Sister site: Colorado River Monitor
Two sites, one story. The river monitor is the why: the reservoirs draining, day by day. This site is the who: the communities whose water has already stopped, as dated, cited events on a map.
What the river monitor is
Colorado River Monitor is an independent dashboard of the reservoirs the Southwest draws on: Lake Mead, Lake Powell and the other reservoirs of the Colorado River system, plus Elephant Butte on the Rio Grande. Every figure on it is a daily reading published by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, fetched by the site and shown with the date of the reading; it forecasts nothing. It also carries a weekly digest by email, an embeddable widget and a hand-curated news list.
How the two sites fit together
The two sites share a publisher and a design, and each links to the other, but they are kept apart on purpose: the river monitor is live data from one federal source, refreshed hourly; this site is a register of cited facts in a file, changed by hand when a new event is documented. A reader who wants to know how low the lakes are goes there; a reader who wants to know which towns have already lost their water comes here. The organizations on this site's Solutions page are seeded from the river monitor's list and extended toward drinking-water access.
Where to start over there
- Dashboard: every tracked reservoir at a glance: percent full, the change over seven days, the system figure.
- Lake Mead: the largest reservoir, with its elevation, storage and the shortage tiers written in feet.
- Lake Powell: the second largest, with minimum power pool and dead pool explained.
- Water shortage update: the current federal shortage condition and what the new federal rules change.
- Southwest water crisis: the overview of the drought, the compact and the cuts: the why behind this register.
- News: a hand-curated reading list on the river, refreshed monthly.
- FAQ and methodology: how every figure is derived from Reclamation data.
- Get involved: the conservation groups, educators and water users working on the river; this site's own list is seeded from it.
- Embeddable widget: the reservoir levels as a small widget any site can embed.
And over here
The map and register, one page per place with its whole dated history, the reporting behind the register, and the FAQ that states the rule for what goes on the map.