Colorado River in Crisis: A Los Angeles Times documentary
Journalists from the Los Angeles Times travel along the Colorado River to examine how the Southwest is grappling with the water crisis.
The Colorado River can no longer withstand the thirst of the arid West. Water drawn from the river flows to millions of people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates vast farmlands.
For decades, sections of the river have been entirely used up, leaving dusty expanses of desert where water once flowed to the sea in Mexico. Now, chronic overuse and the effects of climate change are pushing the river system toward potential collapse, with depleted reservoirs near the lowest levels since they were filled. A water reckoning is about to transform the landscape of the Southwest.
Colorado River in Crisis follows Los Angeles Times journalists traveling throughout the river’s watershed, from the headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the river’s dry delta. These stories reveal the stark toll of the river’s decline, responses that have yet to match the scale of the crisis, and voices that are urging a fundamental rethinking of how water is managed and used to adapt to the reality of an overtapped and dwindling river.
This documentary was filmed and produced by Albert Brave Tiger Lee, with reporting by Ian James and other L.A. Times journalists. Consulting producers included Maggie Beidelman, Robert Meeks and Erik Himmelsbach-Weinstein. (46 minutes)
Read the L.A. Times series Colorado River in Crisis: www.latimes.com/environment/s...
0:00 Intro
2:20 The Headwaters of the Colorado River
8:03 The River Keeper
15:50 Tribes push for change
19:53 Agriculture under Pressure
27:54 Growing suburbs in the desert
34:53 A Water Reckoning
40:01 The River’s End
READ THE SERIES:
www.latimes.com/environment/s...
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Hello, everyone! Ian James here, the reporter on this project. My colleagues and I traveled throughout the Colorado River Basin to produce this documentary, speaking with scientists, environmentalists, water managers, farmers, tribal leaders and others. Thank you for watching. Let me know if you have any questions!
i@ianjames-latimes . Thank you !! Would like to know if any reporter has ever been invited or on the agenda for a Palo Verde Irrigation Board metting 'a very different atmosphere' , and ask the question how these water managers are elected or appointed onto to these water boards. One thing is for sure, the 10 x 12 'honorable mention' bronze plaque that mentions the Colorado on the walkway on Olivera Street downtown Los Angeles.
Thanks, Mr. James! For the stories.
Keep us UPDATED on this subject ... THANK YOU!
Great documentary, very insightful. Sad to watch though!!
Great job on this documentary Ian and your crew!👍 Lots of great data points in the video. You hit just about every facet of this complex issue. Each state along the river has their own unique problems to work out and they really started coming into the public light when Lake Mead dropped in 2022. It's great to see all the increased attention surrounding this issue and we hope the push will get everyone closer to understanding how to fix all this. If you are ever in the Lake Mead / Las Vegas area again to cover this topic feel free to reach out to us here, we continue to watch the reservoir and changes in the river.
California needs to get their act together and start capturing more precipitation from atmospheric rivers during el nino years.
Thts expensive..not Big business, rich wasting water on lawns…in a desert😅 and lack of caring from politicians…Cali. Having amazingly cheap State water prices😂 and El Niño is uncommon, maybe common nowadays. This be to us Most of southern Cali is arid or plain deserts anyway..terrible spots for megacities😅 Great weather but not too sustainable in todays growing multitudes. L.A. Struggled with water from day 1
And bake a pie in the sky too. Please provide us the technology to do that.
Crazy, folks who have to have water pumped long distances from the river insist they have more of a right to use water to make money than people at the end of the river who live very close to the river now has zero water do.
Ranchers think their rights are more important no matter how ridiculous the situation gets.
Now the question is how do we fix this? Start with recreation that is taking up water like Golf Courses in desert? Or start with restructuring water rights and how those are sold and bid for?
Stop breeding cows
Combination of multiple good ideas. Sacrifices will have to be made. Survival over leisure. Corporations needs to cut back demands. Teamwork? What is that says the capitalist!
21:19. In the background is one of the many mountains of harvested hay or alfalfa. Much of that animal feed, grown on government subsidized water, is for export to Saudi Arabia, China, Japan and other money rich but water poor countries 25:16. Fatmers talking about installing sprinkler systems yo irrigate their anim🎉al feed. Because sprinklers, inefficient as they are, are more efficient than what they have bee using, which is flooding the fields, which is the least efficient, misr wasteful method of irritation there is.
Some people might say it's too late to solve these problems and I strongly agree.
Politicos ,sociedade civil,agricultores deven unir forças para salvar o rio Colorado, a unica solução e a reflorestação, o tempo não espera é preciso agir con urgencia mãos a obra por favor...!
There are two choices here: 1. Make significant changes now to avoid catastrophe or 2. Fail to make significant changes and have a catastrophe. My money is on option 2.
3. Just stop breeding cows
thank you for this reporting, excellent work
Thanks very much.
He sets out to deceive and succeeds.
I have one reason why those rivers dry up, that's DAMS! or Hydroelectric Dams, we have seen multiple cases where dam removals cleared the way for biodiversity and normal river levels
Dams are no good, but the real problem is cows & their feed. Alfalfa crops use 62% of the water we obtain from the Colorado.
You really need to know your history guys. Study up on Powell. He proposed basing County and state lines based on watersheds just like the original Spanish settelers who laid out the territories who learned it from the African Moores.
The river is not in crisis Denver Water has stolen the water and us pumping it to the Mississippi. Fundamentally Denver water is not compliant of the basic water law of returning the water to its original watershed.
Thank you LA times for highlighting. Also really appreciate your frequent articles advocating for native plants and lawn removal
Excellent video.
River Kepper!! go visit the knot 'the core' that holds the River, Palo Verde Diversion Dam and the several water district entity's that wheel and deal for the control of it.
food forests can restore hydrology.
First sensible comment I've seen to this video. We need to replace all the pastures, mono crops, and other conventional agriculture with biodiverse permaculture food forests ASAP.
Humans LOVE learning the hard way!😢😢 we didn't plan....we took as much as we could....now we suffer...
Yes its called OVER POPULATED DESERTS.
Overpopulated with cows, yes.
The dead Colorado river delta indicates that the catastrophe already occurred whereas the consequences will arrive for civilization soon enough as blowback from climate change.
California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, It's your problem ! Tell the developers and politicians no more, your population has exceeded resources ! And good luck with that !
Abuse Mother Nature at your own risk....there is plenty of water....too many people😂😂😂😂😂😂
Too many cows*
You forgot to plant big trees, like the baobab, all tree is usefull, planted by a mexican family in baha.
Everything good always have a downside.
If everyone P ed In a jug and flushed it once a week how much water woud that save? ⛲️
Thousands of times less than if everyone stopped eating cows
Build more farms in the desert that’ll help. Maybe California with all their money can build desalination plants and make the Colorado great again.
I have no compassion for these beef farmers, their product is seriously water intensive. People aRE cutting down on beef, I don't want to give these climate crisis enhancers one more drop change your product, there are lots of them to choose from. As far as I am concerned they are poor stewards of the land and don't deserve water from a river miles away....sad
Millions and millions of ppl eat beef they love it so many steakhouses to eat at I don't see beef farming going away wut so ever not in urs or my lifetime anyway think how many ppl be without a job not just farmers but all ppl work at steakhouses restaurants truckers that haul beef way to many ppl that beef farming isn't going anywhere facts
Regenerative farming. See work of carbon cowboys, Whitw Oak Pastures, Joel Saladin etc.
@@HibouRondo Regenerative ranching is a greenwashing scam. See "Grazed and Confused" by Oxford or read Regenesis by George Monbiot. Regardless, 62% of the water we use from this river is being put on alfalfa mono crops, which are incredibly water-intensive. Globally we use 60 of all agricultural land to grow cows, and they produce only 2% of our calories. Cows don't just eat all the alfalfa, they eat more soy, grains, and fish than people do, while emitting unsustainable amounts of methane in the process. When analyzed by real scientists, cows grown in the methods employed at White Oak Pastures, Joes Saladin, et al are generally about 500% worse.
When it runs out don’t bring yall ass to the east coast 😂
I wonder how the river looked around 1100 AD during the 250 year drought that hit the west. 250 years, and another 150 year drought after that one, must have really dried up the river. That well before "man made global warming", automobiles or coal fired power plants. All they have is about 150 years of actual weather data to go by. And that record has few data points in the early years. That doesn't include 200, 300 or 600 years ago either. I'll laugh if the next 30 years brings "above average" precipitation through out the region.
make forest.. same the land
This is the dumbest comment section that I have ever read. People wake up!
Stop the BS there is so much snow pack
Let the water go to the sea and turn to salt, talk about waste.
Water is supposed to reach the sea. Living deltas rank among the most productive and sustainable sources of food for humans. Agriculture is a dead end as the United States will discover in the West and Midwest.
This is propaganda, is it not?
40 million people use the Colorado River they said. I wonder how much that number would be knocked down if we removed the 33 million illegal immigrants. Not only does illegal immigration cost Tax Payers 162 Billion Dollars a year but also stuff like this. Huge water loss. Just imagine the water savings from 33 million people not being in the USA o
Since they're the ones farming all the food, it would decrease by about 100% when everyone starved. If we stopped farming cows and instead grew food for humans, we could easily pay everyone a living wage and there would be more than enough food and water for all of us.
LA times?😂😂😂😂