A new report outlines what is hurting our rivers—and what populations are feeling the most pain.
from American Rivers and other environmental groups, including National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense Fund, and The Nature Conservancy, also outlines a handful of strategies to rebuild resilience in the incredibly important water source. The suggestions include anything from forest management to building naturally distributing aquifer storage in the forms of meadows and floodplains to even covering reservoirs and canals with shade balls and solar panels to slow down evaporation rates.
“As we face another summer of drought and fire, we are already seeing what our future could look like if we continue with business-as-usual,” said Nancy Smith, Conservation Director at The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River Program. “The scale and pace of climate-related changes in the Colorado River Basin pose an increasing risk to the reliability of our water supplies—and we do not have time to waste.
For the other rivers on the list, threats range from coal ash to industrial agricultural pollution to dams. The second-most endangered waterway, the Snake River, is struggling due to dams that haveThe Snake River, which runs through Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, once produced 2 to 6 million salmon and steelhead trout every year, feeding a healthy trophic web and trade economy. Northwest Tribal Nations have relied on the salmon populations for centuries longer.
All this goes to show how varied the problems facing American water sources are—and that we are at a crossroads where we have to choose to reinvigorate and protect these landscapes, or risk losing them forever.Sara Kiley Watson is an Assistant Editor at Popular Science, where she has led sustainability coverage since 2021. She started her tenure at PopSci as an intern in 2017 before joining the team full time as an Editorial Assistant in 2019.