Visit the Colorado riverbed in northwest Mexico this spring, and you’ll see something that hasn’t been witnessed in the area for decades: Flowing water.
The Los Angeles Times reports that authorities recently opened the gates of the Morelos Dam that sits between the international boundary of Yuma, Ariz., and Los Algodones, Mexico, with the goal of pouring 105,000 acre-feet of water into the barren Mexican side of the delta for eight weeks.
Besides the welcome sight of water, there are even signs of wildlife such as hawks, egrets, ospreys and beavers, the newspaper reports.
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This thirst-quenching move has been described by the Associated Press as a “landmark agreement” between the United States and Mexico, who are putting aside their bickering over water rights in an effort to restore the wetlands and wildlife that once flourished south of the border.
Conservationists are hailing this project as a victory. “Never before have we deliberately sent water below the Morelos Dam … to benefit the environment,” Jennifer Pitt of the Environmental Defense Fund, who was involved with the flooding project, wrote on her blog, according to the AP. “By abandoning the old framework of ‘who gets what’ and establishing cooperative management of our shared resource, the U.S. and Mexico are achieving benefits for communities and nature alike.”
At a time when the water-pinched West is experiencing a devastating drought, this restoration project can’t come soon enough.
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Tag: drought
Inside ‘Tank Town’ Could Lie a Solution to the Country’s Worst Drought in Decades
The town of Dripping Springs, Texas, is not living up to its name. In the last five years Dripping Springs, along with most of Texas, has been experiencing its worst drought in decades. But inside Dripping Springs lies an oasis of water — 250,000 gallons of it to be exact.
The area is called Tank Town. Twenty years ago Richard Heinichen grew sick of the water he was getting from his well. “I took my first shower, and I almost threw up because of the sulfur smell,” he says. He built a system in his backyard to collect, store and pump rainwater through his house.
Since that fateful shower, Heinichen has installed about 1,300 tanks, including 16 on his own property. He collects so much water, in fact, that he now bottles and sells his own Cloud Juice. People around the country — many of whom have to contend with the effects of drought — are turning to Tank Town to find solutions to their water woes.
The Eco-Friendly Plan to Quench Central California’s Thirst
There are billions of gallons of water in California’s parched Central Valley. But the problem is this water is filled with salt, toxins and heavy metals, making it useless for irrigation. As we’ve mentioned before, traditional water desalination plants can be costly and use up a lot of energy. However, San Francisco-based start-up WaterFX has come up with a solution that uses heat to turn salty water into freshwater, and is sure to help the region’s water-pinched farmers.
WaterFX’s Aqua4 project, currently in phase one, is humming along in California’s agricultural hub that’s especially feeling this year’s awful drought. As Clean Technica reports, though small at 160 x 40 feet, this solar-powered plant is capable of turning otherwise unusable water into 65,000 gallons of freshwater a day. And here’s more good news — it also converts all that leftover brine and other minerals from the saltwater for reuse (such as calcium compounds for drywall or nitrates for fertilizer). You can watch the video above to see how it works.
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This water desalination plant could solve multiple problems. First, because it runs on solar power, the energy is cheap and clean. Second, local farms no longer have to pipe in water from other locations. Thanks to this project’s success, there are plans in the works to expand the facility later this year to quench more of California’s thirsty cities.
How One City Is Stepping Up to Help Solve Our Fresh Water Worries
With parts of the country running short on fresh water, San Diego is pushing forward on a deceptively simple solution — turning ocean water into drinking water. As Aljazeera America reports, the Carlsbad desalination plant that’s currently under state-approved construction is a $1 billion project to help solve our country’s water shortage.
Parts of the Middle East and Africa already operate large desalination plants, but similar projects are getting some push-back in the states. That’s because desalinating salt water can suck up a lot of energy and hinder less-invasive conservation efforts such as recycling waste water. However, with no end in sight to California’s drought, tapping the resources of the Pacific Ocean is necessary if conditions worsen. “Without doing desalination [and] without having another source of supply, we would clearly have shortages of water,” said Sandy Kerl, deputy general manager of San Diego Water Authority.
Once construction is complete in 2016, the Carlsbad plant will have the capacity to produce 50 million gallons of drinking water per day and provide 300,000 San Diego County residents with locally controlled, fresh drinking water.
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