The Pacific Institute is the media’s go-to resource for water-related information and analysis. We help shape critical debates on water use and management through articles from some of the top media outlets in the world.
Featured in The Press Democrat
When discussing the drought, the question of which crops use the most water comes up a lot.
A Pacific Institute analysis of California Department of Water Resources data sheds light on the state’s top 10 water-intensive crops in 2015, the most recent year for which the department has published water-use estimates.
Featured in The New York Times
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity — the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s — even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon.
Featured in CalMatters
In Los Angeles, people have been hearing about the dangers of drought for decades. But in this land of infinity pools and backyard putting greens — better suited for rattlesnakes and scrub — water never seems to run out.
Yet little Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, which gets a bountiful 38 inches of rain in an average year and sits near the headwaters of the Russian River, has been devastated by this year’s drought. Each resident has been told to use no more than 55 gallons per day — enough to fill a bathtub and flush a toilet six times.
Featured in NBC News
On May 17, the City Council of Mesa, Arizona, approved the $800 million development of an enormous data center — a warehouse filled with computers storing all of the photos, documents and other information we store “in the cloud” — on an arid plot of land in the eastern part of the city.
But keeping the rows of powerful computers inside the data center from overheating will require up to 1.25 million gallons of water each day, a price that Vice Mayor Jenn Duff believes is too high.
Featured in Los Angeles Times
If you live in the American West, you don’t need me to tell you it’s hot, hot, hot.
Palm Springs set a daily record of 120 degrees this week. So did Anaheim, where the mercury hit 97. Salt Lake City tied its all-time temperature record, as did the Montana city of Billings. Las Vegas baked in 114-degree weather on Tuesday and was expected to be even warmer the next two days. The hills above Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, saw an overnight low of 87 degrees.
Featured in Bloomberg
The catastrophic drought that’s gripping the U.S. West is claiming a new victim: the hydropower dams that much of the region depends on for electricity supplies.
Featured in The Guardian
Santa Clara county, the home of Silicon Valley, issued mandatory water restrictions this week during a severe drought that has already reached historic levels.
Featured in AGDAILY
For those of us in agriculture, we realize that Mother Nature will always have a say in our industry. You can plan out every detail of a growing season, but often it is a waste of time since no one knows what type of weather we will face in a given season. That is exactly what is happening to farmers and ranchers out west.
Featured in Weather Underground
The California drought, part of the most expansive western U.S. drought this century, is locked in place for awhile. The impacts from this slow-motion disaster are only beginning to ratchet up as we head into the state’s dry season. Here are some facts on the status of the drought, the factors that triggered it, and the impacts already being felt.
Featured in CalMatters
With most of the state gripped by extreme dryness, some conditions are better, some worse, than the last record-breaking drought. Over-pumping of wells hasn’t stopped. But urban residents haven’t lapsed back into water-wasting lifestyles.
Featured in KQED Newscast
Drought conditions have intensified in parts of California over the past week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday. These factors have prompted Governor Newsom to expand a drought emergency declaration to 41 of California’s 58 counties.
Featured in the Guardian
Peter Gleick argues there’s an urgent need to reshape our relationship to water: ‘There is enormous untapped potential for conservation’…
