Lake Powell

As of Sept. 1, the reservoir was 37% full, which is about 68 feet down from a full reservoir, and a ring of muddy shoreline was growing

Colorado River Basin states have a problem even before considering climate change: There are more water rights on paper than there is water in the river.

First-ever shortage declaration on key western river means big losses for Arizona and Nevada. Colorado’s own time for cuts and living with less is coming soon, experts warn.

Lake Powell is the second-largest reservoir in the United States, right behind Nevada’s Lake Mead, which also stores water from the Colorado River. Both are shrinking faster than expected.

Drought made an expected 2.5 million acre-feet of water disappear before it ever reached the key reservoir in the Colorado River Compact, forcing federal officials to siphon from Blue Mesa Reservoir and other big pools to protect the electric grid.

Officials plan to build a pipeline to siphon water from Lake Powell to Utah's Sand Hollow Reservoir despite the coming water cuts in downstream states

Plummeting reservoir levels at Mead and Powell solidify Arizona cutbacks next year and near-future threats to all the Compact states, from Colorado to California

As the state mulls paying irrigators to leave water in the Colorado River instead of flooding fields, Audubon Rockies is using bird counts in the northwest part of the state to gauge the implications of intentionally drying the landscape.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections this week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead

Republican lawmakers in Utah approved an entity that could push for more of their state's share of Colorado River water as seven Western states, including Colorado, prepare to negotiate how to sustain a river serving 40 million people.

Coloradans also can look out their windows and see the “snow drought” forecasters are talking about when they say snow cover in the West is the worst it has been at any time in the last two decades.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s dire projections for Colorado River Basin reservoirs for the first time triggers drought contingency planning across seven basin states.

Colorado cooperates with other states to avoid a long, unpredictable Supreme Court battle. But if we cooperate and Arizona doesn’t, we may continue to lose.

Millions of people in seven states and Mexico rely on the river for drinking water and growing crops

Ranchers in northwest Colorado are experimenting with hay species that may allow them to irrigate less and leave more water in the Upper Colorado River.

Utah cited the need to consider roughly 14,000 public comments on a draft environmental impact statement, released in June by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, for the Lake Powell pipeline project

Compared with an average year, only 55% of Colorado River water is flowing from the Rocky Mountains down to Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona line

Decades of collaborative agreements between the states that rely on the Colorado River could be threatened by the Trump Administration plan to expedite review of Utah’s diversion project