BBC diary: Colorado River drought
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 16, 2008 at 7:15 amFrom BBC News:
The south-western US is suffering its eighth consecutive year of drought. There are concerns that the Colorado River, which has sustained life in the area for thousands of years, can no longer meet the needs of the tens of millions of people living in major cities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
The BBC’s Matthew Price is travelling along the river to investigate the scale of the problem and is sending a series of diary items from there.
Day 1 - Page Arizona:
It takes several hours to get to Page, Arizona. From anywhere. The drive, though, is far from dull. It’s one of those journeys that can make you feel incredibly insignificant. Vast landscapes dwarf everything made by man. The cars and trucks speeding along the desert highways appear as small as model vehicles. You could stick the skyscrapers of Manhattan, from where I flew in a few hours earlier, next to the immense rock formations, and they would look like Toy Town.
In places the landscape falls sharply away into canyons, in others it rises up towards plateaus, and everywhere the geological history of the place is obvious.
Today, as I walked alongside the Colorado River just outside the town of Page, I saw two prints in the red Navajo sandstone, each with three “toes”. It was the fossilised footprint of a dinosaur which had stood at the same spot many thousands of years before me.
This land is sacred to the Native Americans who live here. Shana Watahomigie is a park ranger with the National Parks Service. She is also a member of the Havasupai tribe, which still lives alongside the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Havasupai means “people of the blue-green water”, and, as we dip our toes in the chilly river, Ms Watahomigie tells me the Colorado is part of her history.
“It’s my lifeline, my bloodline. We have a lot of respect for the river, water and the earth.”
Read more from BBC News & view video clips by clicking here.
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