Colorado: a river exhausted by man

In the middle flows the Colorado

It took forty million years for the river to carve out its famous canyon. It only took man a century to divert the water into boomtowns and agricultural oases. As a result, the Colorado River is exhausted. Report.

Near Navajo Bridge, in Arizona, the river gushes out of Glen Canyon (above), to plunge into the Grand Canyon's 450 km of trenches.

The Western Nile can no longer reach its estuary

A dismaying sight on the shores of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico: this tangle of salt-flooded arms of the river is all that remains of the Colorado after 2,200 km from its source in the Rockies. In the past, its delta was considered to be one of the most exceptional wetlands in an arid land.

The Arizona Indians, witnesses to desertification

Near Teesto, Virgil Nez, a Navajo, observes the advancing desert on his reserve, bordered by the Colorado River. In Arizona, the drought is more disastrous than elsewhere. The towns are drawing on a river whose flow is diminishing. Global warming is intensifying the sandy winds and the springs of this Indian nation are drying up.

And Lake Powell gradually evaporates...

Straddling Utah and Arizona, Lake Powell, which was filled with water after the construction of the Glen Canyon dam, is now at only 45% of its capacity. Record evaporation is to blame.

The most Hollywood of American dams

America began taming the Colorado in 1935 with the inauguration of the Hoover Dam, a giant concrete structure 240 m high and 410 m long on the Arizona-Nevada border.

Lakes at the bottom of the lake

The river is no longer able to meet the demands of a thirsty region; the huge artificial lakes, such as Lake Vegas, that supply the towns are now half empty.

From the big chill to the beginning of the scare

For tourists, Colorado is always a source of great thrills. For the forty million inhabitants who depend on its resources, it's starting to look rather scary.

The Salton Sea is dying of poisoning

Another cause for concern in California is the Salton Sea, formed in 1905 by a flood from the Colorado River and now ravaged by fertilisers. An ecological time bomb.

Where every drop of water counts, agribusiness takes the cake

Cattle that need cooling, as here, or thirsty forage plants... The 160,000 hectares of irrigated land in the Imperial Valley, an oasis reclaimed from the desert south of California, are the emblem of the monopolisation of the Colorado by agriculture, which diverts 80% of the river's water to meet its needs.

Place your bets, nothing's going to go wrong!

To meet the needs of its 39.7 million annual visitors, Las Vegas, Nevada, pumps water from Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam. A new $1.5 billion project will enable it to draw water directly from the bottom of this reservoir.

Less snow = less water

These scientists are studying the snow on the San Juan mountains in the Rockies. After fifteen years of drought, the period of snow cover in the West has been shortened by two months. The result: less meltwater for the Colorado and its tributaries.

Nature put to the test

In the Colorado watershed, in the San Juan mountains, this meltwater runs off earlier in the season. As a result, the water is flowing too fast, and downstream, the aquifers, already severely tested by the drought, are running out of time to recharge.

Disappearance of a delta announced

Shrubs are regularly planted in the Colorado delta to fix the soil, as here. A fragile comfort, because sea water is gradually invading this wetland. And the salinity is helping to intensify erosion.

When water is also a source of disputes

In Imperial Valley, the great agricultural oasis of the south-west, this Mexican proudly displays his pride in working here. He and his employers, who have been accused of wasting Colorado's water, say they are working hard to rationalise it.