Western states struggle to reach consensus on water rights

BY CATELYN FITZGERALD ’23 SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT EDITOR

Critically low water levels in the Colorado River did not appear overnight. In fact, the drought crisis in the Western U.S. has been unfolding since the turn of the century, a Washington Post article reported.

According to the article, the drought “has been building for decades but has come to a head in recent years” as major reservoirs along the river have dwindled to dangerously low levels. The crisis is spurred on by a combination of climate change and the overallocation of water rights, The Los Angeles Times reported. In order to continue providing water to the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River, Western states have been forced to cut their water usage and negotiate new water rights allocations, the Washington Post article said. The Los Angeles Times recently published a series titled “Colorado River in Crisis” which follows the drought and investigates how it will impact the communities that rely on the river. According to a recent article from the series, scientists began expressing concerns in the 1990s over the ability of the river and its reservoirs to support Western states while withstanding climate change. By 2000, the Colorado River watershed had already entered a period of drought which has only worsened over the past two decades. The Colorado river supplies water to the seven states that border it, the Washington Post article explains. These states are further divided into the “Upper Basin” and

“Lower Basin” regions. The “Upper Basin” states include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. These states get their water by diverting the river thousands of times to redirect it towards different users, the article said. Arizona, California and Nevada comprise the “Lower Basin” states, which rely on large man-made reservoirs — such as Lake Powell and Lake Mead — for their water. Water levels in the two lakes currently stand at a parched ticle reports that this type of study in self-recognition from images was observed in chimpanzees, and this “mental image of the self-face” is a behavior easily observed in humans.

The Bluestreak cleaner wrasses were observed exhibiting the same scraping behavior first observed in the original 2019 study after being shown photographs of themselves with the placebo parasite marking. Science News explains that in this same study, the fish readily attacked pictures of other fish in their same species, but stayed calm when presented with pictures of themselves.

The research paper concludes with the discussion that their results may be controversial and that there needs to be more research towards self-recognition in different species and taxa of animals. As of now, there are many discrepancies between different animals’ abilities to complete the mirror test, as it was originally designed for primates. Their final conclusion is that there is a strong cognitive ability in fishes, and self-awareness is suspected by the authors to be more common in the animal kingdom than once thought.

Reproduce This!

The history of and options for birth control

BY DIKSHA BATRA ’26 STAFF WRITER

The history of birth control goes back thousands of years, with people across the globe trying a variety of methods to prevent pregnancy. According to WebMD, thousands of years ago women in China had been known to drink mercury as a contraceptive, while King Minos of Crete was described as using the bladder of a goat as a condom in Homer’s Iliad. Only in 1960 was the first hormonal birth control pill, Envoid, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to Our Bodies Ourselves Today. However, the article explained, it was not until the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples were granted the right to use contraceptives. Unmarried women did not have the right to use birth control until the Eisenstadt v. Baird ruling in 1972.

As time went on, the varieties of birth control increased. Today several different types of contraceptives are commonly used, including: one-quarter full, and the river is put under additional stress by “hotter and drier conditions” caused by climate change, the article said. These conditions also diminish the ability of snowmelt to replenish the reservoir, by causing increased evaporation rates and greater absorption of melting snow by soil and plants. The article explains that over the past two decades, water use has exceeded the natural flow of the river. The Los Angeles Times reported that chronic overuse of water resources caused the Colorado River Delta, a region in Mexico where the river flows into the ocean, to have “largely dried up decades ago.”

IUD: According to the CDC, “IUDs are long-acting, … reversible and can be used by women of all ages, including adolescents, and by parous and nulliparous women.” According to Healthline, nulliparous refers to someone who has not given birth to a child, while parous refers to someone who has birthed one or more children. IUDs, however, are not a safeguard against STDs.

According to The Washington Post, regulations governing the use of the river’s resources date back to the signing of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which defined water rights for each of the seven states along the river. Later, regulation written in 1944 granted a share of the river’s resources to Mexico. Water rights for the “Lower basin” states were redefined in the 1963 Su-

Contraceptive Implant: The FDA approved the first implant, called Norplant, in 1991 according to Our Bodies Ourselves Today. “Surgically implanted as a set of small, soft tubes under the skin of the upper arm, Norplant releases the hormone levonorgestrel, which prevents pregnancy for five years,” the website said. According to Planned Parenthood, Nexplanon and Implanon are the two implants commonly used today.

Birth Control Shot: Like the contraceptive implant, birth control shots are long-acting reversible contraceptives that were used starting in 1992. This method is “a birth control shot that contains the hormone progestin and is taken every [three] months,” according to Our Bodies Ourselves Today. According to Planned Parenthood, Depo-Provera is another common name for the shot.

Emergency Contraception: In the late 1990s, the FDA approved Prevena and Plan B, according to Our Bodies Ourselves Today. According to Planned Parenthood, emergency contraception is “a safe and effective way to prevent pregnancy up to [five] days after unprotected sex.”

According to Planned Parenthood, there are many more types of birth control you can choose based on your body type. Factors such as convenience, effectiveness and cost can determine what type of birth control is the best for you.