Daniel Rothberg

The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters

"Nevada is completely over-allocated on its groundwater resources. It’s the driest state in the union. Our tribe’s number one goal is protecting our resources." | The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A new report looks at approaches for updating local ordinances in California to consider the connection between groundwater use and streamflow within the context of SGMA and a 2018 ruling that applied public trust considerations to well permits. www.groundwaterresourcehub.org/content/dam/...

I joined @danielrothberg.bsky.social for the first video edition of his newsletter, Invisible Waters—imo the best resource for staying up to date about what’s going on with water in the West—to talk about my forthcoming book, Salt Lakes:
substack.com/@cetracey/no...

‘The precedent is Flint’: How Oregon’s data center boom is supercharging a water crisis | Food and Environment Reporting Network In the spring of 2022, Jim Doherty kept having the same conversation with folks at the only grocery store in Boardman, his eastern Oregon hometown, or at the grain depot where he picked up food for…

‘The precedent is Flint’: How Oregon’s data center boom is supercharging a water crisis thefern.org/2025/11/the-...

Have you been wanting to learn more about Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom's ideas for collaborative governance?

Now is your chance to get that copy of The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom for half price!

islandpress.org/books/uncomm...

Thanks Ian for sharing!

What happened on the Colorado River? Negotiating around legal uncertainties as climate change takes its toll.

“Litigation could take years, if not decades, to resolve. The effects of aridification are unfolding at a faster rate.” @danielrothberg.bsky.social invisiblewaters.substack.com/p/what-happe...

Why Colorado River negotiations are so difficult - High Country News Basin states have had 2 years to figure out how to share the shrinking river. Will they get there before the feds step in?

“Previous negotiations did not address core issues. They either delayed them or worked around them, making do based on the circumstances of the time.” Good piece from Caitlin Ochs on the legal questions behind the Colorado River talks: www.hcn.org/articles/why...

California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes

New York Times investigation finds home insurance companies have exploited loopholes in California wildfire regulations to avoid high-risk areas while still charging higher rates: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...

my latest: CRIT grants personhood status to #coloradoriver - 3rd in North America by Indigenous peoples. www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

Colorado River talks hit crunch time. What's at stake for California water? Western states in the Colorado River basin are racing a federal deadline to hash out how to share the overtapped river. As the clock ticks down, two questions looms large: Just how real is this deadli...

Colorado River talks hit crunch time as deadline from Trump administration looms calmatters.org/environment/...

Well Into the Future A Nevada program addressed overallocation of groundwater by paying farmers to use less. Is it working?

Do groundwater rights retirement programs work? There is certainly demand for them in Nevada. For KNPR and the Daily Yonder, I talked to irrigators about their experiences with a pilot program in areas where aquifers are being depleted faster than they are replenished. knpr.org/desert-compa...

Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and con...

Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Episode 72: A Blueprint for Community Organizing around Data Centers — Water Talk A conversation with Professor Michael Bogan (University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment) about data center water use, the concept of water neutral development, and community...

Highly recommend these eye-opening Water Talk podcast episodes about how local governments and communities are struggling to assess the impacts of data center proposals because of NDAs, etc...

- www.watertalkpodcast.com/episodes/epi...

- www.watertalkpodcast.com/episodes/epi...

Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows Executives at world’s biggest datacentre owner grappled with disclosing information about water used to help power facilities

“Regardless of what sort of offsetting or replenishment you do, it doesn’t necessarily nullify the water footprints of your own operations." Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Thanks to you both for the kind words! It's a small world. Glad we are all connected.

Where there's mining there's water Gold hit a record-high this week. Behind the commodity price is a water story, too.

Wrote a bit about the mining and (ground)water nexus in the Western U.S., with the rush for critical minerals and gold surpassing $4,000/ounce. invisiblewaters.substack.com/p/where-ther...

Melanie Winter, who fought for embracing nature along the Los Angeles River, dies Melanie Winter led efforts to embrace nature along the L.A. River, touting the potential for a restored river to heal the city's relationship to water. She was 67.

Melanie Winter, who dedicated much of her life to reimagining the Los Angeles River as a natural asset, has died.

I feel fortunate to have known Melanie and learned about her vision for a living river. She inspired many others, who will carry her vision with them. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Following California condors tagged with GPS transmitters, researchers have tracked their expanison in 2025 from the Central Coast to the East Bay and near Santa Barbara. Condor GPS activity in 2025 Sources: Ventana Wildlife Society, heat map provided by Evan McWreath/VWS PAI/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

California condor range expanding into the Bay Area and Santa Cruz Mountains, further south into Santa Barbara County too. 🪶 www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/20/f...

Why I'm writing about climate and culture I never expected to leave the Los Angeles Times and start a Substack. Then a story about Disneyland caught me by surprise.

Check out (and subscribe!) to @sammyroth.bsky.social's new Substack focused on climate solutions in entertainment and pop culture.

"...what I’ve realized — what drove me to start this newsletter — is that the climate crisis is in large part a cultural problem."

This Northern California reservoir has pioneered a way to store more water After years of advocacy and experimentation, officials will celebrate the reservoir’s status as the nation’s first to get the go-ahead to adopt a flexible, forecast-based operations policy.

Its official! Today, the US Corps Of Engineers is announcing that it signed into effect a Water Control Manual update for Lake Mendocino on the Russian River that implements FIRO* there! 1/7

www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

* Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations

Inside Trump's plan to eviscerate USGS and beyond - Center for Western Priorities Forced by a federal judge to partially reveal plans for firing federal employees, the Trump administration on Monday said it plans to “imminently” terminate more than 2,000 employees at the Interior d...

“The Monday filing outlines where 2,050 positions would be eliminated; the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management, and the main Interior office would be especially hard hit. Regional offices with the National Park Service are also targeted for significant cuts.”

Salmon reach headwaters for first time in a century after California dam removal Klamath River salmon have crossed a major threshold after dams were removed along the California-Oregon border, with the fish reaching the river’s headwaters for the first time in more than a...

Salmon reach headwaters for first time in a century after California dam removal www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

The little-known groundwater Los Angeles pumps in the Owens Valley, and the tribes who want it back In the Owens Valley, Los Angeles siphons water from Sierra streams and also pumps groundwater from wells. Native tribes are calling for the city to take less water.

“We’ve seen so many impacts from groundwater pumping. There’s a lot of areas that are dewatered, that are dried up.” Indigenous leaders raise concerns about groundwater pumping in Owens Valley and call for negotiations with L.A. @ianjames.bsky.social has more. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Episode 74: Tribal and Transboundary Issues in the Colorado River Basin — Water Talk A conversation with Cora Tso (Senior Research Fellow, Tribal Water Policy, Kyl Center for Water Policy, Arizona State University) and Prof. Sam Sandoval (University of California Agriculture and Natur...

You'd think the Colorado River Basin dispute amounts to conflict between the upper and lower basin states based on most coverage, but Tribes and Mexico also have a big role here. We talked with Cora Tso and Sam Sandoval about these issues on Water Talk
www.watertalkpodcast.com/episodes/epi...

Important report out from the Initiative on Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities (UACW): The FY 2026 federal budget includes a 70% reduction in funding for Tribal Access to Clean, Reliable and Accessible Drinking Water. tribalcleanwater.org/wp-content/u...

Why winter rains keep skipping the Southwest » Yale Climate Connections Human-caused climate change from burning fossil fuels may be involved in a persistent tilt toward dry patterns.

NOAA has just issued a La Niña Watch for late 2025/early 2026. So far this century, we've had 12 La Niña winters versus just 8 El Niño winters. What does this portend for Southwest US drought? There's some unsettling new science out on that.

yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/08/why-...

Photographs from Mono Lake and the Mono Basin, a landscape of deep silence and immense space. (And overdue for implementation of the full protections guaranteed by decades-old legal decisions.)

#monolake #monobasin #lake #nature #landscape #california #basinandrange #photography

In today’s @latimes.com:
‘It needs more water’: Calls grow for boosting Mono Lake www.latimes.com/environment/... @myungchun.bsky.social

Q&A: Groundwater loss on a global scale ASU's Jay Famiglietti on the alarming drying of Earth's land surface.

We do not talk enough about groundwater, the quiet water crisis playing out across the globe.

“Groundwater is the most precious natural resource in the dry parts of the world," said ASU's Jay Famiglietti. “And it is probably the least protected.” www.westernwaternotes.com/p/q-and-a-gr...