A century-old legal framework promises those users more water than there is to go around. The river’s flow has shrunk by about 20 percent over the last century as climate change has made the West more arid. As water has vanished, states have clashed over how to divide up what remains. The core dispute is between the sparsely inhabited mountainous states of the “Upper Basin,” where hay farmers and a few major cities like Denver draw water from the river and its tributaries, and the far more populous “Lower Basin,” which diverts water to support most of the nation’s winter vegetable farmers as well as megacities like Los Angeles and Phoenix.

  • terry_jerry@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    16·
    7 days ago

    Shits gunna hit the fan real soon, snow pack levels are under 50 % of average this year. No way lake mead is gunna get enough juice to fill up all those toilets in AZ.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    While this is presumably a less likely scenario, if one assumes that basically all water routing would be designed around this not happening:

    If the water level at Lake Mead gets low enough that the turbines at Hoover dam cannot generate power…

    You’re looking at more or less a scenario where the entire South West power grid buckles.

    Or, rolling blackouts and brown outs on a continuing basis, for… what, I dunno, 30 million people?

    … what I am saying is replay Fallout New Vegas, Hardcore mode, just in case.

  • Bwaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    Fuxaik… Trump neither is aware of nor understands, much less cares about this.