Devastating drought is imminent: Scientists surprised to find Colorado River Basin drying up faster than expected

Monday, March 21, 2016
By Paul Martin

by: J. D. Heyes
NaturalNews.com
Monday, March 21, 2016

More than a half-dozen Western states that depend on the Colorado River Basin for the bulk of their water are drawing much more heavily from groundwater supplies than previously thought, according to a new study, which is the latest indication that the historic drought gripping much of the region is threatening their future access to water.

According to The Washington Post, over the past nine years the basin — covering Wyoming, Utah, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada — has lost some 65 cubic kilometers of fresh water, which is nearly double the volume of the country’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead. It was a figure that truly surprised the study’s authors, who used data from a NASA weather satellite to examine groundwater supplies.

“We don’t know exactly how much groundwater we have left, so we don’t know when we’re going to run out,” said Stephanie Castle, a water resources specialist at the University of California, Irvine, and the study’s lead author. “This is a lot of water to lose. We thought that the picture could be pretty bad, but this was shocking.”

About two-thirds of water lost over the past near-decade came from underground supplies, instead of surface water, the Post reported, citing the study’s findings.

“We were shocked to see how much water was actually depleted underground,” Castle told the paper.

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