Voices from the Drying Rio Grande
By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue
Photographs by Pablo Unzueta
October 13, 2022
One of the West’s iconic waterways, the Rio Grande stretches nearly 1,900 miles from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. It is also under assault from a warming climate.
The Rio Grande stopped flowing for five miles through Albuquerque in July, the first time it ran dry in that reach in four decades.
The river is New Mexico’s largest and most essential watershed. In many ways it is the soul of the state.
This reporting project was supported by The Water Desk, an independent journalism initiative based at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Brett writes about agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and the politics and economics of water in the United States. He also writes the Federal Water Tap, Circle of Blue’s weekly digest of U.S. government water news. He is the winner of two Society of Environmental Journalists reporting awards, one of the top honors in American environmental journalism: first place for explanatory reporting for a series on septic system pollution in the United States(2016) and third place for beat reporting in a small market (2014). He received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018. Brett lives in Seattle, where he hikes the mountains and bakes pies. Contact Brett Walton
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