Word: aridity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...debate over the O'Shaughnessy Dam continues, politicians and water managers throughout the Western states will be watching. This is a debate that has the potential to broaden into a long-overdue discussion of just how the rapidly growing population of this arid, drought-prone region plans to meet its water needs without sucking dry every river and aquifer. The future of development in the West may rest on what happens to this elegant dam and the valley it flooded so long...
...nearly 200,000-acre cattle ranch in the high desert on the Arizona--New Mexico border. The nearest town was 35 miles away, and the three Day children--Sandra, Ann and Alan--learned early that self-reliance was a necessary survival skill. When rain occasionally wet the arid land, she wrote in Lazy B, a 2002 memoir that she co-authored with Alan, "We were saved again--saved from the ever present threat of drought, of starving cattle, of anxious creditors. We would survive a while longer." Self-reliance was also a political value: her father Harry was a staunch...
April-Agro's enterprising president, Morris Demel, 50, a Polish-born Jew who grew up in Cuba and fled to Puerto Rico after Castro's takeover, planned to grow produce on arid southern coast farmland once used for sugar cane. Importing five Israeli agronomists and applying drip-irrigation methods developed on Israeli kibbutzim, Demel initially wanted to devote 5,000 acres to fruits and vegetables. But seven years after he began the project, only 1,000 acres are under cultivation...
...script, which was screenwriter Simon Kinberg's graduate thesis at Columbia University Film School, had been kicking around for months. Liman had already passed on it once. It's the story of a seemingly conventional suburban couple facing two very big problems. One, their marriage is arid and joyless. And two, they both, each unbeknownst to the other, are topflight assassins at rival agencies. When professional circumstances pit the Smiths against each other, a hilarious fire fight between two trained killers ensues ("I missed you, honey" becomes a double entendre), which somehow, mysteriously, becomes a portrait of a marriage rediscovering...
...roughly one-fifth of the Colorado's flow. Because it lacked transporting capacity, however, the state has used less than half of its legal entitlement, allowing California to take much of the remainder. The CAP's new flow will thus put pressure on Southern California, particularly the booming but arid San Diego area, to find additional sources of supply. While more water from Northern California's High Sierra may be available, the West's continued population boom and unpredictable circumstances like drought could lead to a savage squeeze. Says Colorado Governor Dick Lamm: "We're playing a climatic slot machine...