The American West is drying up

LOCALS CALL it the “bathtub ring”. A white strip more than 150 feet tall encircles the turquoise surface of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, showing visitors how high the water once was, and how low it has fallen. The shrinking of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, its sister reservoir upriver, is the most visible manifestation of the 22-year megadrought that has gripped the American West. The water levels of both have reached record lows. Dip a toe into Lake Mead and it feels shockingly warm for such a large body of water. The canyons that were drowned when Lake Powell was filled in the 1960s are slowly revealing themselves again.

The drought has become so severe that on August 16th the Bureau of Reclamation, an agency within the Interior Department, declared the first-ever water shortage for the Colorado River. The river is the lifeblood of the south-west, supplying 40m people across seven states with water and hydropower. A patchwork of water rights, laws and litigation means that farmers in central Arizona will bear the brunt of the initial cuts.