watershedplus: The Colorado River provides water for 30 million people. Because it is so heavily tapped for agriculture, industry, and municipal uses along its course, the Colorado River rarely reaches its delta and the Gulf of California. About one-tenth of the river’s former flow now makes it to Mexico, where most of that is used… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Colorado River Delta
We wanted to slow down and savor this rare experience, floating through a desert that had seen water only a handful of times in the last 30 years. In the end we traveled a little more than 40 miles, less than half the distance to the Gulf. But years of paddling have taught me never… Read more »
Chasing the Historic “Pulse Flow” Through the Colorado River Delta
For one week now, the Colorado River has been flowing into its delta. It’s the first ever deliberate release of water here to benefit the environment. That the river is flowing again in its delta is somewhat astounding, all the more remarkable because it’s happening as the result of cooperation between the United States and Mexico under a… Read more »
There’s an entire generation of people who are seeing their river for the first time.
The Case for Reconnecting the Colorado River to the Sea
Nearly two decades ago, when I first visited the delta of the Colorado River in northwestern Mexico, I became obsessed with the idea that major rivers like the Colorado were running dry. I knew what the Colorado Delta had once been—a 2-million-acre expanse of wetlands, lagoons, braided channels, and towering riverside cottonwoods and willows that… Read more »