onearth.org: by Tim Folger

More than 80 years ago, seven western states hammered out a pact dividing up the water in the Colorado River. Agriculture was king and Las Vegas just a railroad watering stop in the middle of nowhere. Today, after an eight-year drought, the river is in crisis. Tim Folger traveled from its snow-fed headwaters to the feeble trickle that enters the Gulf of California, asking everyone he met: What comes next?

Somewhere on the road between the lonely McMansion where the Mormon polygamist’s senior wife lives and the dried-up spring where the wild horses died of thirst, I put my foot in my mouth. “How big is your ranch?” I ask Dean Baker, the lean and weathered owner of much of the land around us. [ read more ]