Issues

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.

Mario Atencio’s family never received a notification that 1,100 barrels of produced water—a byproduct of oil and gas extraction—had spilled on their allotment in February 2019 near Counselor, New...

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...

Wyoming native Leslie Hagenstein lives on the ranch where she grew up and remembers her grandmother and father delivering milk in glass bottles from the family’s Mount Airy Dairy. The...

Scientist Adrienne Marshall explains why these extreme snow years are expected to decline in our warming world.

A new law gives the state authority to test water quality in mobile home parks and force owners to fix any issues. The testing program officially begins this summer, but state officials have gotten a head start at one community in Western Colorado that helped spur the legislation.

The Colorado River is in crisis — one of the worst in recorded history. For the past several months, the seven states that use Colorado River water have been trying to come up with a plan to keep the river from collapsing. California is the single largest user of Colorado River water, which means that any effort to save the river involves California making some serious cuts. 

No joke: April 1 readings were decent across many parts of the West, but some areas are still stuck in a snow drought