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Tehran, home to more than 10 million people, stands on the brink of a catastrophic water shortage amid Iran’s most severe drought in decades. In 2025, the capital has seen a 100% drop in precipitation compared to the previous year — an unprecedented collapse that has left the region’s reservoirs nearly empty. Iranian officials are now warning that, absent immediate rainfall, parts of the city may face forced evacuation within weeks.
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At the center of the crisis is the Amir Kabir Dam, once a cornerstone of Tehran’s water supply. Today, it holds only <a href="https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/07112025">14 million cubic meters of water</a> — just 8% of capacity — enough to sustain the city for about two weeks under current conditions. Tehran depends on five primary dams — Lar, Mamlu, Amir Kabir, Taleqan, and Latyan — but together they are only <a href="https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2025/11/07/tehran039s-main-dams-only-11-pct-full-amid-severe-drought#goog_rewarded">8%</a>. Excluding the newly added Taleqan Dam, that figure plunges to 5%, according to Mohsen Ardakani, head of Tehran’s Water and Wastewater Company.
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Tehran’s environmental collapse is only one part of a broader national emergency. <a href="https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/human-rights/stop-executions-in-iran/irans-regime-executes-14-on-oct-14-over-2000-killed-under-pezeshkian/">According</a> to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), more than 2,000 people have been killed in just 14 and a half months of Pezeshkian’s repressive presidency, as the regime tightens its grip.
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Tehran province received only 159 millimeters of rainfall in the last water year, the lowest in a century, and has had no measurable rain since September 23. Current dam reserves have dropped to 252 million cubic meters, down from 420 million cubic meters in previous years, and weather forecasts indicate no significant rainfall is expected before December. Even after tapping underground aquifers to maintain a minimal supply, the crisis remains “critical,” Ardakani warned.
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The Karaj Dam, another key source, is currently at 7% capacity, and clean water could be exhausted within two weeks, according to Mehdi Maghsoudi, director of Karaj Water Affairs.
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President Masoud Pezeshkian admitted, “If it does not rain, we will have to start restricting water supplies in Tehran next month. If the drought continues, we will run out of water and be forced to evacuate the city.”
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With the capital consuming about three million cubic meters of water per day, Tehran has little margin for error. The convergence of drought, state failure, and brutal governance paints a grim picture of a nation on the brink — where both the land and its people are being drained dry.
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei

Iran’s Despotic Government May Have To Evacuate Tehran Because Of Water Shortage

drought

Iran

Natural Disaster

World

A decades-long drought and population growth has left the Colorado River over-leveraged and in dire need of a new management plan before the water runs out for millions of Americans.
 Negotiations between seven states to reapportion the river’s water have been deadlocked for months, and the federal government is threatening to break the deadlock with its own management plan — whether the states like it or not.
The Department of the Interior has given Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming a deadline to reach an agreement twice, and each time the states blew past it without reaching consensus.
The federal government’s request is unprecedented in U.S. history. The Colorado River supplies water for roughly 40 million Americans. The Bureau of Reclamation has asked the Basin states to cut water usage by about one-third.
The latest deadline passed on Wednesday with six of the seven states agreeing on a plan to cut water usage, with only California dissenting. The Golden State put forward its own plan emphasizing its priority rights over the Colorado River that have been a part of the legal framework governing the basin for a century.
The lack of consensus increases the chance that the Bureau of Reclamation will devise its own plan and force the basin states to follow it whether they like it or not. The bureau needs a plan soon in order to model the water level of the river and its reservoirs and complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the basin. The EIS will inform the Department of the Interior’s long-term water management strategy.
The Colorado River has been governed under the same rough legal framework of water apportionment for the past 100 years, though it has been updated as new infrastructure has been added and court cases have been settled. The body of law that governs the basin is collectively known as “<a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g1000/lawofrvr.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Law of the River</a>.”
The cornerstone of that legal framework was set in 1922 in an agreement called the Colorado River Compact. The agreement divided the basin into upper and lower halves and guaranteed each 7.5 million acre-feet of water from the river. The Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 allotted 1.5 million acre-feet of the Colorado River to Mexico. One acre-foot is about the amount of water two or three households use in a year.
The upper basin, where the Colorado River originates, consists of parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and is above the river’s two reservoirs: Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam, and Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam. The lower basin states – Arizona, California, and Nevada – are located roughly below the reservoirs and can pull from them, whereas the upper basin must rely on the river’s natural flow.
<div id="attachment_497819" style="width: 569px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-497819" class="size-large wp-image-497819" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Colo-River-Basin-states-3-559x576.webp" alt="" width="559" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/Colo-River-Basin-states-3-559x576.webp 559w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/Colo-River-Basin-states-3-291x300.webp 291w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/Colo-River-Basin-states-3-768x791.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/Colo-River-Basin-states-3.webp 1000w" sizes=" (max-width: 559px) 100vw, 559px" />Colorado Foundation for Water Education</div>
The 1922 agreement that set out the apportionment for the upper and lower basins may always have been too optimistic. The compact <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/07/11/running-dry-in-the-american-west/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> the Colorado River’s annual flows at 17 million acre-feet. In the century since, the river has averaged about 12 million acre-feet annually. The compact, we now know, was drawn up during the river’s wettest season in the past 500 years, according to Shawn Regan, vice president of research at the Property and Environment Research Center.
In addition to poor planning and population growth, the river is under stress from an extended drought that has beat down on the American West for over two decades. A study <a href="https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-west-megadrought-f02449c2db4f0ebeb1557bb39504c62d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> last year suggests that the West is the driest it’s been in 1,200 years.
“In the Colorado River Basin, the period from 2000 through 2021 has been the driest 22-year period recorded in more than 100 years of record-keeping,” Tanya Trujillo, an experienced water lawyer and Interior’s assistant secretary for Water and Science, <a href="https://www.doi.gov/ocl/colorado-river-drought-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Congress in 2021. “The reservoir system was 95 percent full in 2000, but as of September 28th, Colorado River system reservoirs sit at just 39 percent, the lowest levels since they began to fill.”
The water level has continued to drop since Trujillo’s testimony. The strain is evident in the Colorado River basin’s two major reservoirs. Lakes Powell and Mead are both at all-time lows. Lake Mead, in particular, has made a number of ghastly headlines over the past year as its water level has dropped, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sixth-set-of-skeletal-remains-found-in-lake-mead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealing</a> sunken ships and bodies weighted and sunk to its lake bed.
Officials across the seven states fear what could happen as each reservoir approaches two low-water <a href="https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2022/05/16/what-is-dead-pool-a-water-expert-explains/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">benchmarks</a>, each of which would have severe consequences.
The first and highest benchmark is known as the minimum power pool elevation: the level at which the lakes need to sit in order for their dams to produce hydropower.
The Glen Canyon and Hoover dams produce power for millions of Americans. Should that power be cut off, the worst effects could be mitigated by siphoning power from other parts of the U.S. electrical grid.
The scenario officials are seeking to avoid at all costs, which would likely have catastrophic effects, takes place at the lower benchmark, a condition known as “dead pool.” If the reservoirs reach dead pool status, no more water can flow downriver from the lakes. The effects would be disastrous for cities such as Los Angeles, which <a href="https://viterbi.usc.edu/water/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gets</a> half its water from the Colorado River, and Las Vegas, which <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/us/california-water-proposal-colorado-river-climate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gets</a> 90% of its water from the Colorado.
Despite the urgency, officials across the seven states have not been able to agree on a way to collectively cut down water usage from the Colorado by two to four million acre-feet as the Interior Department has requested. The brunt of the responsibility to cut has fallen on the lower basin states. The upper basin states are only <a href="https://www.coloradoriverdistrict.org/imbalances-in-the-colorado-river-basin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pulling</a> about half their legal allotment of water because the drought has crippled the river upstream.
The lower basin states cannot agree on how to implement the cuts. The two sides on Wednesday clashed to a large extent on California’s insistence that priority water rights, a feature of the current legal framework that give priority to claims to the Colorado River’s water made earlier, still apply.
“[D]espite big disagreements about how to approach this, we have unanimity among all seven states that very deep cuts in Lower Basin water use are needed,” University of New Mexico professor and Colorado River expert John Fleck <a href="https://www.inkstain.net/2023/02/deadpool-diaries-the-numbers-in-the-states-two-proposals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> Wednesday. The two sides both presented plans based on cuts that scale up as the water level in Lake Mead falls.
“The difference is in timing,” Fleck wrote. “California’s cuts don’t kick in until later – essentially a gamble on good hydrology once again helping us avoid conflict by letting us use more water in the short term.”
Officials in Arizona, which has the second-largest water usage in the lower basin behind California, recognized California’s legal claim, but said the approach simply is not realistic.
“If you want to model cutting off most or all of the water supply of 27 million Americans, you can go through the exercise but implementing that on the ground would have the direst consequence for almost 10% of the country,” Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager John Enstminger told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/us/california-water-proposal-colorado-river-climate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN</a>.

Lake Mead near Hoover Dam

Over 40 Million People Rely On Water From The Colorado River. It’s Dangerously Close To Drying Up.

Arizona

California

Colorado

Department of the Interior

Drinking Water

Lake Mead

New Mexico

Readers Pass

U.S.

A suburb in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/arizona" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Arizona</a> is suing the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, after its city water supplies were shut off.
Rio Verde Foothills had its water turned off by the city of Scottsdale earlier this month. Scottsdale has sold water to around 500 to 700 residences in the area, but it said that it cannot afford to spare the water anymore and needs to keep it for the people who live in its own city.
On Thursday, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/01/17/arizona-water-supply-rio-verde-foothills-scottsdale-contd-vpx.cnn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">residents</a> <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/17/arizona-suburb-sues-scottsdale-for-cutting-off-its-water-supply-.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> a <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23571804/file_5173.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> against Scottsdale to try to get it to start giving the small community water again.
The lawsuit noted that EPCOR, a water utility business, wants to set up a water facility to give water to Rio Verde. Until it is greenlit and its facility is established and sending water to Rio Verde, EPCOR wants to &#8220;provide Central Arizona Project (CAP) water at no cost to Scottsdale to replace&#8221; the water Rio Verde was getting, as well as provide funds for Scottsdale to treat the water. Scottsdale could then give water to Rio Verde at no cost to its finances or resources.
Scottsdale has noted that it would not operate with outside businesses in order to give water to Rio Verde Foothills.
“Rio Verde is a separate community governed by Maricopa County, not the City of Scottsdale. Scottsdale has warned and advised that it is not responsible for Rio Verde for many years, especially given the requirements of the City’s mandated drought plan,” Scottsdale said in a <a href="https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/news/scottsdale-statement-and-facts-rio-verde-foothills-water" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> on Monday. “The city remains firm in that position, and confident it is on the right side of the law.”
Residents of Rio Verde are trying to cut down on water use by taking laundry to friends’ houses and even using rainwater to flush the toilets. They are not taking as many showers and are using paper plates over dishes, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/arizona-water-rio-verde-scottsdale.html">reported</a>.
Water used to be delivered via trucks to Rio Verde houses that didn’t have wells, but now the delivery trucks have to go on longer trips in order to bring water to the region, which has led to an up-charge for people getting the water.
While the recent storms in California have been helpful in replenishing some of the land and reservoirs, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a> has still caused immense damage. Lake Mead has become shockingly dry and the Colorado River has been struggling.
“It’s a cautionary tale for home buyers,” Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said, per the Times. “We can’t just protect every single person who buys a parcel and builds a home. There isn’t enough money or water.” She noted that other parts of Arizona also get their water from bigger cities that are close by.

1AB3E107-2763-4963-822B-27C7E139FAE7_1_201_a

Arizona Suburb Sues Nearby City After Water Supply Is Shut Off

Environment

Lawsuit

The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lack of water</a> availability for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/farming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">agriculture</a> has created a crisis that could continue for years to come and lead to a food supply shortage across the United States. The lack of water not only impacts the communities and environment of California, but has national security and global market implications.
Bob Amarel grows prunes in Yuba City, California, and is also on the Farm Credit West board. Amarel is based in California so he noted that many of his perceptions come from what has happened there. He discussed the sheer quantity of food that is grown in the agricultural region of the state, and the problems that come with cutting water to those regions.
“First of all, you&#8217;ll see less food,” he said, and he wouldn’t be surprised if there were international suppliers providing food to Americans.
“You&#8217;re going to start seeing the shelves being filled with made in China, or grown in China, grown in Mexico, more so than you are today,” he said. “You&#8217;re going to end up getting crop produce, but it&#8217;s not going to be anywhere close to the quality and safety that we produce as U.S. producers.”
Ryan Jacobsen is the CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and is the descendant of two farm families going back generations. He is also on the Fresno Irrigation District Board of Directors.
Jacobsen noted that farmers haven’t felt the inflationary rise in prices as much as some consumers, but looking to the future, he said people will experience a shortage of many materials from California, which could lead to price hikes on some of them.
David Guy, the executive director of the Northern California Water Association, said that Costco is concerned about where it will source its food since it tries to use local products.
“We&#8217;re hearing from them that they&#8217;re just really nervous about where their food is going to come from,” he said, adding that this includes fruits, nuts, and meat.
“2022 was devastating. It just was devastating. It was devastating for everybody,” he said, adding that 600 square miles of Sacramento Valley land was fallowed, or left unplanted, this year. “Just brown dry, nothing grown there.”
He said they need the regulatory environment to let water be used to grow products on the land. “If they don&#8217;t, we&#8217;re just going to all suffer again like we did this year. It was devastating this year in the Sacramento Valley, on the west side of the Sacramento Valley &#8230; we just didn&#8217;t grow anything hardly,” he said.
Relationships between growers and international markets are also at risk. Guy pointed out that when a grower doesn’t have items to provide, buyers will look to get their products elsewhere.
The potential food supply crisis is also a national security and food safety concern.
JB Hamby is on the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors and he made the point that “there is no more basic need that Americans need than food,” thus moving food supplies to international sources “puts us in a very vulnerable position.”
“We need to ensure that Americans are fed by food produced in America. And the more we continue to offshore and outsource our food supply puts us in an increasingly vulnerable and weak position if we want to maintain full reliability of food in our grocery stores,” he said.
Around two-thirds of the water that goes into California from the Colorado River is pushed towards agriculture, with the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County using a massive amount of it, CalMatters <a href="https://calmatters.org/commentary/2022/11/feds-demand-colorado-river-water-cutbacks/">reported</a>.
Hamby said many major farming areas that grow winter produce for the United States get almost all of their water from the Colorado River, but if Americans want to have full availability of products at the grocery stores, there needs to be irrigation to those crops, specifically during that season.
“What we&#8217;re facing right now is a significant situation on the Colorado River, where there&#8217;s more demands on the system than there is water flowing in the Colorado River,” he said.
He said Americans should start to look at where their broccoli or romaine lettuce comes from when they go to the grocery stores during the late fall and coming seasons.
&#8220;Most likely, over the next few months, almost all of that is going to be grown with Colorado River water. And so if we want to continue to have grocery store shelves that we can depend on to give us the food that we need, we need to ensure that we have water flowing to farms, particularly on the Colorado River,&#8221; he noted.
He said the short-term solution will be “some painful reductions across the board, across all sectors. … There&#8217;s going to need to be a collective effort and collective action on the part of all users across the Colorado River basin to reduce consumption.”
“However, in the long term, that&#8217;s not really a viable solution, and we need to look at some additional measures to encourage some augmentation or new supplies of water to chart our future over the next century,” he added.
Water storage is also a much-needed solution to the crisis.
Amarel said more water storage needs to be created like it was in the 1960s because the water storage plan was made decades ago when the population hadn’t even reached 15 million people.
“Since then, we have grown to 40 million with not a single storage site being built,” he said. “All of those folks need to eat, and they want quality, affordable food every day. How do you do that when the food production base continues to shrink?”
Jacobsen discussed the importance of storage, as well. He says that due to climate change, the Sierra Nevada snowpack could be impacted and is projected to get the same or nearly the same precipitation levels as it has in the past, but it will be more from rainfall than snowpack. The reservoirs in California were constructed to be used for snowpack, so he argued there is more infrastructure needed.
Amarel pointed out the many conservation efforts that have been made in the agriculture industry, namely the transition in his operation to water-saving irrigation. However, he pointed out, this practice still needs enough water storage to be effective.
“We&#8217;re saving on the top side and basically not putting money in the bank under the soil. The only way you can make that up is you got to make it up with surface water, which means you got to have adequate storage,&#8221; he said.
Farmers are inherently concerned about and careful with the environment. Guy said the drought not only impacted farmers, but entire communities, suppliers, as well as had a devastating effect on the environment.
“The garter snakes,” he explained, giving an example. “There’s 225 species that live in rice land, in a rice field that just have nowhere to live this year so it was really harsh on the environment and we were doing this all for the benefit of salmon and the salmon didn&#8217;t do well this year.”
He hopes policymakers will learn from the impacts of this year and not only implement strategies that help salmon, but that send water to the land to help the communities and living creatures that need it.
Guy also said wells are beginning to dry up, which normally means communities use groundwater. This year, however, a lot of communities don’t have groundwater access.
“These are disadvantaged communities that are getting hit not only with the economic impact from the lack of farming, but also because of lack of surface water and groundwater,&#8221; he said.
The Biden administration has <a href="https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/17387-judge-clears-biden-delta-plan-to-replace-trumps-biological-opinions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taken</a> steps to get rid of the Trump administration’s biological opinions that impact protections for endangered fish. Jacobsen said the biological opinions&#8217; review was initiated during the Obama administration, and finished in the Trump administration, and were more data-driven.
Jacobsen said the current situation does not look for “win-win” solutions that help the environment and serve the municipal and agricultural users who depend on the water system, but he believes this is possible.
“I’m really, from my perspective, just looking for more leadership that can see that there needs to be a different path or a different way than what we&#8217;ve done the last decade, because our current system is just completely broken,” he pressed.

Farmland in Arizona and California

‘2022 Was Devastating’: California’s Water Crisis And Its Impact On America’s Food Supply

‘2022 Was Devastating’: California's Water Crisis And Its Impact On America's Food Supply

Agriculture

Farming

A group of divers discovered another set of skeletal remains in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/lake-mead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lake Mead</a> last week, marking the latest findings as the sixth set recovered since May.
A park service dive team searched the lake after a commercial diver found &#8220;what appeared to be a human bone in the Callville Bay area&#8221; on October 17, the Lake Mead National Park Service told Fox LA.
&#8220;At this time, no foul play is suspected,&#8221; Stefani Dawn, a Park Service spokesperson, told <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/human-remains-found-by-divers-at-lake-mead-2665166/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Las Vegas Review-Journal</a>. &#8220;The Clark County coroner&#8217;s office has been contacted to confirm the identity of the deceased.&#8221;
According to Clark County Public Affairs Officer Stacey Welling, the divers were performing contract work at the marina in Calville Bay when they discovered the initial evidence of the human remains.
While the details of the latest discovery are still unknown, the grim finding comes after five other sets of human remains have been found since May.
Historic drought levels have impacted the shrinking Colorado River reservoir near the Hoover Dam, drying up local waterbeds into deserts.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/riverops/hourly7.html#t0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> Lake Mead&#8217;s water levels hit a historic low, roughly 1,046 feet, which has left mountains surrounding the area with an imprint showing how far the levels have dropped.
According to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/historic-lake-mead-drought-leads-disturbing-discoveries-dried/story?id=92124028" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ABC News</a>, D.J. Jenner, the owner of Las Vegas Scuba, said that he had witnessed the water levels sink down to approximately 40 feet after observing the lake for years when he first opened his business.
&#8220;There&#8217;s still plenty of water out here for people to come out and enjoy the lake, but it is going down pretty quickly,&#8221; he said.
Park services officials first announced that a group of boaters discovered the first body with a gunshot wound inside a metal barrel stuck in the mud near the lake&#8217;s Hemenway Harbor on May 1.
Detectives on the case believe the victim may have been murdered sometime between the mid-1970s to the early 1980s based on the clothing and footwear found with the body, a local NBC affiliate reports.
Less than a week later, authorities found a second set of remains that surfaced at Callville Bay, which a local County coroner said she believes belong to someone between 23 and 38 years old.
National Park Service authorities announced nearly two months later that rangers responded to a report on July 25 of the third set of human remains found at the park&#8217;s Swim Beach area in Boulder City, Nevada.
On August 16, park rangers responded to a report of the discovery of human skeletal remains in the Swim Beach area of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
NASA, which recently released satellite images of the drought&#8217;s impact on Lake Mead, reports that the lake holds the record for the largest reservoir in the U.S. The reservoir supplies water to millions of people across seven states, tribal lands, and northern Mexico.
Lake Mead hit its peak in the 1980s, with levels reaching 1,225 feet above sea level. However, NASA satellite imagery shows a dramatic decrease in water levels as lakeshore areas have mineralized over the past 22 years.
The reservoir hit its lowest drop since April 1937 while the lake was still filling for the first time during the construction of the Hoover Dam.

US-CLIMATE-DROUGHT

Sixth Set Of Skeletal Remains Found In Lake Mead

Climate Change

General

Las Vegas

Mafia

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drought</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/10/17/drought-mississippi-river-shipwreck-uncovered-orig-jc.cnn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conditions</a> across the United States have resulted in significant and eerie findings, including a recent shipwreck uncovered in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mississippi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mississippi</a> River.
The ship is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/17/mississippi-river-shipwreck-louisiana-baton-rouge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">considered</a> to have sunk in 1915, and it recently <a href="https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-baton-rouge-mississippi-river-climate-and-environment-4265f1645b7b345e80642208b103f2e5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">became visible</a> after water levels have become shockingly low in the Mississippi River.
The boat was found by Patrick Ford, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as he was scouring for interesting items at the river’s edge, according to <a href="https://www.wbrz.com/news/drought-conditions-drop-mississippi-river-waters-exposing-19th-century-shipwreck/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WBRZ</a>.
“Explore your surroundings, get to know where you live and what&#8217;s around, beyond just what&#8217;s in front of you … take a walk, see what&#8217;s out there,” Ford said.
“This past Sunday I was out here looking and realized the rest of the shore had washed away, and there was an entire ship there,” Ford <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/17/mississippi-river-shipwreck-louisiana-baton-rouge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> said to WBRZ. “I immediately texted friends and was like, ‘Holy moly, I think I found a ship, a sunken ship!’”
Chip McGimsey is the Louisiana state archeologist and has been examining the shipwreck over the past two weeks. He said archaeologists “believe this is a ship that was manufactured in 1896 in Indiana for trade here.”
The boat’s presence in the major river won’t always be apparent. “Eventually the river will come back up and [the ship] will go back underwater,” McGimsey said. “That’s part of the reason for making the big effort to document it this time — cause she may not be there the next time.”
McGimsey noted that he thinks the vessel might be the Brookhill Ferry, a ship that probably transported people and wagons across the river prior to the construction of massive bridges.
The ship has been spotted due to low water levels in the past, and McGimsey noted that small pieces of the boat were visible in the 1990s.
“At that time the vessel was completely full of mud and there was mud all around it so only the very tip tops of the sides were visible, so (archaeologists) really didn’t see much other. They had to move a lot of dirt just to get some narrow windows in to see bits and pieces,” McGimsey said.
Now, though, people can see much more of it — around one-third of the vessel. He said that 90% of the remaining half of the shell can now be seen.
“For the most part, there are not good documents on boat building, especially when you get back into the area of wooden boats,” McGimsey <a href="https://www.wbrz.com/news/century-old-shipwreck-uncovered-near-baton-rouge-as-drought-lowers-mississippi-river">said</a>. “They have a lot of individuality in these boats, and there are so few of them remaining. This is a rare example of one from around 1900.”
Low precipitation levels have been a major factor in contributing to the Mississippi River’s drastically low water. The river is a vital part of the area’s economy, and the low levels have already <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mississippi-river-reaches-low-levels-barges-stuck-due-to-drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">impacted</a> barges and shipping movements.

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Mississippi River Drought Reveals Sunken Ship

Mississippi River Drought Reveals Sunken Ship From Late 1800s

American History

History

Louisiana

Mississippi

The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> tomato crop is hurting after a devastating <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a> and economic policies continue to plague California farmers.
The processing tomato production is expected to be 9.525 million metric tonnes, or 10.5 million tons, according to the <a href="https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Specialty_and_Other_Releases/Tomatoes/2022/202208ptom_final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U.S. Department of Agriculture</a>. The number is 2% <a href="https://www.tomatonews.com/en/california-2022-processing-tomato-production-revised-at-9525-million-mt_2_1757.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lower</a> than last year’s number and 10% under the number forecasted in May. The anticipated production amount also continued to go down as the season went on, and crops that were planted early were harmed by frost.
The global production estimate is almost 3 million tons less than projections from March, according to Tomato News <a href="https://www.tomatonews.com/en/wptc-crop-update-as-of-30-september-2022_2_1783.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reporting</a> of the World Processing Tomato Council’s crop data as of the end of September. The outlet noted, however, that the final number is expected to be even less because California’s tomato output will likely be even lower.
Low water and intense summer heat have made a difficult environment for farmers, creating issues for them to meet the need for the crop. The Processing Tomato Advisory Board’s shipment numbers reportedly revealed a 5% drop through August 27, 2022 when contrasted with the end of August last year.
The low tomato yield could impact what customers see on grocery shelves and in restaurants, as well as the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/10/10/california-drought-tomato-prices" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cost</a> of such items.
“Ninety-five percent of the processed tomato products consumed in the United States come right here from California’s Central Valley,” Mike Montna, president and CEO of the California Tomato Growers Association, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/17/us/california-drought-tomato-farmers-climate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> CNN. “Mainly the tomatoes from the growers that I represent … go to your ketchups, pizza sauces, your retail sauces that you see at the supermarket.”
“We’re going to end up ultimately somewhere around 10.5, 10.4 million tons,” Montna noted, estimating that amount will be around 14% less than annual numbers forecasted early on. “We’re not getting the yields that we expected or that we got historically seven or eight years ago. We’re in a flat to declining yield situation and a lot of it’s due to weather and how intensive it is to grow a tomato.”
Montna said this is the least amount of tomatoes the industry has ever garnered, after there was a lot of need for tomato items during the pandemic. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-s-restaurants-are-facing-a-ketchup-shortage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Last April,</a> there was a shortage of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-shortage-ketchup-cant-catch-up-11617645189" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ketchup</a> as restaurants had tried to secure packets of the condiment during COVID.
Aaron Barcellos, a farmer, told CNN that his family reduced the amount of land used to grow tomatoes this season.
“It’s just like owning a second home and trying to rent it out,” Barcellos said of his empty acres. “If you don’t have a tenant in there, you still have all your fixed costs … but you have no income coming from it.”

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Tomato Crop Suffers In California

California Tomato Output Low Due To Drought

While western states are experiencing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a>, the sometimes less-noticed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mississippi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mississippi</a> River is getting hit hard by low water levels and it’s already impacting shipping movements.
The water levels in the Mississippi River are at their lowest they have been in decades, according to <a href="https://weather.com/news/news/2022-10-13-mississippi-river-drought-low-water-levels-impacts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Weather Channel</a>, leading to issues with shipments and the availability of drinking water.
Some of the water that is getting to the start of the river in Louisiana is reportedly letting salt water get into the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico, which could impact the drinking water, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/12/mississippi-river-drought-low-levels-agriculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has had to take swift measures, saying it would construct a sediment construction to keep additional salt water from going up the river.
“In Plaquemines Parish, there’s many freshwater intakes for municipal, industrial uses and the salt water can cause corrosion to pipes and can cause a change in the taste of the water for municipal use, so we try to, that’s why we’re involved to mitigate that,” David Ramirez, chief of the River Engineering Branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, <a href="https://www.fox8live.com/2022/09/28/saltwater-gulf-impacts-plaquemines-parishs-water-system/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Fox 8 News last month.
Low rainfall in the Ohio River Valley and the Upper Mississippi are apparently leading to the low levels and stopping commercial movement and river cruises at multiple locations below Illinois, according to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mississippi-river-approaching-record-low-water-levels-threatening-commercial-traffic-11665748981?mod=flipboard" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Wall Street Journal</a>. The costs to send materials have also gone up more than twice their amount in a span of weeks.
George Flaggs, the mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi, hasn’t seen the river this low in nearly 70 years.
&#8220;It&#8217;s definitely having an impact on the local economy, because the commercial use of this river has almost completely stopped,&#8221; Flaggs recently <a href="https://www.wapt.com/article/mississippi-river-dangerously-low/41574996" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> WAPT-TV.
As the National Park Service <a href="https://www.nps.gov/miss/riverfacts.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a>, the Mississippi River is a major part of the economy in the upper Midwest of the United States. Barges and tows ship around 175 million tons of cargo every year on the upper part of the river.
“America is going to shut down if we shut down,” Mike Ellis, chief executive of American Commercial Barge Line LLC, said, per the Journal. The Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division’s spokeswoman, Lisa Parker, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has even been scooping out parts of the river to make it lower for commercial ships to start passing through again.
&#8220;When the water gets low enough, commerce starts to slow. Commerce is restricted and it turns into an extremely difficult environment to operate,&#8221; Austin Golding, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/14/mississippi-river-boats-barges-water-levels" target="_blank" rel="noopener">president</a> of Golding Barge Line, <a href="https://www.wapt.com/article/mississippi-river-dangerously-low/41574996#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> WAPT. &#8220;This will actually affect us in a very negative way. We have to have less cargo on our barges and less tonnage moving. It affects our revenues.”
&#8220;We need the barges fully loaded and our tows pushing as many barges as possible to be as economically viable as possible,&#8221; Golding said.

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Mississippi River Reaches Low Levels, Barges Stuck Due To Drought

Mississippi River Reaches Low Water Levels, Barges Stuck

Ohio

Weather

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> water agencies are offering to cut water supplies to towns and farms in order to save the Colorado River which is facing a devastating <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a>, but the cuts could further harm an already dry region of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/farming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">farmland</a>.
“California water agencies that utilize Colorado River water supplies propose to conserve up to an additional 400,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead each year, beginning in 2023 and running through 2026,” officials <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23119315-2022-10-5_california-letter_colorado-river" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a letter. “This water, which would otherwise be used by California’s communities and farms, will meaningfully contribute to stabilizing the Colorado River reservoir system.”
The amount of reduction would come to around 9% of the state’s entire allocation of water from the river for the coming four years, according to the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-06/southern-california-faces-new-water-restrictions-next-year" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>.
Leaders who signed the letter are from the Imperial Irrigation District, the Colorado River Board of California, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Coachella Valley Water District, and the Palo Verde Irrigation District Board of Trustees.
This summer, the seven states that receive water from the Colorado River were asked by federal authorities to generate strategies to cut yearly water diversions, but the states couldn’t come to an agreement on the water cuts.
The groups requested specific assistance in detailing their proposition.
“In order to enable this water conservation, our agencies will need to utilize funding opportunities provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal programs,” the groups wrote in their letter. “Each of the California agencies involved in developing this package of proposed conserved water supplies will also require your support in developing agreements for funding, potential intra- and inter- state coordination, water use accounting, and in obtaining necessary board and agency approvals over the coming weeks and months.”
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California authorities reportedly said they are planning to support water cuts that would impact 19 million people.
The majority of the water California gets from the Colorado River is given to the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), according to <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/10/california-colorado-river-water/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CalMatters</a> and the Times. According to the IID’s <a href="https://www.iid.com/water/water-supply" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>, the Imperial Valley relies entirely on the Colorado River for its source of surface water. IID takes in water from the river and then sends it out, with most of it going toward farming purposes. It also <a href="https://www.iid.com/water/ca-drought-information" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gives</a> water to seven local municipal agencies.
The Imperial Irrigation District reportedly provides water to almost 500,000 acres of agricultural land in California. The IID said it could reduce 250,000 acre-feet of water each year with a few contingencies.
In August, the Biden administration’s Bureau of Reclamation <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-government-inflicts-water-cuts-on-states-as-colorado-river-drops-to-historic-lows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> there would be water cuts to Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico. The Lower Colorado River Basin came to a “Tier 2” shortage for the first time ever.

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California Water Districts Offer Water Cuts From Colorado River As River Suffers

California Water Districts Offer Colorado River Water Cuts  

Gavin Newsom

Los Angeles

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California’s</a> water supplies are running dry as the state’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">parched conditions</a> are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/officials-say-california-dry-conditions-expected-to-continue" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expected</a> to continue into the winter months.
Across the state, over 1,200 wells <a href="https://mydrywell.water.ca.gov/report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">have gone dry</a> this year, which is up 49% from the same period of time last year. In the last 30 days, 175 wells were reported as dry, which was a 33% decrease from the 30 days beforehand, per the Department of Water Resources’ Dry Well Reporting System.
In 2018, 2019, and 2020, less than 100 dry wells were reported each year, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/we-need-water-water-water-central-valley-farm-wells-drying-up-in-drought/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, told The Daily Wire that there are two major reasons groundwater levels have gone down in California.
”First, over the past 30 years, surface water supplies that irrigated much of the state’s food-producing farmland were largely redirected to other purposes,” he said over email. “And second, to cope with reduced surface water supplies, farmers turned to groundwater to stay in business and invested in high-efficiency irrigation systems. This combination of factors severely reduced groundwater recharge and we’re seeing the results today through reduced water for farming and local communities as well as less food production for consumers in the rest of the state.&#8221;
Sarah Woolf of Water Wise, an agricultural water consulting business, told The Daily Wire  over email that she is &#8220;aware of the number of wells and how devastating this is for the residents and then entire county. &#8221;
&#8220;California has a serious infrastructure problem that has been eroding for many years.  These dry wells are directly impacting homes and people who should be able to count on a clean drinking water supply in their homes.  But until there is more infrastructure for water in CA these limited supplies are going to continue to devastate people, industries and communities,&#8221; she said.
Adding another layer to the problem is the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (<a href="https://water.ca.gov/programs/groundwater-management/sgma-groundwater-management" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SGMA</a>), which made it so that local groups have to create groundwater sustainability agencies for certain basins. Local agencies will need to have their aquifers sustainably operated by 2042, per the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-droughts-climate-and-environment-e49c8c5c34ead7ef7f83b770082f20bc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Associated Press</a>. This puts an additional level of stress and burden on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/farming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">farmers</a> who are already trying to get by without much support from the government.
Dry weather is expected to continue for a fourth year. La Niña weather is expected to result in less rain and snow for the western state, Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist told <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/09/california-drought-likely-to-continue/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CalMatters</a>. He said it’s not known just how the weather will go, but “I would still put my money on dry, even in the northern third of the state,” adding, “It’s not a guarantee. But if you were to see 50 winters like this one, most of them would be dry.”
The La Niña effect is thought to have a 91% chance of continuing through September to November, with an 80% likelihood that it will occur through November to January, and a 54% likelihood in January to March of next year, according to <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/september-2022-la-ni%C3%B1a-update-it%E2%80%99s-q-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">climate.gov</a> and the <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center</a>.
California officials also recently said they anticipate the dry conditions to continue.
“We are actively planning for another dry year,” Jeanine Jones, drought manager for the California Department of Water Resources, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/04/california-record-drought-climate-crisis-la-nina" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> when talking about how California was doing at the end of its water year, which concluded on September 30.

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More Than A Thousand California Wells Run Dry

Over 1,200 Wells In California Are Drying Up As Dry Weather Continues 

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> state officials are anticipating dry conditions in the state to continue after three years of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a> that has plagued the state and severely impacted agriculture.
The water year <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-braces-for-dry-winter-as-Western-17483959.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ended</a> on Friday, which is measured from October 1 to September 30. According to SF Gate, California mountain snow usually accounts for one-third of California’s yearly water resources, but this past year saw levels of snow that were much lower than average by the conclusion of the winter months. The Colorado River is also experiencing extremely dry conditions which <a href="https://grist.org/drought/colorado-river-water-california-imperial-irrigation-district/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">could</a> impact the amount of water it can send to areas of the western United States.
State authorities said that precipitation levels were at 76% of average for the year that recently concluded, noting that the reservoirs in California are at 69% of historical levels. The <a href="https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conditions</a> at many of the major water reservoirs are way below their historical averages.
While John Yarbrough, assistant deputy director for the Department of Water Resources, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/california-drought-weather-forecast.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">informed</a> the California Water Commission last month that a lot of the largest reservoirs in the state have more water than they did last year, the levels of reservoirs are still far under their averages. He said the situation is “better than last year, not good enough.”
According to the U.S. Drought <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Monitor</a>, the majority of the state is experiencing drought, with the Central Valley region hard hit by exceptional drought. The Central Valley accounts for the cultivation of much of the produce and nuts for the entire country.
“As the state prepares for the possibility of a fourth dry year and potential weather extremes, it’s more important than ever that all of us adopt water conservation as a way of life,” Democratic Governor of California Gavin <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/gavin-newsom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Newsom</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/california-drought-weather-forecast.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement on Wednesday. “Together, we can save water and save California.”
While many blame the impacts of climate change, the state’s water priorities tend to skew towards environmental purposes and away from agricultural and residential water needs.
The California Department of Water Resources notes that 50% of water supplies in the state are put towards the environment, with 40% going to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/farming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">farming</a> and 10% to urban regions, per the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-03/californias-environment-takes-biggest-hit-during-drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>. However, when dry conditions persist, the environment reportedly gets less. Agriculture also gets 80% of the water located for businesses and domestic utilization, per the outlet.
State <a href="https://water.ca.gov/programs/groundwater-management/sgma-groundwater-management" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulations</a> are set to impact agricultural water availability, as well, such as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which was passed in 2014 and will <a href="https://ca.water.usgs.gov/sustainable-groundwater-management/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">impact</a> groundwater usage for farmers. Farmers point to water as a major issue in California agriculture, and it is something that could severely hinder agricultural production in the western state in the coming years.
<div>
<div dir="ltr">“Less water means less food available and higher food costs for everyone. Food security is a national security issue and should be prioritized as such,&#8221; Daniel Hartwig, resource manager at agricultural business Woolf Enterprises, told The Daily Wire over email.</div>
</div>

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Officials Say California Dry Conditions Expected To Continue

Officials Say California Dry Conditions Expected To Continue After Third Year Of Drought

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> reduced water <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/water-use-drops-10-in-july-as-california-deals-with-drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">use</a> 10.4% in July from two years ago, according to state water authorities.
There were new conservation regulations that took effect in July for the first time for an entire month, such as not allowing any watering of ornamental grass.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/gavin-newsom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom</a> had asked the state to cut water use 15% in the summer of 2021.
The State Water Resources Control Board put out the monthly amounts, which come from information provided to them from urban water suppliers.
“Last summer the savings numbers were slow to ramp up because the governor&#8217;s call had just gone into effect. But the most recent numbers show how far we&#8217;ve come,&#8221; Marielle Rhodeiro, a research data expert with the board, said. &#8220;We can see some achievements — quite heartening.”
On average, California residents used 104 gallons each day in the month of July, which is 12 gallons less per day than a year prior. The amount reflected the least amount of water use in July since the same month in 2015 when mandatory cuts were enforced. At that time, water use declined to 98 gallons per person each day.
“What a ride it&#8217;s been,” board chairman E. Joaquin Esquivel said.
“We know that we need to keep the momentum going,” he noted later, saying that California is probably going to have another winter with less rain and snow than normal.
The major reservoirs in the state, which mainly rely on snow from the Sierra Nevada, are far lower than their historical averages; and the snowpack in the state was only at 27% of its historic averages as of the beginning of April, according to Bloomberg.
“Things are in general significantly below historic averages,&#8221; Eric Ekdahl, deputy director for water rights, said to the board. &#8220;That trend is continuing, and there’s no clear precipitation on the horizon, with maybe the exception of Southern California, which may see some tropical moisture toward the end of the week.”
The Central Valley, which is comprised of much of the state’s farmland and agricultural production, is currently in an <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exceptional</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/drought" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drought</a>, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
In 2021, farms received less water due to reductions put in place to give water to others and help the environment, the Public Policy Institute of California <a href="https://www.ppic.org/publication/policy-brief-drought-and-californias-agriculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in an April brief. The report noted that less watering can lead to a drop in crop production, which has far-reaching impacts. It estimated that the drought and crop declines have resulted in the loss of $1.7 billion in profit and 14,600 jobs.

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California Cut Water Use By 10% In July

California Water Use Declines 10.4% In July From Two Years Ago

Economy

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