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Water/Southwest

40 images Created 25 Nov 2011

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  • "Shade balls" cover the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District recycled water reservoir, August 17, 2015, in Calabasas, California. The four-inch balls prevent evaporation and algae growth.
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  • Earl L. Griffis outside his Bombay Beach home, August 18, 2014, the Salton Sea, California. Griffis built his house in 1971 and has lived there full-time since retiring in 1989.
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  • The Desert Princess, a three-level paddle-wheeler, passes Rock Island, November 17, 2014, while leaving HemenwayHarbor on it mid-day sightseeing cruse.  A high-water mark or “bathtub ring” is visible on the shoreline; Lake Mead is down over 145 vertical feet.
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  • Dust blows at Lake Mead's Boulder Harbor, June 20, 2015. A high-water mark or “bathtub ring” is visible on the shoreline; Lake Mead is down over 150 vertical feet.
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  • Claudia Hauser checks a dam, May 11, 2016, while irrigating alfalfa on their farm, 652 Montezuma Castle Hwy, Camp Verde, Arizona.
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  • Colorado River Delta tidal channel, March 3, 2020, Sonora/Baja California, Mexico.
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  • Richard Wilson waters his animals, August 13, 2019, at his home in Cochise, Arizona. Wilson’s well went dry and he is now hauling water to his property.<br />
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In a roundup of the year’s best environmental journalism, The New York Times singled out the unprecedented look at aquifer degradation in Arizona by Ian James, Rob O’Dell and Mark Henle. The Republic team analyzed water-level data for more than 33,000 wells throughout Arizona, including some records going back more than 100 years, and nearly 250,000 well-drilling records. The findings are alarming for anyone with an eye on Arizona's future. Groundwater is plummeting. Water levels in a quarter of the wells have dropped 100 feet or more since they were drilled. Some of the biggest users are probably large industrial farms that have moved into far-flung desert land in recent years. These big farms drill wells as deep as half a mile into the earth. Nearby, homeowners discover their own shallower wells are running dry. When that happens, there's nobody –– no regulator, no financier –– to help them. This project was the result of monumental reporting by Ian and Rob, who have been analyzing hundreds of thousands of data points and traveling to distant farms for months. It comes to life through the visuals of Mark, who found sources and stories of his own as he turned his lenses on the groundwater problem, along with our drone team. They managed to capture aerial imagery of every big industrial farm profiled -- even the ones that wouldn't talk.
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  • Salome High School was asked to stop watering its football field because the Salome Water Company wouldn’t have enough water for residents to take showers or flush their toilets.
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  • Abraham Perez fixes/tests irrigation tape on an alfalfa field, September 20, 2019, at KLH’s Urrea Farm, Arizona.
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  • A deer grazes in a field, May 8, 2019, at the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, Sierra Vista, Arizona.
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  • Rodney Hayes and his wife, Nancy Blevins, who live near a large hay farm in Vicksburg, watched their well go dry in July. For months, they filled their car with one-galling water bottles and made trips to a friend’s house to fill them.
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  • Mark Skousen drives his International 8026 tractor, September 12, 2019, while working on his farm in Hyder, Arizona.
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  • Dean Bales turns off the water on his well, August 14, 2019, after filling the 1,500-gallon tank on his water truck, Sunizona, Arizona. Bales was hauling to the home of Richard Wilson, who’s well went dry.
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  • Dead mesquite trees, June 24, 2019, near Old Agua Caliente Road, Hyder, Arizona.
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  • Bill Ryan operates a drilling rig near Kingman, digging a new well 1,300 feet deep for Peacock Nuts, which runs a pistachio farm and plans to expand to 4,500 acres.
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  • Water pumped from wells flows through canals at a farm in Salome, Arizona.
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  • Raymond Knight works in the Grand Canyon during the week, helping with mule trains carrying supplies. On weekends, he hooks a trailer to his pick-up and carries water to family and friends. On one recent weekend, he ferried the tank back and forth between a ranch, where people had gathered to brand cattle.  “They use it up pretty fast,” he said. . Water haulers haul because the Navajo Nation lacks adequate, clean water and the infrastructure to deliver it. The reservation lies between three major rivers — the San Juan, the Colorado and the Little Colorado — but the tribe still relies mostly on groundwater. Drilling a well is easier and cheaper than building a pipeline.  Not all the wells produce usable water. Many dry up in a drought. Windmills break down, often for weeks at a time. As a result it's not uncommon for people to drive 30 miles or more to find water.
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  • Jonathan Greyhatt and 70,000 other Navajos haul water daily or weekly to meet their basic needs. The Navajo Nation faces an almost unfathomable water crisis, one that has persisted so long; that it has wormed its way into the routines of life on the nation's largest Indian reservation. Easing the crisis will require decades of work, billions of dollars and the patience to cut through the politics of Western water.
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  • Monument Valley draws tourists from around the world for its tours of the magnificent rock formations, but what brings the locals is the well at the Seventh Day Adventist mission. The well is a rarity, a reliable and clean source of water, clean enough that haulers will pass by other wells and make longer trips to fill up.  Lines form early each day, including the Elvis Saltwater and his children, Fidel and Javier, who wait for their 425-gallon tank to fill.
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  • Ethel Whitehair ran out of water again over the weekend, she emptied every bucket and pot, drained the plastic barrels lined up outside her front door.  The community well at the chapter house was closed until Monday. Water from another well at a nearby windmill could supply the sheep, but it was untreated and made Whitehair's skin itch. And so Whitehair waited as she had so often during her 87 years on the Navajo Reservation, waited for someone to bring her water.  “She stays by herself for long stretches of time and then we have to come and haul the water” said Amy Yazzie, Whitehair's daughter.
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  • In the bathroom of the Whitehair home, Greyhatt fills bucket after bucket with water used for daily grooming.  Homes are built with modern conveniences in hopes that one day they will have running water.  The Bureau of Reclamation estimated that the total economic cost to haul water on the reservation is about $113 per 1,000 gallons.  A Phoenix homeowner pays about $5 a month for as much as 7,480 gallons.  “We're talking about things a lot of people take for granted,” said Ray Benally, director of the tribe's water resources department. “It's about our quality of life. The lack of clean, potable water has an effect on people's health.”
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  • The Dugi family work cattle on their ranch at Ward's Terrace.  Tribal officials acknowledge they may never provide full running water to every home. The reservation is just too big, the ancestral lands too widely spread. A more practical goal is ensuring that water haulers can find clean sources within shorter distances.
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  • Brian Shorty washes at the Red Lake windmill trough while hauling water for his grandfather’s sheep.  The hose is connected to and filling Shorty’s trailer mounted water tank..
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  • The All-American Canal runs through the Imperial Sand Dunes west of Yuma on its way to the Imperial Valley.
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  • Under the watchful eye of his mom, Anakin Everhart plays with the water while the tub is being filled for his nightly bath.
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  • A visitor hikes along the shore of Lake Powell just before Glen Canyon Dam.  The water level on Lake Powell is down over 100 vertical feet and this entire area would be under water if the lake were at its high level.
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  • Portrait of irrigator Raul Rodriquez in a Waymon Farms fennel field.  The field is located south of Somerton, Arizona.
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  • John Benninger uses maps to explain why Pine, Arizona has water shortages, especially during the summer months, when summer homes are full.
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  • A Cliff Swallows returns to its mud nest attached to the underside of a pedestrian bridge on the Western Canal in Tempe.
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  • City of Gilbert Water Conservation Specialist Lisa Hemphill (right) helps Charles Buerger set his irrigation controller.
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  • Synlawn employee Jaime Moreno installs turf in the backyard of Glendale resident E. Normand Blanchette.
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  • Eddie Hunter opens the valve on his 500-gallon truck mounted water tank so he can pump it into his 5,000-gallon storage tank at his home outside of Ash Fork.  Playing in the tree while Hunter transfers the water is his daughter, Sierra.
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  • Doug Duncan, a fisheries biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, checks his net for a Gila topminnow.  After identifying one Duncan commented, “I haven’t heard of topminnow being here (north of San Lazaro, Sonora) since 1997.”  The Gila topminnow, that is now endangered, was once one of the most common native Arizona fish.
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  • Water runs into a recharge basin at the The New River-Agua Fria River Underground Storage Project (NAUSP).
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  • Agua Dulce Creek, at headwaters of the San Pedro River, Sonora, Mexico. The lessons of Rancho Los Fresnos and of other projects along the San Pedro are lessons that can translate to most any desert river system. Protect the watershed, focus on doable projects, involve land owners and users, preserve wildlife habitat and, wherever possible, find a way to keep at least a little water.
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  • Kevin Hauser removes a rock from his sweet cornfield in Camp Verde.  Hauser farms about 1,200 acres along the Verde, on parcels strung out from Camp Verde all the way to Chino Valley.  He relies heavily on the river, taking water from the Eureka Ditch, one of the oldest irrigation systems still operating.  He has followed the arguments about drilling wells along the Verde and about habitat.  “A lot of people feel helpless about what to do,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Prescott or a construction company pumping water ahead of you. You’ve always gotta be watching upstream.”
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  • Round Valley rancher Sam Udall readies for a days work on the X-Diamond Ranch with owner, Wink Crigler.  Crigler’s X Diamond Ranch is one of several operations that are incorporating river ecology and watershed management into their work along the Little Colorado.  You need water to ranch and if you want to keep the water around, you have to be careful the way you ranch.
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  • Samuel Adams Jr. enjoys a late afternoon swim in the Verde River. It was the first time he had ever been camping with his dad.
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  • Mike Landis opens a gate at Willow Ranch.
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  • The Colorado River, March 18, 2019, south of Hoover Dam. The historic Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan was signed by the seven basin states, May 20, 2019.
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