DROUGHT/
CLIMATE CHANGE
Vanishing Act: NASA scientist
Jay Famiglietti on Our Challenging
Water Future

NASA. The word evokes space exploration, rockets and missions to faraway planets. But one of the agency’s most intriguing ventures is what it learns by turning its view back at Earth. H2O Radio's Frani Halperin met Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to talk about the agency's latest endeavors. Satellites with names like "GRACE" are "amazing"—not just for their bird's-eye view of our home planet but for what that perspective is telling us about our challenging water future.

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WATER RIGHTS
Little Ditch. Big Deal. A Couple Living Off the Grid Challenged Colorado Water Law—and Won.

Living off the grid in Colorado's vast San Luis Valley, Chuck and Barbara Tidd needed to find a source of energy to supplement their solar panels. Their solution, to use a creek on their property to generate power, led to a legal battle that went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court—where they won. That decision worries some who say their new right could upend water law that goes back 150 years.

This story was recognized
by the Public Radio News Directors, Inc. (PRNDI) honoring the best in public radio reporting.

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WATER LAW
Hell and High Water—Unexpected Troubles Along Colorado's South Platte River

Many people in Colorado are facing a problem you’d never expect to find in the arid West: too much water. In places along the South Platte River, which flows from the Rockies through Denver to the northeast, basements are flooding, sewage systems are being damaged, and rising water is leaving salt in farmers’ fields, robbing them of productivity. The situation is vexing and has been the subject of numerous meetings of state officials, farmers, and water experts. But no lasting solution has been found. The real question is whether the state’s water law that goes back to the Gold Rush era is flexible enough to deal with the issue.

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