More water restrictions likely as California pledges to cut use of Colorado River supply
A group of farmers and conservationists at a news conference in Boulder, Colo., at the start of the Colorado River water supply crisis. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The New York Times)
A group of farmers and conservationists at a news conference in Boulder, Colo., at the start of the Colorado River water supply crisis. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The New York Times)
Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez, New York Times
Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez, New York Times
Image 1of/8
Caption
Close
Image 1 of 8
A group of farmers and conservationists at a news conference in Boulder, Colo., at the start of the Colorado River water supply crisis. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The New York Times)
A group of farmers and conservationists at a news conference in Boulder, Colo., at the start of the Colorado River water supply crisis. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The New York Times)
Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez, New York Times
Water crisis forces drought-parched states to take water by the bucketful
1 / 8
Back to Gallery
COLDWEB — In the spring of 1987, a flood ravaged the town of Coldwell and sent a half million gallons of wastewater tumbling from a Colorado River reservoir, carrying with it the potential to kill humans, but not to flood an already parched West Coast.
The crisis played out on the state’s eastern border of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California, with a small patchwork of towns along the American River and its tributaries. Residents of towns like Nevada City, Nevada, where most of the water was, were warned to keep their basements dry and to turn off their toilets.
But unlike some big-city public water systems that could be easily shut off at any time, the Colorado River has become far more complicated because it is one of a dozen sources — from the Mississippi River in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south — that supplies almost all of the water
