Water

Selling water in a dry year may make better financial sense for Colorado farms and ranches than growing crops and feed. Listen to "Morning Edition" host Michael Lyle, Jr. discuss this article with Fresh Water News Editor and Colorado Sun reporter Jerd Smith. Then, you can read the article at the link below.

Experts weigh in on what we learned during the region’s worst drought on record, and how those lessons might help us this year

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, there was only silence and the occasional crunch of rocks as a dozen people in orange vests waited in a moonlike landscape beneath a 350-foot-tall dam near Loveland.

Paddling groups want to float. Others want to wade. Landowners want the status quo. And lawmakers seemingly don’t want to get wet in a water fight.

Disputes over water are becoming more common across the Mountain West as populations grow and supplies tighten. Now, a coalition of counties, ranchers and water advocates in Utah and Nevada is appealing federal approval of a groundwater pipeline project in southern Utah.

A resolution that may be “wishful thinking” calls attention to water priorities for the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes.

The city is lowering the threshold for red-flag conditions from 700 cfs to 600 cfs.

Salt lakes in the American West are shrinking — from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to smaller lakes scattered across the Great Basin. In her new book “Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History,” writer Caroline Tracey explores why these unusual landscapes matter, and what their decline reveals about humans’ impact on the environment.

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, have received a $9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study an unlikely candidate for future fuels: cactus pear.

Arizona and the six other states that use the Colorado River do not have a new plan to share the shrinking water supply.