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Flow Woes on the Colorado

-- Adam -- 02/22/2007

A National Research Council panel released a report yesterday that predicts dire impacts to the Colorado River from global warming, Rocky Mountain News reports. Competition over its water has been intense over several decades and the report indicates that issue will get only more heated as climate change brings significant flow reductions. "Regional drying and reduced stream flows" mean that less water will make it to growing urban centers and commercial farms. The article cites a 2005 study that projects a 20 percent decline from current flow levels. All of this is expected to have crippling effects on the economies of the seven user states and regional agricultural production.