{"id":21597,"date":"2021-04-18T21:38:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T01:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=21597"},"modified":"2021-04-18T21:38:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T01:38:56","slug":"us-west-prepares-for-possible-1st-water-shortage-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2021\/04\/us-west-prepares-for-possible-1st-water-shortage-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"US West prepares for possible 1st water shortage declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The huge reservoirs that store water in the Western US are so low that with the continuing drought there, they are expected to reach historic lows this summer. This could trigger the federal government’s first-ever official shortage declaration and lead to cuts in Arizona and Nevada’s water supply. Lower lake levels also means a reduction in the amount of hydropower that can be produced at the dams that hold back those reservoirs due to lower flows, even though the reservoirs have been retrofitted with turbines that are more suited towards low flows than the original designs. You can read about it at https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/us-west-prepares-possible-1st-162540229.html<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere in the West, lack of water is also leading to confrontations between farmers and Native Americans who were given access to water rights to preserve their ancestral way of life and protect endangered species in some of the affected watersheds. You can read one story about this at https:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/news\/article\/Epic-drought-means-water-crisis-on-16101385.php<\/a>. I expect to see a lot more stories about this in the coming months as the drought gets worse over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: Tony Webster\/Commons Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The huge reservoirs that store water in the Western US are so low that with the continuing drought there, they are expected to reach historic lows this summer. This could trigger the federal government’s first-ever official shortage declaration and lead to cuts in Arizona and Nevada’s water supply. Lower lake levels also means a reduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":3042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21598,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21597\/revisions\/21598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}