Denver to get more water from the Colorado River

In the West, water wars never really end — they just fade away, only to re-emerge during a drought, or when there’s a new proposal to build another dam or divert a river through a mountain range.

The latest flare-up, not surprisingly, is about the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River, born in crystal clear springs in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming. In wet years it reaches the Gulf of California as a muddy trickle. In dry years, it vanishes in the dust before empties into the sea, and long before it satisfies all the claims that have been made on it.

Along the way, the river hydrates 40 million people and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of produce, from Denver through Arizona and Nevada, all the way to Southern California, via dams, pipelines, and diversions.

In early July, Denver Water, Colorado’s largest water provider, won a crucial permit from the federal government to once again tinker with the plumbing and make the river work just a little bit harder.

LINK (via: Project Earth)