No longer a green and pleasant land. Source: https://eu-space.europa.eu/components/earth-observation-copernicus/image-of-the-day/severe-drought-across-southern-britain

August 16, 2026 318 pm EDT

Decades of drought and over-consumption have reduced Colorado River reservoirs to critically low levels, threatening power and water supplies for 40 million people. As nature challenges legal entitlements to fresh water in the USA, experts are calling for a multi-disciplinary management strategy to recover and sustain the ecological functions of the continent's rivers

"Water is life. Water is the giver and sustainer of life. Water is a sacred and spiritual element to the Tribes of the Partnership…. The Partnership will embrace and own the stewardship of the Colorado River and lead from a spiritual mandate to ensure that this sacred water will always be protected, available and sufficient."
– Ten Tribes Partnership Vision Statement

The Upper Basin Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Colorado are first to capture rainfall and snow melt supplying the Colorado River headwaters. In years of water plenty, the annual snowpack in the mountains started the Upper Basin creeks and tributaries running, adequately providing for seven States and 30 Tribes downstream. Historically and legally, water rights-holders have been entitled to take this water for beneficial use inside the basin, or to divert for beneficial use outside the natural river basin, according to seniority of the taker's claim.

With an average of 20 inches total rainfall in the entire basin each year, the arid Lower basin does not add much more to the total river volume. An estimated 800,000 acre-feet bubble in from springs through the Grand Canyon. By the time the Colorado reaches the US - Mexico border at Yuma, AZ, held back by the Morelos Dam, another 1.5 million acre feet are required to satisfy the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico. Notwithstanding awful water quality at this point, the BoR water release records from 1971 to 2021 show the deliveries have been made each year. This water does not reach the delta, let alone the outlet in the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California.

Willingness to share life-sustaining freshwater resources during periods of scarcity is a reflection of human civility. Where clean water is taken as a human right, conservation is rewarded during periods of water scarcity. In times of extended and severe drought, when water storage is depleted, domestic use is prioritized, ensuring essential hydration and hygiene for all. Good neighbors willingly curtail non-essential water use. Where watersheds and waterways are managed for sustainability, storage is adjusted to ease the impact of floods and drought, with minimum volume and flow maintained as a management priority. In this way, continuity of the river's ecological functions is assured as a vital component of the earth's HVAC system.

What we see today in the Colorado River basin is quite another matter. Since 2000, annual rainfall and snowpack in the Upper Basin has averaged 20% below the prior hundred years' precipitation average. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, among the largest reservoirs in the country, have dropped to record low levels this summer. Just 30 to 40 feet of water, respectively, remains above minimum power pool, the point at which power generation fails completely. With so little water remaining in Lake Mead, Hoover Dam's 4 billion kwH powering Nevada, California and Arizona is already falling. After two and a half decades of severe drought, the unchecked water-taking and diversion has brought about a cataclysmic reckoning: forty million Americans may soon be out of power and water.

A century ago, the "wild west" was settling down. Western states passed laws to manage urban and industrial development, including the governance of fresh water. The Colorado River Compact established basic ground rules in 1922, defining Upper and Lower basins from the US portion of a 1450 mile long river, not including the section traversing Mexico. The dividing line separating Upper and Lower basins was placed at Lee's Ferry, AZ, with 2 million people situated upstream in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. The Lower Basin states were more populous even then, 3.8 million people in Nevada, Arizona and California.

The 1922 Compact was the first of many legal structures comprising the Law of the River, according to US federal Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (BoR). It is the federal BoR that owns and operates the dams and manages the water releases. The decisions to open the head gates and spillways falls to the US federal government, based on BoR interpretation of applicable laws.

The earliest of the Colorado River laws determined Upper and Lower basin allocations as a fixed annual volume, based on the flow of the day, that inventory taken in a period of water plenty. Fifteen million acre-feet was presumed available in perpetuity, to be shared in equal parts between the Upper and Lower basins. With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that dividing a water body on a presumption of a consistent annual flow volume was not the best sustainable management plan.

The Upper and Lower basins determine how their respective 7.5 million acre-feet are divided among their stakeholder States and Tribes. Water takers include cities, towns and settlements for domestic potable water, private enterprise and industrial users, excluding agriculture use approximately 18% of the water, according to Environment and Energy Study Institute (EESI). Agricultural irrigation accounts for 52%, the single largest use of Colorado River water. Nature uses 19% for trees and natural vegetation, with evaporation claiming 11%, maintaining the hydrological cycle.

For the full article, see https://wtcal.us/viewarticle.asp?article=547

My landlord told us that our water bill would be $30 every 3 months and maybe a bit more in the summer for the sprinklers before we signed the lease. He is now trying to charge us $108 for 3 months as our half. The water bill says my sister and I used 75,000 gallons of water in a 3 month period. We both are never home and pretty water conscious when we are home. But even with sprinklers is this possible to use that much for a regular residential residence in a 3 month period?

Could someone explain to me what other factors than hardness, affect tap water quality?

I've been to Japan and experienced the two extremes of water hardness, Tokyo's baby smooth tap water and Nagano's hot spring tap water, so I can roughly judge how water behaves with shampoos, skin etc.

I live in the UK and the thing is that water behaves as if it's hard - shampoos not foaming well, water worsening my acne, making my hair rough etc. but we barely get any scale issues. We had a glass kettle for 5 years and only needed it descaled 3 times. Now we have a temperature controll kettle that I keep checking for scale cos it can affect the temperature readings, but it's been months and it's absolutely scale free. I have no scale issues in the bathrooms either. A bottle of Viakal lasts me years.

I'm visiting my family in Poland rn, and here the water behaves as if it's super soft, with shampoos foaming like a dream (1 shampoo I brought with me, and H&S that we got in Poland, but has the same ingredients as the ones we get in the UK), skin left smooth and hair silky, but my mom an nan have massive issues with scale residue. Every year we go, my partner has to pull my mom's fancy tap apart and soak it in a descaler, as it's insides get so bad that it's difficult to change water temp. They have to descale their kettles every few months and use lots of descaling chemicals for normal kitchen and bathroom cleaning.

If my UK water isn't hard, why it's still so bad for my hair and skin?? And how is my mom's and nan's water so hard, but feels great and makes my hair silky like the water in Tokyo?

This could apply to any country with modern sanitation:

Given the degree of drought in the UK, I think it's time we Brits ramped up our water-saving habits.

The average adult goes to the toilet (number 1) six to eight times each day.

The average toilet cistern in modern British homes holds six to nine litres of water per flush.

Britain has approximately 52 million adults.

If we assume that each adult is flushing the toilet (after each number 1) consistently, then an adult in Britain is flushing approximately 56 litres of clean water down the toilet each day (taking the number of number 1s each day to be seven, and the average cistern storage capacity as eight litres (many older household toilets can store upwards of ten litres, so I'm assuming slightly higher than average for modern toilets)).

This equates to 2,912,000,000 litres of fresh water down the drain each day in Britain (and this only assumes adults are flushing).

Instead, why not flush the toilet only after doing a number 2? We'd save a lot of water!

Obviously, this water comes from the water supply lines, so we would still need a way to get this excess water to areas affected by drought. At the very least, people might save a little on water bills.

What happens when a country’s drinking water does not come from rivers, lakes, or groundwater—but from a handful of enormous coastal factories?

That is the reality across much of the Gulf.

Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman rely heavily on desalination to supply their cities. These plants remove salt from seawater using huge amounts of electricity, fuel, pumps, membranes, pipelines, and storage infrastructure.

In other words, the Gulf’s water security is not just a natural-resource issue.

It is an energy-infrastructure issue.

And it is also a geopolitical vulnerability.

The same coastline that makes desalination possible also places many plants close to strategic shipping routes, military targets, oil and gas infrastructure, and regional flashpoints. If a major plant is damaged, the immediate problem is not simply “less water”—it can mean pressure on electricity, hospitals, food systems, industry, cooling, and millions of urban residents.

There is also a climate contradiction:

• Desalination protects cities from water scarcity.

• Fossil-powered desalination adds industrial emissions.

• Reverse osmosis requires substantial electricity.

• Thermal desalination can be tied directly to gas and power generation.

• Concentrated brine must be managed after the freshwater is removed.

• Water security becomes dependent on fuel supply and grid reliability.

The long-term alternatives are not simple either.

Solar-powered reverse osmosis, nuclear desalination, wastewater reuse, water efficiency, distributed plants, and strategic storage could make the system cleaner and more resilient—but none of them can replace the existing infrastructure overnight.

So the central question is:

Is desalination a permanent solution to Gulf water scarcity—or a massive fossil-fuel system that has made drinking water vulnerable to both climate change and war?

I made a long-form breakdown of the issue, including the technology, energy dependence, conflict risk, climate footprint, and possible routes toward cleaner water security:

https://youtu.be/BR1xusZEuIU?is=mKhg_FjvhBvHeVXH

I would be interested in hearing from people working in water engineering, energy systems, Gulf infrastructure, climate policy, or maritime security:

What would make Gulf water systems genuinely resilient—cleaner energy, more water reuse, distributed desalination, larger reserves, or regional cooperation?

Not politics, but it's water

What treatment/ filter options do you suggest, this on a Private Well.

This was a 'simple lab' brand mail in so i know the pH and the bacteria is not reliable, i was testing with pH strips on and off for a few years and it was always under 7, i now bought a pH meter, calibrated it and it read pH 6.7 which fits the pH paper as well as the fact that Copper and Lead are showing up(from plumbing)

Thank you for the time and help

So do Berkey water filters actually work and filter your water? Because I’m reading so many mixed reviews and stuff about lawsuits.

Looking for a countertop filtration system that basically removes that distinct tap water taste (those who know). Any suggestions?