation every year. So ironically, the more Colorado River water that’s conserved by Imperial Valley’s farmers the faster the Salton Sea is going to dry up.¹

Fact: In 1924 the federal government officially designated the Salton Sea as a permanent repository for agricultural drainage, which authorized the Imperial Irrigation District to use it as a drainage basin for irrigation runoff. This was necessary because increasing salt levels in the soil were threatening to put thousands of acres of highly-productive farmland out of production.²

The Imperial Valley functions as a critical “winter salad bowl” for the United States, yet this massive agricultural output creates a severe environmental health paradox for its residents. While intensive farming produces millions of tons of vegetables, it relies on practices like agricultural burning and heavy pesticide application that release fine particulate matter and toxic chemicals into the air. This pollution is compounded by a shrinking Salton Sea, which acts as a basin for agricultural runoff; as it dries, it exposes toxic lakebed dust containing arsenic and pesticides that wind then carries into local communities. Consequently, children in the Imperial Valley suffer from asthma at rates nearly double the California state average, with roughly one in five children diagnosed—a direct cost of the region’s agricultural success borne by its most vulnerable residents.³

The Salton Sea’s Top 10 Contradictions

1. It’s a vital yet highly-polluted refuge: The Sea acts as a critical Pacific Flyway habitat for millions of birds, yet it is highly contaminated with agricultural toxins, heavy metals, and selenium.
2. Sustained by Wastewater: The lake requires constant inflow of polluted farm drainage (tailwater) to survive; restricting this agricultural runoff is necessary for water quality but speeds up its drying.
3. Agriculture vs. Air Quality: Farming irrigation sustains the lake, but as water efficiency increases, less water reaches the sea, accelerating the exposure of dry lakebed (playa) and the resulting toxic dust storms.
4. Species Management vs. Habitat Collapse: State agencies work to protect endangered species, but the increasing salinity is killing the fish and food sources those species need.
5. Environmental Destruction as Restoration: Major restoration projects often involve breaking up existing, albeit shrinking, habitats to create smaller, managed ponds.
6. Terminal Lake Reality: It is a closed basin that cannot flush itself, meaning all contaminants from decades of agriculture are trapped and concentrated indefinitely.
7. Water Transfers vs. Regional Health: The Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) transfers water to urban areas, reducing inflows to the sea and damaging local communities’ health for external economic gain.
8. Natural vs. Artificial Conflict: It is managed as a wildlife refuge but was created entirely by a catastrophic engineering failure of a canal, resulting in a fragile “artificial” ecosystem.
9. Salinity vs. Stability: Efforts to reduce nutrient inflow (to curb algae) can lead to faster shrinking, while allowing nutrients causes massive fish die-offs and odor.
10. The “Green” Paradox: Developing the area for green energy—namely lithium extraction—requires long-term stability in a region deemed too dangerous for human health due to toxic air. 

by Robert Marcos

The concept of eco-nihilism has emerged as a somber byproduct of the modern climate crisis, representing a shift from proactive environmentalism to a philosophy of futility. Unlike traditional environmentalism, which is rooted in the hope of preservation and restoration, eco-nihilism posits that the ecological collapse of the planet is already underway and ultimately irreversible. The growth of this movement is largely fueled by the persistent gap between scientific warnings and political action. This increase in nihilistic environmental beliefs has been driven by several factors:

The “Foregone Conclusion” mindset: Many people, especially Gen Z, view climate catastrophe as inevitable. This leads to a “who cares” or “carpe diem” attitude, where long-term dreams are abandoned in favor of living only for the moment because the future feels “canceled”.

Perceived Futility: Seeing a lack of significant action from governments and corporations can make individual efforts (like recycling or reducing carbon footprints) feel meaningless.

Betrayal Trauma: Psychologists note a sense of “moral injury” or betrayal among youth who feel that older generations and leaders have failed to protect the planet, leading them to lose trust in the world’s underlying order and meaning.

Large-scale studies highlight the depth of this existential distress –

Frightening Future: A landmark 2021 survey of 10,000 young people (ages 16–25) across 10 countries found that 75% believe the future is “frightening”:

Impact on Daily Life: Over 45% of respondents in that same study reported that their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily functioning.

Choosing Not to Have Children: Nearly 40% of young people globally are hesitant to have children due to climate change.

“Optimism” Nihilism vs. “Doomism”

While “climate doomism” often leads to paralysis and inaction, some adopt a form of Optimistic Nihilism. They accept that the world as they know it might end, but use that realization to lower the pressure of societal expectations and focus on immediate, small-scale kindness and personal joy.

Many climate activists and psychologists warn that nihilism can be a “luxury” or a coping mechanism that leads to compliance with the status quo, whereas “therapeutic hope”—acting as if change is possible—is necessary for mental resilience and actual progress.

by Robert Marcos

Climate change is significantly disrupting global coffee production by altering the specific environmental conditions—mild temperatures and predictable rainfall—that coffee plants require to thrive. These shifts are leading to reduced yields, lower bean quality, and a dramatic decrease in land suitable for cultivation.

Key Impacts on Coffee Production

Drastic Yield Reductions: Research indicates that for every increase in average air temperature, coffee production can decrease by approximately 14%. Top producers like Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia have already experienced significant yield losses due to extreme heat and prolonged droughts.

Loss of Suitable Land: Projections suggest that up to 50% of the land currently used for coffee farming could become unproductive by 2050. This is forcing farmers to migrate to higher, cooler elevations, which is often limited by available terrain and can lead to further deforestation.

Accelerated Pest and Disease Spread: Warmer, wetter conditions are expanding the range of devastating threats like coffee leaf rust (a fungus) and the coffee berry borer (a beetle). These pests are now reaching higher altitudes that were previously too cool for them to survive, causing billions in damages.

Declining Bean Quality: Rising temperatures cause coffee cherries to ripen too quickly, resulting in smaller beans with less complex flavor profiles and lower acidity. This particularly threatens the specialty coffee market, which relies on the delicate Arabica variety.

By Robert Marcos

As of early 2026, many American cities face critical threats to their municipal water supplies due to a combination of overdrawn aquifers, shrinking reservoirs, and aging infrastructure. While historically associated with the Southwest, water stress has increasingly impacted the Northeast and Midwest due to infrastructure failures and shifting climate pattern

Here are twenty American cities most threatened by a potential reduction of municipal water supplies:

Phoenix, AZ: Rapid population growth and heavy reliance on the Colorado River, which is facing record-low supply levels.

Las Vegas, NV: Highly dependent on Lake Mead, which has hovered near “dead pool” levels where water can no longer flow downstream.

Los Angeles, CA: Relies on water imported from hundreds of miles away; recent wildfires have also exposed weaknesses in emergency water-flow capacity.

San Antonio, TX: Its primary source, the Edwards Aquifer, is under intense pressure from drought and high demand.

Miami, FL: Faced with “saltwater intrusion,” where rising sea levels push salt water into the freshwater aquifers used for municipal drinking water.

El Paso, TX: Situated in the Chihuahuan Desert with very few local water sources; it is racing to open a large-scale water purification facility in 2026.

Salt Lake City, UT: Threatened by dwindling snowpack and the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake, which affects regional groundwater recharge.

San Diego, CA: Faces chronic drought and heavy reliance on external sources, leading to massive investments in desalination and recycling.

Atlanta, GA: Struggling with aging, century-old pipes that suffer frequent major breaks, leading to multiple citywide states of emergency.

Lincoln, NE: Highly vulnerable to extreme climate swings and drought that impact its regional water table

Chicago, IL: Despite its proximity to Lake Michigan, the city faces significant water loss due to aging infrastructure and stressed inland aquifers.

New York City, NY: Massive demand and future climate pressure, combined with “subsidence” (sinking land), strain its massive tunnel delivery system.

Denver, CO: Declining snowpack in the Rockies has significantly reduced the flow of the rivers the city depends on.

Jackson, MS: Suffered a near-total system collapse due to decades of underfunding and storm damage, leaving residents without safe water for weeks.

San Jose, CA: Dealing with overdrawn aquifers that have led to significant land sinking and infrastructure damage.

Riverside, CA: High population growth and limited local supply have created a narrow margin of water safety.

Corpus Christi, TX: Its reservoirs have reached dangerously low levels, forcing the city to spend hundreds of millions on new groundwater projects.

Santa Fe, NM: A small city with extremely high vulnerability to prolonged drought due to its limited catchment area.

Philadelphia, PA: Faces increasing risk from saltwater moving up the Delaware River, which can contaminate municipal intakes.

Mathis, TX: A critical example of a small municipality where the only water source, Lake Corpus Christi, reached such low levels that intake valves risked drawing sludge. 

Western water law must evolve from rigid allocation toward flexible, climate‑smart governance that treats scarcity as the new normal rather than as a temporary emergency. This means rebalancing private rights, public interests, and ecological needs as hydrologic baselines shift.¹

First: Prior appropriation’s “first in time, first in right” framework must incorporate stronger rationality and waste limits that reflect hotter, drier conditions, so senior rights cannot indefinitely lock in inefficient or low‑value uses while communities and ecosystems face crisis. Enforcing existing public interest and beneficial use doctrines can gradually reorient supplies toward municipal, tribal, and environmental needs without immediately dismantling the system.²

Second, law must explicitly integrate surface and groundwater, recognizing their physical connectivity and managing them conjunctively rather than independently. This includes permitting and monitoring currently under‑regulated aquifers, tying new pumping to basin‑wide sustainable yield, and curbing withdrawals that quietly undermine river flows and senior rights.³

Third, states need adaptive institutions—water banks, drought reserves, and public or tribal “water trusts”—that can temporarily or permanently acquire rights for critical uses and instream flows. Well‑designed markets and compensated transfers can move water from low‑value irrigation to cities, habitat, and cultural uses while softening political resistance from existing right holders.⁴

Finally, western water law must better protect ecosystems and vulnerable communities by embedding minimum environmental flows, tribal water security, and rural drinking water reliability into baseline allocation rules, not as afterthoughts. Climate change is making yesterday’s assumptions about snowpack and river yield obsolete, so western water law must become more precautionary, data‑driven, iterative, and able to adjust allocations as science reveals a rapidly changing hydrology.⁵

While it looks like a dusty, silver-gray desert shrub, guayule – which originated in Northern Mexico, is essentially a “living rubber factory. As of 2026 the plant gaining serious traction as a potential savior for farmers in the American Southwest—particularly in Arizona and California—who are facing catastrophic cut to their use of Colorado River water.¹

Why Guayule may be a “Rescue” Crop

Farmers in the West are in a bind: water intensive crops like alfalfa, corn, and cotton are becoming nearly impossible to grow with dwindling water allotments. Guayule is stepping into that gap for several reasons:

Extreme Water Efficiency: Guayule uses roughly 50% less water than cotton or alfalfa. In Pinal County, Arizona, it’s estimated that switching to guayule could save 15% of the total agricultural water usage.²

Heat & Salt Tolerance: It doesn’t just survive the desert heat; it thrives in it. It can also handle the high-salinity soil that often plagues fields where irrigation water has evaporated over decades.

Domestic Rubber Security: Currently, almost all the world’s natural rubber comes from Hevea trees in Southeast Asia. Guayule provides a domestic, “Made in the USA” source of rubber for tires and medical supplies.³

Hypoallergenic Latex: Unlike traditional rubber, guayule latex lacks the proteins that cause “Type I” latex allergies, making it a premium material for surgical gloves.

The “Catch”

The hurdle isn’t growing the guayule; it’s the infrastructure. Farmers can’t switch overnight because they need specialized processing plants to extract the rubber from the shrub’s bark. However, companies like Bridgestone have been scaling up commercial-grade tire production using guayule, signaling that the supply chain is finally catching up to the climate reality.⁴

Other Resilient Contenders

While Guayule is the heavy hitter for the Southwest, a few other “underreported” crops are being trialed to rescue Western and Plains farmers in 2026:

Kernza: A perennial grain with 10-foot-deep roots. It doesn’t need to be replanted every year, preventing soil erosion and sequestering massive amounts of carbon.

Teff: An ancient Ethiopian grain that is highly drought-tolerant and serves as a high-value, water-wise forage for horses and livestock.

Amaranth: A “pseudo-cereal” that requires very little water and produces highly nutritious seeds and leaves, often used in health-food markets.

Hemp: Industrial hemp requires significantly less water per kilogram than cotton and other crops. So it can flourish with less irrigation, making it ideal for regions with scarce water resources. Hemp’s deep roots improve soil structure, which aids in water retention and prevents soil erosion and its cultivation helps to minimize agricultural runoff.

by Robert Marcos

In the past two to three years there’ve been important advances both in enteric methane‑reducing feed additives and in manure‑focused technologies, and several options have progressed from the laboratory to commercial use.

What’s new?

3‑NOP (Bovaer): Now the most advanced commercial additive, approved in 60+ countries and marketed in the U.S. by Elanco, with typical methane reductions of about 30% in dairy and beef cattle at very low doses. It works by inhibiting a key enzyme in the rumen’s methanogenesis pathway without harming animal performance¹.

Red seaweed and bromoform products: Asparagopsis‑based seaweed supplements can cut enteric methane by over 80–90% in controlled studies, and work is shifting toward purified bromoform or standardized products rather than raw seaweed to control variability and safety. Several pilot trials are underway in Australia, the EU, and the U.S., but broad regulatory approval is still pending².

Other additives under study: Research programs (e.g., Teagasc, CSU AgNext) are testing oils, grain‑industry by‑products, probiotics, and other inhibitors; some trials in housed cattle report up to 30% methane reduction with no productivity loss, though pasture‑based delivery remains a major challenge³.​

Adoption status: A recent technical review notes that methane‑inhibiting feed additives are now the fastest‑emerging enteric solution, with strong private investment but limited on‑farm uptake so far due to cost, regulation, and farmer skepticism⁴.

by Robert Marcos

Carbon capture has moved from niche demonstrations to early commercial deployment, with rapid progress in new materials, direct air capture plants, and conversion of CO₂ into products. But unfortunately its high cost and the challenge of upscaling it restricts its large-scale implementation.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) covers technologies that trap CO₂ from large sources (power plants, cement, steel), move it, then either store it underground or use it in products. It complements cutting emissions at the source rather than replacing them; most climate scenarios that hit net‑zero use some CCUS for hard‑to‑abate sectors.

Main types of capture

Post‑combustion: CO₂ is removed from exhaust gases after fuel is burned, typically using chemical solvents; it is the main option for retrofitting existing plants and factories.

Pre‑combustion: fuel is converted to a mixture of hydrogen and CO₂ before burning, and the CO₂ is separated at high pressure; more common in new industrial or power processes.

Oxy‑fuel combustion: fuel burns in nearly pure oxygen, producing a flue gas that is mostly CO₂ and water, which makes capture easier but requires expensive oxygen production.

Direct air capture (DAC): large fans pull ambient air through filters or solvents that bind CO₂; the captured CO₂ is then concentrated and stored or used.

New materials and efficiency gains

New sorbents such as metal‑organic frameworks (MOFs) act like highly porous “sponges” for CO₂ and have enabled lab systems that reach around 99% capture while cutting energy use versus traditional solvents. Recent MOF‑based systems report about a 17% reduction in energy requirements and roughly 19% lower operating costs compared with older capture setups, mainly by improving how CO₂ is adsorbed and released.​ Solid sorbents and adsorption processes are gaining patent share as industry shifts away from classic liquid amine systems that have higher energy penalties.​

Nanotechnology is a hot area: experimental nanomaterials and membranes promise lower‑pressure, lower‑energy capture, and one new nanofiltration membrane platform has been reported to make certain carbon capture steps several times more efficient and up to about 30% cheaper.

Where the captured CO₂ goes

Geological storage: CO₂ is compressed and injected deep underground into depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline formations, where it is intended to remain trapped for centuries or longer.

Utilization: captured CO₂ can be used to make synthetic fuels, chemicals, and building materials, or for enhanced oil recovery; there is growing focus on converting CO₂ electrochemically into carbon monoxide, methane, or other feedstocks using renewable electricity.

Emerging processes link capture directly with conversion (for example, “power‑to‑gas” that turns CO₂ and hydrogen into methane), offering energy storage and product value but still facing efficiency and cost hurdles.​

2026: the Promise vs. the Reality

Activity is accelerating: patent analyses show strong growth in CCUS and DAC, with particular emphasis on new materials, electrochemical processes, and better heat and mass‑transfer engineering to cut costs.​ Direct air capture is operating at small but growing scales; it attracts attention because it can reduce atmospheric CO₂ directly, but it remains energy‑intensive and expensive per ton compared with capturing from large point sources.

Policy incentives, such as tax credits and industrial decarbonization mandates, are driving more projects in heavy industry, especially in countries like the United States and Canada. But key concerns remain: high capital and operating costs, the need for extensive CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure, and uncertainties about the integrity of long-term storage.

by Robert Marcos

As the American West gets hotter, farmers will need more water to irrigate the same amount of crops¹. More water will also be required to cool the generators that will supply energy to an ever-increasing number of air conditioning systems in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses².

Why hotter air means thirstier crops

Warmer air has a higher vapor pressure deficit, so it “pulls” more moisture out of soil and plant leaves, increasing evapotranspiration.​ This means that to get the same crop yield, farmers must apply more water per acre because a larger fraction of applied water is lost to the atmosphere rather than staying in the root zone.

Earlier snowmelt and reduced snowpack in Western mountains expose soils sooner to heat and sun, drying them out faster and further increasing irrigation needs. The same corn field will need more irrigation in 2050 than it did in 1980 just to achieve the same yield, because the atmosphere is “thirstier.”

Why hotter days use more electricity

Higher temperatures drive up electricity demand because homes, offices, and industry run air conditioners and refrigeration harder and for longer periods.​ Much of that electricity still comes from thermoelectric power plants (coal, gas, nuclear) that use large volumes of freshwater for cooling, either withdrawing it and returning it warmer or consuming a portion through evaporation³.

As air and water warm, these plants run less efficiently and may need even more cooling water per unit of electricity generated, increasing water use just when rivers and reservoirs are under stress.​ In very hot, dry years, this can create a feedback: heat raises AC demand, AC demand raises power plant water demand, low flows and high water temperatures then constrain power plants, risking reliability problems⁴.

Warming reduces the share of precipitation that reaches reservoirs and aquifers: more evaporates or is soaked up by drier soils before it becomes runoff. Western water systems and legal allocations were designed assuming a more stable climate and more reliable snowpack; under warming, those assumptions are breaking down, reducing dependable supplies for both farms and power plants. The result is a tightening water budget: less water coming into the system at the same time that crops, cities, and energy systems are all asking for more.

by Robert Marcos

Nations around the world are restoring their over-taxed river systems by establishing basin‑wide flow targets, by reserving large quantities of water to maintain riverine environments, by making major cuts in consumptive use, and by removing man-made infrastructure that impeded the natural flow of water.

Australia’s response to the “Millennium Drought” is often cited as a blueprint for the recovery of America’s Colorado River. The Water Act 2007 was Australia’s primary federal legislation for managing the Murray–Darling Basin. Enacted during the Millennium Drought, it shifted water management from a state-by-state approach to a centralized federal framework to ensure long-term water security and environmental sustainability.

Australia’s Water Act 2007 included –

Water Buybacks: The government spent billions to “buy back” water entitlements from willing farmers to return them to the environment, thereby restoring river health.

Water Markets: Australia pioneered “unbundling” water from land, allowing it to be traded as a commodity. This incentivized a shift from low-value, water-heavy crops like rice to high-value ones like almonds.

Legal and remedial reforms: Basin‑wide laws or plans that set enforceable extraction limits and prioritize maintaining minimum environmental flows. Explicit recognition of ecological flow requirements in allocation agreements, sometimes including reserved environmental flow shares in international draft treaties.

Reducing consumptive use: Cutting irrigation diversions and changing crop patterns or technologies so that more water remains in the channel, as highlighted for the Baaka‑Darling. Using pricing, buy‑backs of water rights, and efficiency programs to retire or shrink high‑impact uses while compensating users.

Restoring environmental flows and re‑operating infrastructure. Dedicating a defined volume of water each year as environmental water and delivering it strategically to key river reaches and wetlands.

Re‑operating reservoir cascades to mimic aspects of natural flow regimes (e.g., Yellow River WSRS using coordinated reservoir releases and artificial flood waves for sediment and flow objectives).

Ecological and land‑use restoration: Large‑scale re‑vegetation and land‑use change in upper basins to reduce erosion, improve infiltration, and stabilize hydrology. Floodplain, marsh, and wetland restoration to increase “sponge” capacity, store water during high flows, and sustain baseflows, as in Rhine marsh and broader European river projects.

Infrastructure removal and nature‑based solutions: Removing or modifying barriers (small and large dams, weirs) to reconnect fragmented river sections, restore sediment and fish passage, and improve overall river health; the EU has set a goal to reconnect 25,000 km of rivers by 2030 through such measures.

Implementing local, low‑tech retention structures (e.g., “beaver dams”), to enhance groundwater recharge, moderate extremes, and empower community‑based management.

By Robert Marcos

The summer-like heat in the American West is being caused by a combination of persistent high‑pressure systems, long‑term warming from climate change, and an ever-worsening drought.¹

The main condition behind the current weather is the development of strong, stagnant high‑pressure ridges, often called “heat domes,” over the western United States. In these patterns, air sinks over the region, compresses, and warms (adiabatic warming), while clear skies allow intense solar heating of the surface. Because the high pressure suppresses cloud formation and storm systems, the hot air remains parked in place for days or weeks, letting temperatures climb far above normal.²

These weather patterns are occurring on top of a background of human‑driven climate warming, which raises the baseline temperature so that heat waves start from a hotter average and break records more easily. Studies of recent western and Pacific Northwest heat waves show that such extremes would have been virtually impossible, or far less intense, without anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Warmer air also increases “evaporative demand,” meaning the atmosphere pulls more moisture from soils, vegetation, and water bodies, further drying the landscape.³

At the same time, much of the West has been in a long‑running drought or “megadrought,” with declining rain and snowpack, especially in the Southwest and Colorado River basin. Low snowpack and early melt remove a natural cooling reservoir, so land surfaces heat up faster and earlier in the warm season. With drier soils and sparse vegetation, more of the sun’s energy goes directly into raising air temperature rather than evaporating water, amplifying surface heat and extending fire season.4

Finally, ocean–atmosphere patterns over the Pacific, such as persistent ridging and a positive phase of broader circulation patterns, help steer and reinforce these high‑pressure systems over the West in summer. Together, these intertwined conditions—blocking high pressure, climate‑driven warming, deepening drought, and altered atmospheric circulation—have produced the unusually intense and frequent summertime heat now characterizing the American West.⁵

by Robert Marcos

The electrical power that’s being produced by new wind and solar farms cannot fully replace the power being lost as the output of the Glen Canyon Powerplant continues to fall.

As of March 11, 2026, the Powerplant is producing only 60% to 65% of its maximum output. At full capacity the plant can produce 1,320 megawatts. But because of Lake Powell’s low water level it’s currently producing between 800 and 870 megawatts. While new wind and solar power will cushion the impact of Glen Canyon’s decline, the hydroelectric power is a critical component of the regional power grid. Electricity from the Glen Canyon Powerplant is operationally superior to wind and solar mainly because it is dispatchable, highly flexible, and provides critical grid‑stability services that variable renewables cannot provide on their own.

Dispatchability and reliability

Glen Canyon can generate on demand, ramping output up or down quickly to follow load; flows and generation are deliberately increased during weekday business hours to match demand.

Hydropower at Glen Canyon is not dependent on real‑time sun or wind conditions, so it can produce power at night, during calm periods, and in cloudy weather, as long as water is available in Lake Powell.

The plant provides both energy and dependable capacity for resource adequacy, which is essential during extreme heat waves and other system‑stress events when solar and wind output may not align with peak demand.
​
Flexibility and ramping

Glen Canyon is explicitly operated for load following: its turbines adjust automatic generation control signals to continuously balance supply and demand, so actual output can be above or below the hourly schedule at any moment.
​
The dam is allowed to fluctuate releases to provide about 40 MW of regulation capacity, with short‑lived flow changes of roughly 1,200 cfs up or down that help stabilize the grid against second‑to‑second and minute‑to‑minute imbalances.

Turbines can ramp thousands of cubic feet per second within an hour (subject to environmental constraints), providing fast ramping that complements slower, weather‑dependent changes in wind and solar output.
​
Grid‑stability and system services

Conventional hydropower units like those at Glen Canyon provide inertia, frequency regulation, spinning reserve, voltage support, and black‑start capability, all of which are necessary to keep the system stable as variable renewables grow.

These services are inherently available from large synchronous hydro generators without needing extensive additional power‑electronics‑based equipment that wind and solar typically require for similar functions.
​
Glen Canyon’s participation in automatic generation control helps maintain area control error near zero, directly supporting system frequency and reliability.
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Scale, efficiency, and cost characteristics

Glen Canyon has a total capacity on the order of 1,300 MW and produces roughly 4–5 billion kWh per year, enough for hundreds of thousands of households across seven Western states.

Modern hydro units have high conversion efficiency and very long lifetimes (often 50–100 years), which spreads capital costs over decades and yields low long‑run levelized cost of electricity compared with many newer wind and solar plus storage builds.

Revenues from Glen Canyon hydropower also fund environmental and river‑management programs in Glen and Grand Canyons, a co‑benefit not typically associated with individual wind or solar plants.

by Robert Marcos

Even though the San Diego County Water Authority’s MOU has proposed an initial water transfer of only 10,000 acre feet annually, General Manager Dan Denham said the agreement, (if approved by other agencies), could clear the way for the first-ever interstate transfers of Colorado River water starting next year. He said, “It’s just a different way of managing water in the West”.¹

California Govenor Gavin Newsom has supported the idea, telling governors of the other six states in a recent letter that California would welcome joint investments in water recycling and desalination. Denham said Scott Cameron – the Trump administration’s acting head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, also supports the idea.²

The laws which forbid or limit the transfer of water across state or county lines originated in the early 20th century as states sought to protect their local resources from being diverted to rapidly growing urban centers. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 was a landmark agreement that effectively “locked” water within specific basins to prevent faster-growing states like California from claiming the entire river under the “prior appropriation” (first-come, first-served) doctrine.

But the San Diego County Water Authority, Arizona Department of Water Resources, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, are exploring a strategy that could bypass these legal barriers to interstate water transfers by using “paper water” transfers rather than physically moving desalinated water across state lines.³

While this method avoids the physical impossibility of moving ocean water to the desert, it still requires federal approval from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and from existing rights holders like the Imperial Irrigation District and the Metropolitan Water District which will have to ensure that these transfers do not negatively impact their own legal entitlements.

Read the full press release

Posted by by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors today unanimously approved a landmark agreement to explore an interstate water transfer and exchange pilot program with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and agencies in Nevada and Arizona.,

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) – which still needs to be ratified by the other agencies – creates a pathway that could eventually allow the Water Authority to “move” water from the nation’s largest seawater desalination plant in Carlsbad to areas in the drought-ravaged Colorado River Basin that need more water. If successfully developed, this would create the first program to transfer water across state lines within the basin.

Such a program could help reduce water costs for working families in San Diego County by optimizing the region’s investments in reliability. Water purchases from the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant would generate new revenues and offset costs for residents, improving regional water affordability.

“This agreement could be a gamechanger for San Diego County and the entire Southwest because it creates the possibility of a new, collaborative path for moving water where it’s needed most while keeping reliability and affordability at the center for ratepayers,” said Water Authority Board Chair Nick Serrano. “Leveraging existing resources like our Carlsbad desalination plant in this moment simply makes sense for everyone.”

Water transfers or exchanges would occur “on paper,” meaning agencies would access supplies through existing infrastructure and avoid costly new infrastructure.

The demand is clear: In recent years, agencies in Arizona and Nevada have sought ways to tap the Pacific Ocean, but the costs of construction are prohibitive. The Arizona Department of Water Resources, Central Arizona Water Conservation District and Southern Nevada Water Authority are part of the new MOU.

For more than 20 years, the seven states in the Colorado River Basin have wrestled with drought conditions that have created growing imbalances between water supplies and demands. As the Bureau of Reclamation, Basin States, Mexico, and tribal nations consider new operating guidelines for the river, new management strategies and interstate partnerships are increasingly critical.

Over roughly the same period, the Water Authority has invested $3 billion in water reliability efforts, including the Carlsbad plant, which produces up to 54 million gallons per day. Additionally, the 2003 Colorado River Quantification Settlement Agreement – which generates conserved water in the Imperial Valley – and hard-wired conservation in the San Diego region have positioned the Water Authority to not only meet the region’s needs but also provide relief to other areas.

“Next-generation strategies must include interstate partnerships that deliver water where it’s needed most,” said Water Authority General Manager Dan Denham. “We appreciate the collaboration with the Bureau of Reclamation, Metropolitan Water District, Arizona and Nevada. New ideas are challenging to implement, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to make this work.”

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

Climate change is altering the chemical makeup of rainfall. It’s increased the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide which makes rainfall more acidic¹. At the same time it has shifted the levels of atmospheric pollutants that wash out when it rains. This changing chemistry is a problem because it alters how water interacts with soils, plants, aquatic systems, infrastructure, and even the atmosphere itself. Increased acidity in rainfall acts as a chemical catalyst that destabilizes both terrestrial and aquatic environments through the following mechanisms²

• Nutrient Leaching: Acidic rain strips the soil of essential buffering minerals and nutrients—such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium—which are vital for plant cell structure and growth.
• Heavy Metal Mobilization: As soil pH drops, naturally occurring but normally stable metals like aluminum become soluble. This “mobile” aluminum is toxic to plants, damaging root systems and preventing them from absorbing water.
• Microbial Disruption: Many beneficial soil bacteria and fungi are sensitive to pH changes. Increased acidity can suppress the microbial activity responsible for decomposition and nitrogen fixation, ultimately reducing soil fertility.
• Biological Stress and Mortality: Many aquatic species have narrow tolerance ranges. At a pH of 5.0, most fish eggs cannot hatch, and lower levels can lead to the death of adult fish, amphibians, and insects like mayflies.
• Gill Damage: Soluble aluminum leached from nearby soil enters waterways and clogs the gills of fish. This impairs their osmoregulation and ability to breathe, often serving as the primary cause of fish kills in acidified lakes.
• Food Web Collapse: The loss of acid-sensitive “base” species, such as certain plankton and invertebrates, triggers a cascade effect that starves larger predators and simplifies the entire ecosystem.

Effects on Agricultural Production

The chemical and physical shifts in rainfall are fundamentally destabilizing the economic foundations of global food systems³.

• Declining Crop Productivity: For every 1°C of warming, global yields of major staples are projected to decline significantly: maize by 7.4%, wheat by 6.0%, and rice by 3.2%.
• Nutritional Degradation: Increased atmospheric and altered soil chemistry reduce the concentrations of protein and essential minerals like zinc and iron in crops like wheat and soybeans.
• Increased Costs: Farmers must spend more on lime to neutralize soil acidity and additional fertilizers to replace leached nutrients like calcium and magnesium.
• Direct Foliar Damage: Acidic rain erodes the waxy cuticle of leaves, making plants more vulnerable to dehydration, pests, and diseases.

Impacts on Commercial Fishing

Marine fisheries and seafood industries, which supported $319 billion in sales in 2023, face major disruptions as fish stocks move toward cooler poles or become less productive⁴.

• Catch Potential Losses: Tropical regions are predicted to see declines of up to 40% in potential seafood catch by 2050 due to warming and acidification.
• Shellfish Vulnerability: Ocean and coastal acidification (exacerbated by acidic runoff) hinder calcification, weakening the shells of oysters, clams, and scallops. This is estimated to cause consumer losses of $480 million per year by the end of the century.
• Ecosystem Collapse: Acidified freshwater and marine environments disrupt reproductive cycles; for instance, at a pH of 5, most fish eggs cannot hatch, leading to the collapse of local populations and the industries that rely on them.

Impacts on Water Infrastructure

More acidic rainfall significantly deteriorates water infrastructure by accelerating the chemical breakdown of both metallic and cement-based materials. When rainwater’s pH drops—oftenhttps://www.gov.nl.ca/eccc/files/waterres-reports-drinking-water-study-on-ph-adjustment-systems-task-7-study-report.pdf due to sulfuric and nitric acids—it becomes highly corrosive, leading to structural damage and water quality issues. Acidic water targets the internal and external surfaces of the pipes that transport water.⁵

• Chemical Dissolution: Acidic rain reacts with the calcium carbonate and calcium hydroxide in concrete, dissolving these components and leaving the structure porous and weak.
• Structural Failure: As the concrete matrix dissolves, the protective layer around steel reinforcements (rebar) can fail. Corroding steel expands up to six times its size, creating internal pressure that cracks the surrounding concrete.
• Surface Erosion: Prolonged exposure causes surface “spalling” or peeling, exposing coarse aggregates and increasing maintenance costs for bridges, dams, and treatment basins.

Challenges for Water Treatment

• Water treatment facilities must expend more resources to manage increasingly acidic sources of water.
• Increased Neutralization Costs: Facilities must add more alkaline substances, such as caustic soda or soda ash, to raise the pH to a non-corrosive range (typically 6.5 to 8.5).
• Disinfection Interference: Efficient chlorination is more difficult in water that is too acidic or too basic, potentially requiring higher chemical doses to ensure safety.
• Contaminant Mobilization: Acid rain leaches aluminum and other minerals from the surrounding soil into reservoirs, requiring more complex filtration to remove these additional contaminants.⁶

By Robert Marcos

For decades people believed that the Anasazi, (later renamed the Ancestral Puebloans), had vanished suddenly and under mysterious circumstances. But over the years a host of scientific disciplines has produced evidence that has largely resolved that mystery. Scientists shifted from viewing the Ancestral Puebloans’ departure as a “mysterious disappearance” to a deliberate migration triggered by a combination of environmental and social factors.

The Ancestral Puebloan great house, Pueblo del Arroyo, in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Photo by Rationalobserver.

Types of evidence produced by recent studies

Prolonged megadroughts like the “Great Drought” (1276–1299) coincide with widespread abandonment of large Four Corners settlements and severe maize shortfalls.¹

Tree rings and other proxies show multi‑year to multi‑decadal droughts during the broader Medieval Climate Anomaly (roughly AD 800–1300).²

Environmental degradation including deforestation and topsoil erosion around major centers like Chaco and Mesa Verde, reducing fuel and soil productivity.³

Deer bones decline and turkey bones increase after about AD 1150, suggesting overhunting of wild game and heavier reliance on domestic turkeys that competed with people for maize.⁴

Hydrologic stress and extreme variability: Ancestral Puebloan societies were highly dependent on winter snowpack and limited runoff; summer rains were unreliable and often arrived as intense, erosive storms.In earlier droughts (AD 150–950), people were already resorting to melting cave ice for drinking water, indicating that marginal sources became critical during dry spells.⁵

Climate stress resulted in conflict, and the migration of Numic‑speaking groups onto the Colorado Plateau, and rapid changes in religious and political systems.⁶

Crop failures undermined rain‑making rituals and institutions, social cohesion and the legitimacy of leadership likely eroded, encouraging relocation.⁷

In short, highly climate‑sensitive dry land agriculture, local deforestation and soil loss, and repeated multi‑year droughts combined with social pressures, all combined to make life untenable in the Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon regions.⁸

Conditions in today’s American Southwest are strikingly similar.

The environmental conditions in today’s American Southwest continue to be characterized by a high-desert environment, which is defined by extreme aridity, and unpredictable precipitation patterns. In many ways this mirrors the volatile climate that challenged the Ancestral Puebloans. Much like the late 13th century—a period marked by the infamous “Great Drought”—the modern region experiences significant moisture deficits and high evaporation rates.

Farmers today contend with a bimodal precipitation cycle: winter snowpack provides the primary source of groundwater and spring runoff, while intense, localized monsoon storms in late summer offer brief but erosive bursts of rain. These erratic shifts between prolonged dry spells and sudden deluges force a reliance on micro-climates and elevation-specific planting, as the short growing season is often bracketed by late spring frosts and early autumn freezes.

Soil conditions that consist largely of alkaline, nutrient-poor substrates, are highly susceptible to erosion. In areas like the Colorado Plateau, the soil is often a mixture of sandy loams and heavy clays that lack the organic matter found in more temperate zones. These soils are prone to crusting and salinity buildup, which can inhibit seedling emergence and water infiltration.

Just as the Ancestral Puebloans utilized check dams and lithic mulching (using stones to preserve soil moisture), modern land managers must navigate these “thin” soils that offer little buffer against environmental stress. The persistence of lithic soils and wind-blown loess ensures that any successful cultivation requires sophisticated water-harvesting techniques to prevent the precious topsoil from being stripped away by the elements.

by Robert Marcos

Devices that collect water from the air are generally called atmospheric water harvesters or atmospheric water generators. None of these actually create water, they just phase‑change or capture water that’s already in the atmosphere.

Why is this pertinent? As most of the Earth’s land areas dry out, our warming atmosphere is holding on to ever-increasing amounts of water vapor. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that in 2024 the Earth’s atmosphere held almost 5% more water vapor than the average recorded between 1991–2020.

Here are the four basic types of Atmospheric Water Harvesters –

• Condensation-based systems cool air below its dew point using refrigeration or heat‑pump cycles so water vapor condenses into liquid on cold coils. Theses are essentially dehumidifiers optimized for producing potable water. 
• Desiccant-based systems use hygroscopic materials (desiccants) such as salts or silica gel that absorb moisture from air, which are then are heated to release liquid water for collection.
• Adsorption based systems use porous materials like hydrogels or metal–organic frameworks that adsorb water vapor at night or when cool, then release it when warmed by the sun or low‑grade heat, with the vapor condensed on nearby surfaces.
• Fog and dew collectors are passive devices thatuse meshes or netted surfaces which collect fog droplets which collect then drain into gutters and tanks.

DARPA, the U.S.Army Research Lab, the Marine Corps, Air Force, and special operations units  have all experimented with AWG technologies for desert and emergency conditions, most often at bases in the Middle East and on the African continent. The U.S. Army is actively testing and piloting atmospheric water generators (AWGs), but as of early 2026 they appear in research, demonstration, and limited field trials rather than as a fully standard, widely deployed water source for all soldiers.

Currently the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has signed multiple Cooperative Research and Development Agreements with companies such as Genesis Systems and AirJoule to develop fuel‑efficient, truck‑ or ATV‑mounted AWGs that can provide potable water at the point of need in austere environments. Genesis Systems’ WaterCube units have been “operationally fielded and commercially available,” and an Army–Genesis CRADA is specifically aimed at adapting this platform for mobile military use in field operations. Public descriptions of these efforts emphasize potential use to reduce water convoys and support future warfighters, which indicates a transition and experimentation phase rather than full-scale permanent deployment across the force.

Water From Air is a non-profit organization that’s specifically focused on distributing atmospheric water generators in schools, villages, and water-stressed regions primarily located in East Africa and India. Their units produce clean drinking water directly from humidity in the air, bypassing the need for wells, pipes, or rainfall. Each installed unit typically provides between 200 and 400 liters of clean drinking water daily, supporting approximately 200–400 people.

More non-profits which provide clean drinking water to disadvantaged communities –

• The Moses West Foundation A non-profit that deploys large-scale AWG systems during disaster relief efforts and in water-stressed areas globally, including Africa.
• Innovation: Africa While primarily focused on solar-powered pumped water from aquifers, they specialize in delivering Israeli-developed water technologies to remote African villages.
• Majik Water: A Kenyan-based social enterprise (start-up) that uses AWG technology to provide more than 200,000 liters of water monthly to arid regions in Kenya.
• One Drop Foundation seeks sustainable access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene for the world’s most vulnerable communities. The foundation distinguishes itself through a unique approach called Social Art for Behavior Change™, which uses art and creativity to inspire communities to adopt healthy water-related habits and take ownership of their local infrastructure.

by Robert Marcos

Stratospheric aerosol injection, (SAI), is a theoretical solar geoengineering proposal that involves dispersing sulfate (or other reflective particles) into the stratosphere to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight back into space. Research into delivery methods focuses on platforms capable of reaching the stratosphere, which begins at varying altitudes depending on the latitude. Proposals range from spraying reflective particles, such as sulfur dioxides, finely powdered salt or calcium carbonate, from aircraft or high-flying balloons. None of these solar geo-engineering strategies address the underlying causes of climate change. Instead, they aim to control the amount of incoming solar radiation by emulating the sulfur-rich dust cloud that remains in the atmosphere after large volcanic eruptions.¹

Proof of Concept provided by Mt. Pinatubo

The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo injected approximately 17 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, creating a global layer of sulfuric acid haze that significantly increased the Earth’s albedo. This aerosol veil reflected incoming solar radiation back into space, resulting in a measurable drop in global mean temperatures of approximately 0.5°C (0.9°F) between 1992 and 1993. This transient cooling effect temporarily offset the trend of anthropogenic global warming and disrupted global precipitation patterns, demonstrating the profound impact that volcanic stratospheric aerosols can have on the Earth’s energy balance.²

According to one study, by sending specially designed high-altitude airplanes on roughly 4,000 total sulfate injection missions a year, humans could replicate this same level of cooling. This has the potential to offset half of the warming expected over the study’s 15-year period and counteract billions of metric tons of CO2 emissions each year. At a cost of around $2 billion annually, even medium-sized economies could afford such a program. This price tag would also be far less expensive than the potential impacts of climate change. Take the United States: the 2018 US National Climate Assessment Report estimates the impacts of climate change damages will amount to “hundreds of billions of dollars annually” by 2090, making atmospheric sulfate injection an appealing solution.³

Aerial platforms under consideration

Large commercial or military transport aircraft: These could potentially be retrofitted with specialized tanks and nozzle systems. However, most standard aircraft have flight ceilings that only reach the lower stratosphere, particularly near the poles.

Specialized Research Planes: Aircraft designed for high-altitude atmospheric research, such as those used by space agencies, can reach the higher altitudes (around 20 km) often cited as optimal for SAI. These generally have limited payload capacities.

Purpose-Built High-Altitude Jets: Many researchers suggest that a new class of specialized aircraft would be necessary for efficient, large-scale delivery. These designs would require high-lift wings and engines capable of sustained operation in thin air while carrying heavy payloads of aerosol precursors.

High-Altitude Balloons: Tethered or free-floating balloons have been proposed as a lower-cost method to loft materials into the stratosphere, though they face challenges related to stability and large-scale operational control.⁴

Potential benefits

Rapid Global Cooling: SAI can lower global average temperatures much faster than carbon removal methods. Historical volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991, have proven that atmospheric sulfur can cool the planet by roughly 0.5°C within a year.

Cost-Effectiveness: Compared to the trillions needed for a full green energy transition, SAI is estimated to cost between $18 billion and $27 billion per year using modified aircraft.

Life-Saving Potential: Some studies suggest SAI could save up to 400,000 lives annually by reducing heat-related mortality in the world’s hottest regions.

Glacial Preservation: By lowering surface temperatures, it could slow sea-level rise and prevent the melting of land-based glaciers and sea ice.

Reversibility: Unlike permanent carbon storage, SAI effects are temporary; if stopped, the aerosols naturally fall out of the atmosphere within 1–2 years.⁵

Potential risks

Termination Shock: If SAI is suddenly stopped (due to war, terrorism, or political collapse) while greenhouse gases are still high, the planet would experience a catastrophic and rapid temperature spike.

Ozone Depletion: Injecting sulfates can damage the stratospheric ozone layer, increasing harmful UV radiation and risks of skin cancer.

Disrupted Weather Patterns: Models indicate it could cause regional droughts, specifically by weakening the South Asian monsoon and reducing tropical rainfall.

Ocean Acidification: SAI only masks temperature; it does not reduce CO2 levels. The oceans would continue to absorb carbon, leading to acidification that destroys coral reefs and marine life.

Moral Hazard: The availability of a “quick fix” might reduce the political and corporate incentive to actually cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Geopolitical Conflict: There is no international governance for SAI. A single country could “control the thermostat,” potentially leading to global conflict if their actions cause weather disasters elsewhere.

Ecological Impacts: Reduced direct sunlight could decrease crop yields and interfere with solar power generation.⁶

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

While climate change and the general lack of precipitation are the most obvious causes of the aridification of the American West, there are other factors taking place in the background that are contributing to this process.

Dust on Snow: Windblown dust from disturbed desert soils and dry lake beds—such as the Great Salt Lake—settles on mountain snowpacks. This “dark topcoat” reduces reflectivity (albedo), causing snow to absorb more solar heat and melt up to three to seven weeks earlier than clean snow. This premature runoff often reaches reservoirs when they are already full or when the ground is still too frozen for agricultural use, effectively wasting the “natural reservoir” of the snowpack.¹

Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD): Often described as the “thirst of the atmosphere,” VPD measures the difference between the moisture in the air and how much it can hold. Higher temperatures exponentially increase this demand, sucking moisture directly out of soils and plants even when precipitation levels are normal. In recent years, this “atmospheric thirst” has accounted for roughly 61% of drought severity, outweighing the impact of reduced rainfall.²

Pacific Decadal Oscillation Stagnation: The “PDO” is a long-term ocean temperature pattern that typically flips every 20 years. Since the 1990s, it has remained stuck in a “negative phase,” which brings cooler water to the eastern Pacific and pushes moisture-bearing storms farther north, away from the Southwest. Recent research suggests this prolonged “stuck” phase may be driven by human-caused aerosol and greenhouse gas emissions.³

Soil and Vegetation Feedbacks: Aridification creates a self-reinforcing cycle. As soils dry out, they lose the cooling effect of evaporation, causing solar radiation to heat the ground and the air even further. Additionally, while higher CO2 levels can make plants more water-efficient, this gain is often offset by longer growing seasons and increased plant growth, which ultimately draws more total moisture from the soil through transpiration.⁴

Land Use and Soil Degradation: Intensive land uses, including livestock grazing and urbanization, remove protective vegetation and destabilize soil. This not only increases wind erosion (leading to more dust-on-snow events) but also reduces the soil’s ability to absorb and retain what little moisture does fall, intensifying the “baking” of the landscape.⁵

Invasive plants: Cheatgrass, tamarisk, and Russian olive are invasive plants most often named as contributors to the aridification of the American West. Cheatgrass transforms diverse, deep‑rooted native shrub–grass communities into shallow‑rooted, flammable annual monocultures that dry and senesce early, it depletes shallow soil moisture sooner in the growing season, and dramatically increases fire frequency. It creates a cheatgrass–wildfire feedback loop that repeatedly removes perennial vegetation, reduces soil organic matter and carbon storage, accelerates erosion, and leaves soils warmer, drier, and less able to retain water, so landscapes lose both plant cover and hydrologic function and effectively behave more like a hotter, drier, impoverished system even when long‑term precipitation totals have not changed.⁶

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

I met John Leary in the parking lot of a Tractor Supply in Rangely Colorado. There was something about the vehicles in that lot that made me think it might not be the best place to park a Toyota Yaris with California plates, so I parked around the corner, then moved my video gear into the back of John’s white utility truck.

John is a Senior Restoration & GIS Project Manager at RiversEdge West, a non-profit organization that’s leading the White River Partnership – a coalition of public, private, and nonprofit entities that are working to conserve and to restore riparian ecosystems along the White River and its tributaries.¹

John had volunteered to show me some of the restoration work he and his teams had been doing on the riverbanks west of Rangely. The river had officially been designed as being “over-appropriated” in 2025. When a river is classified as being over-appropriated, it means that the total amount of water legally promised to water rights holders exceeds the supply of water that’s available in the river system at some or all times of the year.² The designation acts as a formal recognition of water scarcity, where the demand for water is higher than the supply, often exacerbated by drought, climate change, and increased development.

John and his teams were working to reduce the number of invasive tamarisk and Russian olive trees that had crowded the White River’s banks, at the expense of wildlife and native vegetation like willows and cottonwoods. One of the methods John and his teams used was the application of tamarisk beetles. Tamarisk beetles originated in Eurasia – specifically central Asia, China, Kazakhstan, Greece, Uzbekistan, and Tunisia, and were introduced to North America as a biological control agent for invasive tamarisks. The beetles defoliate tamarisk trees by feeding on their leaves and on new growth, until the trees either weaken or die altogether.³

Since their introduction tamarisk beetles have spread across the Western U.S., including Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and even parts of Arizona, and in some areas have resulted in an 80% mortality rate for the invasive tamarisks.⁴ This removal method sounds better than what I witnessed in California’s Coachella Valley, where miles of tamarisk trees had been intentionally burned by the Southern Pacific Railroad – which planted the trees in the early 1900s to keep sand off their railroad tracks.⁵

John and I drove west along the river and then finally parked. We hiked to a spot where John showed me a stand of native cottonwoods had sprouted up after his team removed tamarisks which had previously occupied that area. During the interview I filmed with John he repeatedly credited RiversEdge West and their partners in the White River Partnership, which included the Bureau of Land Management, Canyon Country Discovery Center, Colorado Northwestern Community College, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, State of Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, Town of Meeker, Colorado,Town of Rangely, CO, Uintah County Utah, Utah Conservation Corps, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah State University, Western Colorado Conservation Corps, the White River Alliance, and most importantly many ranchers and private land owners who supported the restoration efforts being carried out on their own riverfront property.⁶

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

Mountain snowmelt is the lifeblood of the Great Salt Lake, providing the vast majority of its fresh water. On average the mountains around the lake contribute approximately 1.9 to 2.1 million acre-feet of surface runoff annually.¹ However on February first of this year – with Utah’s snowpack in near record-poor condition, Utah’s Natural Resources Conservation Service released a report that forecast a reduction in snowmelt that ranges from 21% to 77% of average.²

This (potentially) dramatic drop in snowmelt forces our attention to the Great Salt Lake’s other major source of water, the Bear River, and there the news is equally alarming. The Bear River in Utah faces a variety of environmental threats primarily from human activities like agriculture, water management, and development. These impact water quality, habitats, and flows into the Great Salt Lake. The following list of challenges the river faces are ranked in order of prevalence and severity, from reports like wetland studies and conservation plans.³

Water Diversions: Proposed and existing diversions, such as the Bear River Development project, threaten to reduce flows by up to 220,000 acre-feet annually, lowering Great Salt Lake levels by 8.5-14 inches and exposing lakebed dust with toxins like arsenic. This exacerbates drought effects and harms migratory birds reliant on Bear River Bay wetlands.⁴

Agricultural Runoff: Runoff from intensive farming affects 83% of wetlands, delivering excess nutrients, sediments, and pollutants that cause eutrophication, algal blooms, and oxygen depletion. The Bear River is impaired throughout the study area due to these inputs, worsened by upstream sources in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.⁵

Hydrologic Alteration: Dams, irrigation, and impoundments alter flow timing and flooding, impacting nearly all wetlands and degrading riparian habitats. Reservoirs like Cutler divert spring runoff, leading to inconsistent river flows and wetland desiccation.⁶

Invasive Species: Non-native plants like Phragmites australis cover 11% of wetlands, outcompeting natives and reducing biodiversity, especially in disturbed mudflats. Agricultural species such as foxtail and clover invade via forage planting.⁷

Sediment and Pollution: Erosion from tributaries and livestock causes siltation, while point sources (69% of wetlands) and nanoparticles from boat paints add contaminants. Legacy issues like high alkalinity and industrial wastes persist.⁸

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

The Gold King Mine spill happened on August 5, 2015, when EPA contractors accidentally released approximately 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater into Cement Creek – a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado. The plume, containing heavy metals, flowed into the Animas and San Juan rivers. ¹ The USGS – in cooperation with the EPA, gathered streamgage data in order to confirm the origin of the stream flow spike at Cement Creek and the volume of the spike estimated at three million gallons. USGS also took water and sediment samples and provided both current and historical water quality data to EPA.²

Four months later during her address to a House Committee on Natural Resources, the Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said, “As is so often the case, it is unfortunate that an incident like this has to happen to highlight an issue that land managers in both the state and federal governments have been grappling with for years – that addressing abandoned mine lands is a nationwide problem, and mitigating toxic substances released from many of them is a significant undertaking. Abandoned mine lands are located on private, state, federal, and tribal lands. There are tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock sites on federal lands alone. Many of these abandoned mine land sites were mined prior to the implementation of federal surface management environmental laws that require reclamation and remediation to take place. For those mine sites where no viable potentially responsible party can be determined, the federal government, and ultimately the taxpayer, often bears the burden of addressing these threats to public safety, human health, the environment, and wildlife, rather than the entities that developed and profited from the operations.”³

In 2018 the U.S. Geological Survey, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and National Park Service, initiated the Lake Powell Coring Project.⁴ Its purpose was to retrieve and analyze hydraulic piston cores from Lake Powell sediments—primarily targeting the San Juan River delta—to reconstruct the history of sediment and contaminant deposition, including assessing whether material from the 2015 Gold King Mine spill had been sequestered there. Cores taken from 40 holes penetrated up to the pre-Glen Canyon Dam surface to evaluate metal concentrations, distribution, and bioavailability for water quality impacts.⁵

Preliminary results shared by USGS scientists in late 2021 shared significant findings: while the 2015 Gold King Mine spill caused detectable spikes in lead and zinc, much larger and “more concerning” spikes were identified from mining waste disasters that occurred in the 1970s. The following contaminants were found in core samples:⁶

Lead: Found in significant spikes, particularly in deeper sediment layers corresponding to mid-20th-century mining disasters.

Zinc: Often found in conjunction with lead; used as a primary indicator of mine waste runoff.

Arsenic: A major concern in the San Juan River delta, often naturally occurring but concentrated by mining processes.

Cadmium: A toxic metal frequently associated with zinc mining that was identified in the core samples.

Copper: Present in the sediment, reflecting the region’s extensive copper mining history.

Mercury: Studied due to its ability to bioaccumulate in the food chain (fish), though much of the mercury in the system is attributed to atmospheric deposition and older mining practices.

Now as Lake Powell’s water levels continue to recede amid prolonged drought and heavy upstream water use, vast expanses of toxic sediments—laden with heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, selenium, and zinc from historical mining discharges including the 2015 Gold King spill—are increasingly exposed. This drying creates a heightened risk of human exposure through direct contact during boating, fishing, or shoreline recreation, as well as inhalation of windblown dust carrying bioavailable toxins, potentially leading to respiratory issues, skin irritation, and chronic health effects with repeated exposure. Without expanded monitoring or mitigation measures, these once-submerged hazards now pose an urgent public safety threat to the millions of annual visitors in this popular Southwestern reservoir. ⁷

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

As evaporation rates increase and inflow from the Colorado River falls, Lake Mead’s water volume will shrink but the total mass of dissolved minerals will remain relatively stable. This creates a concentration effect where minerals like calcium, magnesium, and salts, become more densely packed in the remaining water. Without sufficient fresh inflow to dilute these minerals, the water becomes increasingly “hard,” reaching salinity levels that pose significant challenges for regional water management.¹

This increasingly hard water is a silent but growing threat to household appliances owned by residents of Las Vegas, because when hard water is heated or left to evaporate, minerals like calcium and magnesium precipitate out of the liquid, forming a rock-hard crust known as limescale. This buildup acts as an insulator in water heaters, forcing them to work harder to heat water, and clogs the delicate internal components of dishwashers and washing machines. Over time, these deposits restrict water flow and corrode seals, leading to premature mechanical failure and leaks.²

The financial burden of these mineral-heavy waters translates to shorter lifecycles for major appliances and higher utility bills. Residents may find themselves replacing water heaters every 8 years instead of the typical 12 to 15, and the efficiency loss from scale buildup can increase energy costs for water heating by as much as 25%. Between more frequent appliance replacements, the cost of professional plumbing repairs, and the potential need for expensive water softening systems, the long-term economic impact on a single household can reach thousands of dollars.³

While drinking water with elevated TDS is generally considered safe by regulatory standards, it can have some noticeable effects. Very high concentrations of minerals like sulfates can cause a laxative effect or gastrointestinal discomfort in sensitive individuals or those unaccustomed to the water. While the body requires minerals like calcium and magnesium, excessive levels can affect the water’s smell and its taste, which may motivate residents to rely more on bottled water or on in-home filtration units like reverse-osmosis, which incrementally drives up the cost of living.⁴

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

Utah’s cloud seeding program began in the early 1950s with initial winter experiments aimed at boosting snowfall in mountainous regions to enhance water supplies. These early efforts were part of broader U.S. weather modification initiatives following World War II discoveries about silver iodide’s role in nucleating ice crystals in supercooled clouds. By the 1970s, amid severe droughts in central and southern Utah, counties collaborated with the state to formalize operations, leading to the Cloud Seeding Act of 1973. This legislation empowered the Utah Division of Water Resources to regulate and fund programs, with North American Weather Consultants often handling implementation using ground-based silver iodide generators.₁

The program’s foundational design targeted winter storms from November to April, releasing silver iodide particles from foothill and high-elevation sites to stimulate precipitation in key watersheds like the Uinta Mountains and central Utah ranges. Early operations in the 1973-74 season involved manual generators, with state funding starting in 1975-76 to match local contributions from participating counties such as Beaver and Sanpete. Evaluations drew from prior research, hypothesizing that seeding supercooled clouds would increase snowpack for spring runoff, and the program paused only briefly during non-drought periods but resumed consistently.₂

Over decades, Utah expanded its efforts with partnerships like the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, supporting targeted areas including the West Uintas and Emery programs, while annual legislative appropriations—around $300,000 by 2021—ensured continuity. Aerial seeding with aircraft supplemented ground units in the late 1970s and 1980s, but ground-based methods proved more reliable and cost-effective. By the 2020s, amid ongoing water scarcity, the state ramped up investments, reflecting confidence in 5-15% snowfall increases backed by long-term data collection.₃

Recent advancements have modernized the program into the world’s largest remote-controlled network, with 190 automated generators deployed statewide by 2025 for safer, faster activation during storms. Funding surged to nearly $16 million in 2025, enabling drone-based seeding pilots in challenging terrains like the La Sal Mountains, replacing prior airplane tests for precise cloud penetration. These innovations, overseen for environmental safety, align with Utah’s water policy to combat the impact of droughts for both agricultural and urban users.₄

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

American consumers are well aware that their electric bills have been going up, in some areas dramatically.₁ The construction of AI data centers have been widely blamed for this, even though (at present) they’re responsible for only a small part of the increase. In Phoenix and Chandler Arizona – two of the nation’s hottest and driest cities – enormous factories are being built to fabricate the semiconductors used in those data centers, and they’re widely expected to drive up costs that local residents pay for both electricity and water. Since the increased costs are shared by all rate payers, it can be said that residents of Maricopa County who pay for water and power are subsidizing the cost of water and power used by these new industries.₇

Water Usage Concerns

TSMC’s Phoenix plant is projected to consume over 17 million gallons a day. Critics from groups like Chip Coalition United argue this adds pressure to local supplies, potentially raising municipal costs despite recycling pledges (e.g., TSMC’s near-zero discharge goal). Phoenix officials counter with investments like a 70,000 acre-foot recycling facility by 2030 to offset shortfalls.₄

The new Intel semiconductor plant in Chandler, Arizona (part of expansions at the Ocotillo campus), obtains its water from the City of Chandler. This supply is drawn from the Colorado River, Verde River, Salt River, and some groundwater sources.₈ Intel heavily recycles water at its Chandler facilities, treating up to 9.1 million gallons daily on-site and returning much of it to the city or aquifer via partnerships like the Ocotillo Brine Reduction Facility. The company achieves high reuse rates (over 90% in some reports), minimizing net freshwater demand.₉

Power Demand Impact

TSMC’s facility alone could require electricity for 300,000 homes, straining Arizona’s grid and emitting gases rivaling 32,000 households. Intel’s Chandler expansions add further load, prompting calls for full environmental reviews. No sources confirm explicit resident bill hikes yet, but increased grid demand often leads to higher utility rates over time.₅

Manufacturer’s commitment to recycling water

TSMC and Intel’s semiconductor plants in Arizona address their substantial ultra-pure water needs for chip fabrication—primarily wafer rinsing and cooling—through advanced on-site recycling facilities designed for Arizona’s arid conditions. TSMC Arizona currently recycles about 65% of its water for cooling towers and scrubbers via in-house systems, with a new 15-acre Industrial Reclamation Water Plant (IRWP), groundbreaking in 2025 and operational by 2028, set to treat industrial wastewater back to ultrapure standards, targeting 85-90%+ recycling rates to achieve near-zero liquid discharge and minimize fresh municipal water draws. Intel, operating multiple Chandler fabs, already recycles over 80% of water through on-site reclamation plants like its 12-acre Ocotillo facility, purifying used water for reuse in manufacturing, cooling, or aquifer recharge, while pursuing net-positive water goals by 2030 via conservation and restoration. These strategies sharply reduce net consumption, with TSMC’s first fab projected to drop from 4.75 to 1 million gallons daily post-recycling, supporting sustainable expansion amid regional scarcity.₆

Sources

1. Choose Energy: https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/
2. Bipartisan Policy Center: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/why-is-my-electric-bill-going-up-understanding-changes-in-electricity-bill-prices-over-time/
3. InBusiness: https://inbusinessphx.com/technology-innovation/arizonas-semiconductor-boom-sparks-environmental-concerns
4. Greater Phoenix Economic Council: https://www.gpec.org/blog/water-key-resource-in-greater-phoenix-and-the-semiconductor-industry/
5. Stand: https://stand.earth/insights/the-climate-cost-of-bidens-semiconductor-buildout-in-arizona/
6. Construction Owners: https://www.constructionowners.com/news/tsmc-arizona-breaks-ground-on-water-recycling-plant
7. Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/?embedded-checkout=true
8. UltraFacility: https://www.ultrafacilityportal.io/insights/end-user-insight:-water-strategy-at-intel’s-ocotillo-site
9. Arizona Disital Free Press: https://arizonadigitalfreepress.com/intel-ocotillo-aws-water-certification/

By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
Grand Junction, Colorado

While filming for the Nature Conservancy I learned this: Climate change has made three-quarters of our planet drier, yet at the same time the frequency of extreme downpours has increased. Raindrops that fall during these downpours hit the soil with more energy than they used to. This results with more erosion as dislodged soil is swept downstream by runoff that our increasingly dry soil is unable to absorb.

Forgive me if I left anything out of that overly-simplified explanation, but I wanted to define the problem first before describing solutions that are underway in Northwestern Colorado. The Nature Conservancy and their partners are heavily invested in a project whose goal is to improve the water quality in the Yampa River, and I was fortunate to have been invited to film work being done at three remote sites.

Joseph Leonhard – a Riparian Restoration Project Manager at the Nature Conservancy told me that his crews – which consisted primarily of AmericaCorps workers plus a few hardy scientists from the BLM and USGS, utilized Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration, (LTPBR), methods to slow the water in streams that led into the Yampa River.

LTPBR is a low cost restoration method that uses simple, hand-built structures composed of natural materials obtained locally – like branches, boulders, and sod, which mimic actual beaver dams. By restricting water these small dams encourage regenerative processes that can, over time, repair degraded landscapes, improve water retention, create habitat, and even build resilience against drought and fire.

What really impressed me was that the members of these crews – some of whom were 19-year olds while others were PhD’s, shoveled mud and waded through knee-deep water together. They displayed “group cohesiveness”- which is defined as coordinated effort toward shared objectives. During his interview Joseph Leonhard said that he and his people were “activated”, which I interpreted as meaning that instead of sitting in front of a computer, (like I am right now), they were engaged in productive physical activity that would directly benefit the environment.

For more information about the Yampa River Fund please visit: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/colorado/stories-in-colorado/yampa-river-fund/

By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
Grand Junction, Colorado

Most of you have heard that California’s Salton Sea would not currently exist were it not for the nearly 1 million acre feet of agricultural runoff that’s drained into it every year. Paradoxically – the sea is both being kept alive by this salty runoff and being killed by it, in part because the Sea’s evaporation rate of six feet per year is continually concentrating its chemical-laden waters. ¹

As you might expect the Salton Sea’s water is dominated by high salinity from salts, which increases dramatically as the lake shrinks. Selenium ranks next as a major metalloid of concern, often reaching ecologically harmful concentrations from runoff. Other notable contaminants include heavy metals like cadmium, copper, zinc, and nutrients driving algal blooms.²

Meanwhile 132 miles south in Sonora another body of water has formed from American-made runoff, and it’s also a paradox. Ciénega de Santa Clara is technically a brackish water wetland consisting of marshlands and lagoons, and its classification as “anthropogenic” stems from the fact that it was inadvertently created by, and entirely sustained by human engineering.³

This “human engineering” began in 1965 after the U.S.Bureau of Reclamation rerouted approximately 100,000 acre feet of salty runoff from the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation District away from the Colorado River and 13 miles into Mexico – as a temporary way to reduce the excessively salty Colorado river water that had been killing crops in Mexico. By 1973 a permanent bypass canal was built which carried that salty runoff 50 miles further, to the Ciénega de Santa Clara in Sonora.⁴

But to everyone’s shock and surprise the salty runoff that was dumped at Cienega de Santa Clara resulted in the rebirth of an amazing ecosystem. The sprawling 40,000-acre wetland, now a UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve, transformed a desolate salt flat into a lush expanse of emergent marshes dominated by dense stands of southern cattail interspersed with bulrushes and submerged aquatics. The nutrient-rich, albeit salty, waters fostered rapid plant growth, creating tangled corridors of green that ripple across the landscape, their feathery seed heads swaying in desert breezes amid shallow, mirrored pools teeming with microbial life.⁵

But the oasis’s vitality depends upon consistent inflows. Disruptions, like the one in 1993 that occurred during canal repairs caused a dramatic loss of vegetation, confining green regrowth to low-lying faults until the runoff flows resumed. But today “La Cienaga” endures as a testament to ecological opportunism, though looming desalination plans at Yuma threaten its future by potentially diverting the life-sustaining drainage. ⁶

1. The Salton Sea. Physical and Chemical Characteristics
   https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.4319/lo.1958.3.4.0373
2. NIH: National Library of Medicine
   https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7232737/
3. From accident to management: The Cienega de Santa Clara ecosystem
   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925857413001079#:~:text=rights%20and%20content-,Abstract,that%20flows%20to%20the%20Cienega.
4. Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Project
   https://www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=96#:~:text=In%201961%2C%20two%20major%20problems,Project%2C%20Delivery%20of%20Water%20to
5. Audubon: “Water Flows in Colorado River Delta Again”
   https://www.audubon.org/news/water-flow-colorado-river-delta-again
6. Sonoran Institute
   https://sonoraninstitute.org/files/pdf/colorado-river-delta-research-la-cienega-de-santa-clara-06152011.pdf

By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
Grand Junction, Colorado

A political brouhaha erupted in the early 1960s after the Wellton‑Mohawk irrigation project in Arizona discharged very saline return flows into the Colorado River, which raised salinity at the border from 800 ppm to about 2,700 ppm. In Mexicali Valley farmers said the water was virtually “useless for irrigation purposes,” and led to widespread crop failure in one of Mexico’s largest and most fertile regions.

It took the United States 12 years to find a definitive, long-term solution: from the initial crisis in 1961 to the signing of a permanent agreement, known as “Minute 242” in 1973. This agreement led with the Bureau of Reclamation investing $250 million in the development of the Yuma Desalting Plant, which would use a reverse-osmosis system to filter a percentage of salts from the river before it entered Mexico.

The expensive plant was completed in 1992 but was used for only a few months. Because in 1977 a temporary measure enacted by the BOR diverted (the salty) Wellton-Mohawk runoff to Mexico’s Ciénega de Santa Clara. This action brought the river water back into compliance while the Yuma Desalting Plant was still being built. But this “temporary measure” worked so well that it obviated the need for the expensive desalting plant.

The Bureau of Reclamation had known since the 1970’s that the Dolores River had, (for millions of years), been a significant source of the Colorado River’s salinity and in 1996 they took action. The Paradox Valley Unit removes between 50,000 to 180,000 tons of salt annually from a facility west of Montrose, Colorado. In a nutshell the operation works by intercepting saline-rich groundwater before it enters the Dolores River by the use of nine extraction wells. These wells pump out this naturally occurring brine -which is eight times saltier than seawater, before it can seep into the Dolores River.

The brine is piped to a facility where it’s injected under high pressure 3 miles down into the earth – underneath a natural salt layer that prevents it from rising back to the surface. Unfortunately, as is often seen with other types of deep fluid injections, a 4.5 magnitude earthquake was triggered and the unit had to be shut down for two years. When operations resumed it was at a reduced rate of 67% in an attempt to mitigate the seismic risks. Even so, in 2024 the unit still managed to remove 62,913 tons of salt …salt which used to show up in Mexicali Valley.

The very different types of operations that have succeeded in lowering Grand Valley’s once-massive salt load will be addressed in a future post. Thank you.

Sources:

https://www.usbr.gov/history/ProjectHistories/Yuman-AZ-Desalting-Plant.pdf

https://sonoraninstitute.org/files/pdf/colorado-river-delta-research-la-cienega-de-santa-clara-06152011.pdf

https://www.usbr.gov/uc/progact/paradox/index.html