Thanks to a landmark agreement between the United States and Mexico, the parched Colorado River Delta will get a rejuvenating shot of water this spring for one of the first times in five decades, just in time for World Water Day on March 22. On March 23, 2014, the gates of Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border will be lifted to allow a “pulse flow” of water into the final stretch of the Colorado River. Officials and scientists hope the water will help restore a landscape that has long been arid but that once supported a rich diversity of life.
“The pulse flow is about mimicking the way the Colorado River flowed in the springtime, thanks to snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, before all the dams were built,” says Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project and a National Geographic Freshwater Fellow. By the early 1960s, dams on the Colorado, such as Glen Canyon and the Hoover Dam, had diverted so much water that there was precious little flow entering the lower Colorado.
Water that did make it to Morelos Dam was diverted into Mexico’s Mexicali Valley for crop irrigation, leaving little for the wildlife or indigenous people living in the delta.
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