Follow up to previous posting – California Curtails Senior Water Rights via ProPublica –  California’s Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis. Here’s What You Need to Know, by Abrahm Lustgarten, Lauren Kirchner and Amanda Zamora. June 25, 2015. “Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it’s the Colorado River that we’re “killing”? – Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years.  California’s is a severe, but relatively short-term, drought. But the Colorado River basin — which provides critical water supplies for seven states including California — is the victim of a slower-burning catastrophe entering its 16th year. Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California all share water from the Colorado River, a hugely important water resource that sustains 40 million people in those states, supports 15 percent of the nation’s food supply, and fills two of largest water reserves in the country. The severe shortages of rain and snowfall have hurt California’s $46 billion agricultural industry and helped raise national awareness of the longer-term shortages that are affecting the entire Colorado River basin. But while the two problems have commonalities and have some effect on one another, they’re not exactly the same thing…”