Drinking Water

Deep below Arizona sit large volumes of water that are less salty than the ocean, but not easily used. If it were all pumped to the surface and purified, this brackish groundwater would supply Arizona’s water needs for a century or more. Problem is, it can’t all be pumped.

On an early morning, a quiet Denver neighborhood was temporarily transformed into a construction zone. A boring machine on the road outside someone’s home pointed a long, thin drill...

State Sen. Kevin Priola traveled to Israel in 2022 and came away with an idea: If the arid country can produce drinking water by taking the salt out of...

The Colorado River is a lifeline for about 40 million people across the Southwest. It supplies major cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Denver and a multibillion-dollar agriculture industry...

When researcher Brian Richter set out to take a close look at how big cities in the Western U.S. were adapting to water scarcity, he already knew the story’s...

Waking up to long-overdue system upgrades, dozens of towns that were awarded federal ARPA dollars may see them "clawed back" for lack of resources to complete paperwork.

Brett Fleck does not have an easy job. He manages water for a city in the desert. He has to keep taps flowing while facing a complicated equation: The...

On this episode of Water Buffs, we examine how drought can harm human health, specifically how dramatic fluctuations in water availability can lead to increasingly toxic water supplies.

Decades of climate change-driven drought, combined with the overpumping of aquifers, is making the valley desperately dry — and appears to be intensifying the levels of heavy metals in drinking water.

Upper basin states seek added leverage to protect their river shares amid difficult talks with California and the lower basin