Hello, everyone! Ian James here, the reporter on this project. My colleagues and I traveled throughout the Colorado River Basin to produce this documentary, speaking with scientists, environmentalists, water managers, farmers, tribal leaders and others. Thank you for watching. Let me know if you have any questions!

Incredibly interesting and well made documentary!

Humans LOVE learning the hard way!😢😢 we didn't plan....we took as much as we could....now we suffer...

The dead Colorado river delta indicates that the catastrophe already occurred whereas the consequences will arrive for civilization soon enough as blowback from climate change.

thank you for this reporting, excellent work

Marc Reisner's great book Cadillac Desert written in 1986 explained that even John Wesley Powell tried in the 1870's after his trips down the Colorado to convince the country to NOT develop the arid west for irrigation agriculture. You can't grow a lasting society in dry place without water. We didn't, we built a short term place to PROSPER........ for awhile. Nothing is in balance in our American west. Despite my gloomy words I thank the LA Times and Ian James and entire team for their good work here.

Crazy, folks who have to have water pumped long distances from the river insist they have more of a right to use water to make money than people at the end of the river who live very close to the river now has zero water do.

California needs to get their act together and start capturing more precipitation from atmospheric rivers during el nino years.

21:19. In the background is one of the many mountains of harvested hay or alfalfa. Much of that animal feed, grown on government subsidized water, is for export to Saudi Arabia, China, Japan and other money rich but water poor countries 25:16. Fatmers talking about installing sprinkler systems yo irrigate their anim🎉al feed. Because sprinklers, inefficient as they are, are more efficient than what they have bee using, which is flooding the fields, which is the least efficient, misr wasteful method of irritation there is.

Politicos ,sociedade civil,agricultores deven unir forças para salvar o rio Colorado, a unica solução e a reflorestação, o tempo não espera é preciso agir con urgencia mãos a obra por favor...!

Yes its called OVER POPULATED DESERTS.

Now the question is how do we fix this? Start with recreation that is taking up water like Golf Courses in desert? Or start with restructuring water rights and how those are sold and bid for?

Excellent video.

The river is not in crisis Denver Water has stolen the water and us pumping it to the Mississippi. Fundamentally Denver water is not compliant of the basic water law of returning the water to its original watershed.

Thank you LA times for highlighting. Also really appreciate your frequent articles advocating for native plants and lawn removal

Helli, as for the agricultural fields, they should be smaller with more confines with some trees and bushes. Their shades help to hold more water in the soil and their leaves in autumn give nutriments to the soil...

The Colorado River is at a critical juncture, facing unprecedented challenges that threaten its sustainability and the well-being of communities and ecosystems that depend on it. Urgent action is needed to address water scarcity, climate change impacts, and ecosystem degradation, and to ensure the equitable and sustainable management of this vital natural resource for future generations. Collaborative efforts, informed decision-making, and innovative solutions will be essential in navigating the path forward and securing the future of the Colorado River.

food forests can restore hydrology.

California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, It's your problem ! Tell the developers and politicians no more, your population has exceeded resources ! And good luck with that !

I have one reason why those rivers dry up, that's DAMS! or Hydroelectric Dams, we have seen multiple cases where dam removals cleared the way for biodiversity and normal river levels

California needs to stop wasting Water..

There are two choices here: 1. Make significant changes now to avoid catastrophe or 2. Fail to make significant changes and have a catastrophe. My money is on option 2.

River Kepper!! go visit the knot 'the core' that holds the River, Palo Verde Diversion Dam and the several water district entity's that wheel and deal for the control of it.

4:00 The cattleman states that he will do whatever it takes to fill his water rights even with lower flows.

Remember, before the dams they had floods. And we have all eaten food from the Imperial Valley

Heres an idea, stop watering the desert, its a desert for a reason

cali could incorporate new energy production, like small modular reactors and start desalinating salt water

Very convenient that California was not covered much if not at all, when California takes most of the water……

Abuse Mother Nature at your own risk....there is plenty of water....too many people😂😂😂😂😂😂

This is the dumbest comment section that I have ever read. People wake up!

Build more farms in the desert that’ll help. Maybe California with all their money can build desalination plants and make the Colorado great again.

Rethought or reallotments? Good luck.

You forgot to plant big trees, like the baobab, all tree is usefull, planted by a mexican family in baha.

Great civilizations come and then they go. This one will be no different. The decline has already started.

the fact we think we can live anywhere we want ,building subdivisions and golf courses all over the deserts of our country will lead to our own demise....yet most of humanity is seldom aware of these issues while profit margins remain high, its hard to say no to 6 figures, mansions and country clubs ..when the mansions burn down the country clubs and golf courses dry up , no one is buying your mansion in the desert it will be painfully clear how stupid we have been .... the amount of areas that are completely unlivable without water being diverted into these areas are so widespread that they are beyond counting ... gotta say when people in the high desert complain about their neighborhood not having enough water i find myself saying ....well yea you live in a desert dumasp good call

Everything good always have a downside.

If everyone P ed In a jug and flushed it once a week how much water woud that save? ⛲️

Well golly I thought it was all just hunky dory. The head in the sand squad did their government overreach dance, they got some rain and then it was all good for a day. Problem solved!

Americans and water, trouble? Nah, they just lay the blame somewhere else.

I hate Liberty mutual. I wish they'd stop showing me so many ads

...and who told you that God didn't answer? He knows what you are going through, he listened and the answer, given, is on its way...

Some people might say it's too late to solve these problems and I strongly agree.

As usual, I have to explain how capitalism started all of these problems! We never should have had 30 million farmers in 1900, now 1 million, because we NEEDED housing for +50 million people, and we should have built only Tower cities connected to maglev Trains, worldwide, and no wage, so we could have built desalination plants worldwide (because in capitalism that “costs too much” to pay wages) and probably no dams like here at the Colorado River. And every Tower could have had rainfall catchments, and other ways to catch water (like water towers or who knows, from too much rain that caused floods) and we could have caught the RAIN/flood water and sent it to nations that needed it (which is too expensive in capitalism). Then people wouldn’t have suffered through floods and hurricanes etc and it killed millions that would have lived longer if not in houses and cars. We should have had fewer farms, and NO fertilizer which we now know is very bad. And could have taught people not to eat so much beef, which the government was paying millions in ads to teach people to eat lots more beef because then farmers could sell more and have a better income, which wouldn’t have existed because all people should have owned all things and we could have eliminated money, and had equal wealth so billions weren’t left to starve to death, because they should have built T&T too, and there wouldn’t have been the drug cartels, that are taking over small and large farms in Mexico and everywhere, started by the CIA probably to help poor people have something (drugs) to sell for an income! No CIA, no crimes, no prisons, no law enforcement killing innocent people sometimes. Then we could have started rethinking growing food vertically without soil, indoors, so farmers aren’t ruined when tornadoes, hurricanes, floods etc destroy all their crops and houses leaving them destitute, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, after all that hard WORK! In T&T all people could have worked part time, no debt or rent (causes poverty because it IS POVERTY!), because most jobs never would have existed (think especially low wage McDonalds etc jobs). No colleges would have been teaching slavery for wages! Equal wealth means no people could have been unable to AFFORD to live in T&T! And so much more. Renew your mind and start thinking differently!

"Driven by the burning of fossil fuels." LAT has been predicting end of Sierra snow for decades including right before the 5th biggest snow in recorded history, 2022/23. SOooo...let's burn more fossils to feed the rivers?

make forest.. same the land

I have no compassion for these beef farmers, their product is seriously water intensive. People aRE cutting down on beef, I don't want to give these climate crisis enhancers one more drop change your product, there are lots of them to choose from. As far as I am concerned they are poor stewards of the land and don't deserve water from a river miles away....sad

When it runs out don’t bring yall ass to the east coast 😂

Decades ago America should be sending Mississippi River water and Great Lakes water to the Deserts South West. Where humans can better use the water. And the evaporation cooling process would cool the planet down

I wonder how the river looked around 1100 AD during the 250 year drought that hit the west. 250 years, and another 150 year drought after that one, must have really dried up the river. That well before "man made global warming", automobiles or coal fired power plants. All they have is about 150 years of actual weather data to go by. And that record has few data points in the early years. That doesn't include 200, 300 or 600 years ago either. I'll laugh if the next 30 years brings "above average" precipitation through out the region.

Let the water go to the sea and turn to salt, talk about waste.

Stop the BS there is so much snow pack

This is propaganda, is it not?

40 million people use the Colorado River they said. I wonder how much that number would be knocked down if we removed the 33 million illegal immigrants. Not only does illegal immigration cost Tax Payers 162 Billion Dollars a year but also stuff like this. Huge water loss. Just imagine the water savings from 33 million people not being in the USA o

LA times?😂😂😂😂