Arizona

The Santa Cruz River may be dry but it has come alive with people who are making a seasonal river cleanup a community conservation tradition in Tucson.

By Stephen R. Miller, Food and Water Reporting Project Photography by Bill Hatcher You could almost visit Arizona without noticing it was a farming state. If you flew into Phoenix in an aisle seat,...

Lakes Mead and Powell, the basin’s two largest reservoirs, are approaching critical levels in which hydropower from their dams (Hoover and Glen Canyon, respectively) would be severely curtailed or altogether cease.

Smaller cities. Soaring water prices. Scorched desert towns.

As the Southwest faces rapid growth and unrelenting drought, the Colorado River is in crisis, with too many demands on its diminishing flow. Now those who depend on the river must confront the hard reality that their supply of Colorado water may be cut off.

As severe water scarcity becomes an increasingly real and dire prospect for Arizona, looking south to Sonora offers important insight.

Should Colorado River water be used to grow alfalfa or subdivisions in the Phoenix metropolitan area?

BECLABITO, N.M. – Standing in a breezy parking lot on Navajo land in the state’s far northwest corner, Tom Taylor looked toward the western horizon and then upwards at...

Severe drought, dead wells and political division push Arizona steadily closer to water supply peril.

With the Southwest locked in a 19-year drought and climate change making the region increasingly drier, water managers and users along the Colorado River are facing a troubling question: Are we in a new, more arid era when there will never be enough water?