The Disappearing Colorado River

Peter McBride describes the Colorado River delta:

"This estuary used to be one of the largest desert estuaries in North America," McBride says. "It ran to the sea for 6 million years, and the river basically stopped in the late '90s. It used to be 3,000 square miles with lush forests and jaguars and deer. And having walked it ... it's nothing but a cracked, parched arid landscape."
How did this happen? As McBride puts it, too many straws in the water: Near Mexico, the river basically produces the entire lettuce crop for the United States in the months of November and December, and all of the nation's carrots in January and February. "So whether you love the river and fish it and float it, or you've never been to it and you live on the East Coast, you actually eat Colorado River water," McBride continues.

It is amazing that all the river water is gone before it reaches the ocean.  Of course, when you divert a river into aqueducts for hundreds of miles to be used in cities which dump their wastewater directly into the ocean, you can expect such results.  Development in the American West has been so short-sighted, it is amazing.