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Deadline Looms for Western States to Cut Colorado River Use

Banks along parts of the Colorado River where water once streamed are now just caked mud and rock as climate change makes the Western U.S. hotter and drier. 

More than two decades of drought have done little to deter the region from diverting more water than flows through it, depleting key reservoirs to levels that now jeopardize water delivery and hydropower production. 

Cities and farms in seven U.S. states are bracing for cuts this week as officials stare down a deadline to propose unprecedented reductions to their use of the water, setting up what’s expected to be the most consequential week for Colorado River policy in years. 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to determine how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. The bureau is also expected to publish hydrology projections that will trigger additional cuts already agreed to. 

Tensions over the extent of the cuts and how to spread them equitably have flared, with states pointing fingers and stubbornly clinging to their water rights despite the looming crisis. 

Representatives from the seven states convened in Denver last week for last-minute negotiations behind closed doors. Those discussions have yet to produce concrete proposals, but officials close to the negotiations say the most likely targets for cuts are Arizona and California farmers. Agricultural districts in those states are asking to be paid generously to bear that burden. 

The proposals under discussion, however, fall short of what the Bureau of Reclamation has demanded and, with negotiations stalling, state officials say they hope for more time to negotiate details. 

“Despite the obvious urgency of the situation, the last 62 days produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis,” John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority wrote in a letter Monday. He called the agricultural district demands “drought profiteering.” 

The Colorado River cascades from the Rocky Mountains into the arid deserts of the Southwest. It’s the primary water supply for 40 million people. About 70% of its water goes toward irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of the United States’ winter vegetables. 

Water from the river is divided among Mexico and the seven U.S. states under a series of agreements that date back a century, to a time when more flowed. 

But climate change has transformed the river’s hydrology, providing less snowmelt and causing hotter temperatures and more evaporation. As the river yielded less water, the states agreed to cuts tied to the levels of reservoirs that store its water. 

Last year, federal officials for the first time declared a water shortage, triggering cuts to Nevada, Arizona and Mexico’s share of the river to help prevent the two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — from dropping low enough to threaten hydropower production and stop water from flowing through their dams. 

The proposals for supplemental cuts due this week have inflamed disagreement between upper basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — over how to spread the pain. 

The lower basin states use most of the water and have thus far shouldered most of the cuts. The upper basin states have historically not used their full allocations but want to maintain water rights to plan for population growth. 

Gene Shawcroft, the chairman of Utah’s Colorado River Authority, believes the lower basin states should take most of the cuts because they use most of the water and their full allocations. 

He said it was his job to protect Utah’s allocation for growth projected for decades ahead: “The direction we’ve been given as water purveyors is to make sure we have water for the future.” 

In a letter last month, representatives from the upper basin states proposed a five-point conservation plan they said would save water, but argued most cuts needed to come from the lower basin. The plan didn’t commit to any numbers. 

“The focus is getting the tools in place and working with water users to get as much as we can rather than projecting a water number,” Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, told The Associated Press. 

That position, however, is unsatisfactory to many in lower basin states already facing cuts. 

“It’s going to come to a head particularly if the upper basin states continue their negotiating position, saying, ‘We’re not making any cuts,'” said Bruce Babbitt, who served as Interior secretary from 2003-2011. 

Lower basin states have yet to go public with plans to contribute, but officials said last week that the states’ tentative proposal under discussion fell slightly short of the federal government’s request to cut 2 to 4 million acre-feet. 

An acre-foot of water is enough to serve 2-3 households annually. 

Bill Hasencamp, the Colorado River resource manager at Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, said all the districts in the state that draw from the river had agreed to contribute water or money to the plan, pending approval by their respective boards. Water districts, in particular Imperial Irrigation District, have been adamant that any voluntary cut must not curtail their high priority water rights. 

Southern California cities will likely provide money that could fund fallowing farmland in places like Imperial County and water managers are considering leaving water they’ve stored in Lake Mead as part of their contribution. 

Arizona will probably be hit hard with reductions. The state over the past few years shouldered many of the cuts. With its growing population and robust agricultural industry, it has less wiggle room than its neighbors to take on more, said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke. Some Native American tribes in Arizona have also contributed to propping up Lake Mead in the past and could play an outsized role in any new proposal. 

Irrigators around Yuma, Arizona, have proposed taking 925,000 acre-feet less of Colorado River water in 2023 and leaving it in Lake Mead if they’re paid $1.4 billion or $1,500 per acre-foot. The cost is far above the going rate, but irrigators defended their proposal as fair considering the cost to grow crops and get them to market. 

Wade Noble, the coordinator for a coalition that represents Yuma water rights holders, said it was the only proposal put forth publicly that includes actual cuts, rather than theoretical cuts to what users are allocated on paper. 

Some of the compensation-for-conservation funds could come from $4 billion in drought funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act under consideration in Washington, U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona told the AP. 

Sinema acknowledged that paying farmers to conserve is not a long-term solution: “In the short term, however, in order to meet our day-to-day needs and year-to-year needs, ensuring that we’re creating financial incentives for non-use will help us get through,” she said. 

Babbitt agreed that money in the legislation will not “miraculously solve the problem” and said prices for water must be reasonable to avoid gouging because most water users will take be impacted. 

“There’s no way that these cuts can all be paid for at a premium price for years and years,” he said. 

 

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Film Academy Apologizes to Littlefeather for 1973 Oscars

Nearly 50 years after Sacheen Littlefeather stood on the Academy Awards stage on behalf of Marlon Brando to speak about the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences apologized to her for the abuse she endured.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Monday said that it will host Littlefeather, now 75, for an evening of “conversation, healing and celebration” on September 17.

When Brando won best actor for “The Godfather,” Littlefeather, wearing buckskin dress and moccasins, took the stage, becoming the first Native American woman ever to do so at the Academy Awards. In a 60-second speech, she explained that Brando could not accept the award due to “the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry.”

Some in the audience booed her. John Wayne, who was backstage at the time, was reportedly furious. The 1973 Oscars were held during the American Indian Movement’s two-month occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In the years since, Littlefeather has said she’s been mocked, discriminated against and personally attacked for her brief Academy Awards appearance.

In making the announcement, the Academy Museum shared a letter sent June 18 to Littlefeather by David Rubin, academy president, about the iconic Oscar moment. Rubin called Littlefeather’s speech “a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity.”

“The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified,” wrote Rubin. “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”

Littlefeather, in a statement, said it is “profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago.”

“Regarding the Academy’s apology to me, we Indians are very patient people — it’s only been 50 years!” said Littlefeather. “We need to keep our sense of humor about this at all times. It’s our method of survival.”

At the Academy Museum event in Los Angeles, Littlefeather will sit for a conversation with producer Bird Runningwater, co-chair of the academy’s Indigenous Alliance.

In a podcast earlier this year with Jacqueline Stewart, a film scholar and director of the Academy Museum, Littlefeather reflected on what compelled her to speak out in 1973.

“I felt that there should be Native people, Black people, Asian people, Chicano people — I felt there should be an inclusion of everyone,” said Littlefeather. “A rainbow of people that should be involved in creating their own image.”

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US Defense Chief Tests Positive for COVID

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday he tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time this year and is experiencing mild symptoms.

The Pentagon chief said in a statement that he will continue to work a normal schedule but do so virtually from home. Austin said he would quarantine for the next five days in accordance with CDC guidelines and “retain all authorities.”

In January, Austin, 69, also contracted COVID-19.

“Now, as in January, my doctor told me that my fully vaccinated status, including two booster shots, is why my symptoms are less severe than would otherwise be the case,” he said.

Austin said he would continue to consult closely with his doctor in the coming days.

The defense chief urged all Americans to get vaccinated, saying the inoculations “continue to both slow the spread of COVID-19 and to make its health effects less severe.”

Austin said his last in-person contact with President Joe Biden was July 29.

Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on July 21 and came out of isolation July 27. He tested positive again on July 30 and spent another week in isolation.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.

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New Study Reveals Britain’s Health Inequalities

People who live in the poorest regions of England are diagnosed with serious illnesses earlier and die sooner than their counterparts in more affluent regions, according to a new study.

The Health Foundation study, published Monday, found that “A 60-year-old woman in the poorest areas of England has a level of ‘diagnosed illness’ equivalent to that of a 76-year-old woman in the wealthiest areas . . . While a 60-year-old man in the poorest areas of England will on average have a level of diagnosed illness equivalent to that of a 70- year-old man in the wealthiest areas.”

The Health Foundation is an independent charity dedicated to improving “the health and healthcare of the people in the UK.”

The foundation said while previous studies about health inequalities in England have mostly relied on self-reported health outcomes, their study “linked hospital and primary care data to examine socioeconomic, regional and ethnic variations in the prevalence of diagnosed long-term illnesses.”

The study also uncovered “significant ethnic disparities in diagnosed illness” in populations of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and black Caribbean backgrounds.  This group had higher levels of long-term illness than the white population.

People from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds also had “the highest rates of diagnosed chronic pain, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”

The Health Foundation, however, also found that the white population “had the highest levels of diagnosed anxiety or depression, and alcohol problems.”

“White people are also more likely to be living with cancer,” according to the study’s findings. This may be occurring because of “the increased survival rates associated with cancers that are more prevalent in this group and due to more diagnoses resulting from greater access to cancer screening in the white population.”

‘The NHS wasn’t set up to carry the burden of policy failings in other parts of society,” Jo Bibby, director of Healthy Lives at the Health Foundation said in a statement. “A healthy, thriving society must have all the right building blocks in place, including good quality jobs, housing and education. Without these, people face shorter lives, in poorer health”.

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NASA-Funded Researchers Head to Western Australia for Clues on Extra Terrestrial Life 

NASA researchers are studying “Mars-like” salt lakes in Western Australia in their hunt for extra-terrestrial life. Experts from the United States say the region, with its pink-hued water and distinctive trees, is more like Mars than almost any other location on Earth.

The Yilgarn Craton is a vast mineral-rich region about 400 kilometers east of Perth in Western Australia.

Yilgarn is a word used by the area’s indigenous people to describe quartz. The region has been the focus of exploration and mining, but scientists believe it could harbor clues about the universe and life on other planets.

Western Australia’s acidic lakes are said to mimic conditions on ancient Mars. Three-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia are some of the oldest on Earth and academics believe they are about the same age as those on the Red Planet.

A team of U.S. experts, supported by local Indigenous elders, are investigating how so-called “hyper-saline environments” — or places with lots of salt — are not only present-day ecosystems, but how they preserve a record of the past.

Associate Professor Britney Schmidt, from Cornell University in New York state, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the project is funded by NASA, the Washington-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“We are members of the Oceans Across Space and Time project, which is a program funded by the NASA Astrobiology Program and we are out here studying analogues, or examples, of what we think ancient Mars might have been like. So, Western Australia’s unique because it has very, very old rocks. So, here in the Yilgarn Craton somewhere around two to three million years old as well as highly acidic water, and so those two combinations are things that we see on the surface of other planets. So, it is really unique,” she said.

The U.S. team of researchers has been working with indigenous elders, who have explained the region’s so-called “dreaming stories,” which chart the creation of the land by ancestral spirits.

There are many big questions to answer; if life can survive in toxic and hyper-saline environments in Western Australia, could it have existed in extreme conditions on other planets?

We may never find out, but together science and traditional knowledge could yield valuable clues.

Much of the data will help to craft Ph.D. and master’s theses when the team returns to the United States.

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