From Shaun McKinnon, a must-read story for water geeks on Arizona’s thinking about its water future – specifically where to get more (or use less?):

Drop 2 is no Lake Mead, the huge reservoir outside Las Vegas that holds Colorado River water until cities and farms in Arizona, Nevada and California need it. The new project is unlike almost any other on the river, designed not to store large quantities of water for long-term use but to hold smaller amounts for a few days or weeks.

It is a fitting symbol of the challenges of stretching a water source – the river – that has little stretch left in it and of the mounting costs to do so.

The reservoir is an attempt to wring every last drop of water from the Colorado. It will act as a catch basin, holding water that flowed past the last traditional dam on the river without a user ready to take it. That can happen if, say, a farmer in California’s Imperial Irrigation District requests water for a particular day and then it rains in the time it takes the water to flow south from Parker Dam, south of Lake Havasu City.