Five Years Later, Effects Of Colorado River Pulse Flow Still Linger

From inside a small airplane, tracing the Colorado River along the Arizona-California border, it’s easy to see how it happened. As the river bends and weaves through the American Southwest, its contents are slowly drained. Concrete canals send water to millions of people in Phoenix and Tucson, Los Angeles and San Diego. Farms, ribbons of green contrasted against the desert’s shades of brown, line the waterway. Further downstream, near Yuma, Arizona, the river splits into threads, like a frayed piece of yarn. A massive multi-state plumbing system sends its water to irrigate the hundreds of thousands of farm acres in southern California and Arizona, hubs for winter vegetables, alfalfa, cotton and cattle.