A woman walks along a cliff top near Lake Powell, the second biggest reservoir in the U.S., where climate-change-driven drought continues to lower water levels. Photograph by David McNew / Getty

The management of water in the western USA has been an occasional topic in these pages and Rachel Monroe adds to our understanding:

The Water Wranglers of the West Are Struggling to Save the Colorado River

Farmers, bureaucrats, and water negotiators converged on Caesars Palace, in Las Vegas, to fight over the future of the drought-stricken Southwest.

In mid-December, I drove to Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, to see its infamous bathtub ring. The bathtub, in this metaphor, is Lake Mead, on the border between Nevada and Arizona; the ring is a chalk-white coating of minerals that its receding waters have left behind. The Southwest, which includes the Colorado River Basin, has been in a protracted drought since 2000; climate change has made it worse. Continue reading →