Daniel Salzler No. 1347
EnviroInsight.org Four Items February 27, 2026
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1. Water – Plant It Wisely: Plant Smarter This Spring. This spring, learn how beautiful water conservation can be.
Spring shows up in all the little ways; brighter mornings, blooming shrubs, and that unmistakable urge to finally tackle the yard. Before you know it, the gloves are on, the shovel’s out, and your landscape is ready for a seasonal glow-up. Water – Plant It Wisely is your handy resource to provide landscaping guidance, advice, and ideas on what to plant. What you plant affects more than your yard. It helps create a more sustainable future. By selecting low-water-use plants, you help conserve our precious water supply for generations to come. Turns out saving water can be a pretty good look. Learn more at WaterPlantItWisely.com.
Dig into the benefits of low-water-use plants. Flowers that smell sweet, trees that provide shade, and pollinators that make your yard their playground. Beauty and conservation really can go hand in hand. The sheer number of heat and drought-resistant species native to our southwest deserts or from arid climates around the world may surprise you. Desert flora doesn’t require much water to thrive and adds a variety of colors, sizes, functions, and yes, even lush greenery to your landscaping.
You will love how your yard looks and how your water bills look. With each low-water-use plant you place in your landscape, you can save up to 550 gallons a year. Considering up to 70% of water use is outdoors, you can brag to your neighbors that your beautiful landscape is not only conserving water but is easy to take care of, too.
Quick facts on the benefits of low-water-use landscapes.
– Use up to 75% less water than grass or traditional landscapes
– Save water, a precious resource in the desert
– Provide many functions (shade, attracting birds, add color)
– Easier to maintain requiring less fertilizer, pesticides, and care
Healthy plants, healthy savings with low-water-use landscaping.A lush, vibrant garden does more than please the eye – it soothes the soul. As you relax in the shade, admire your spring blooms, and take a deep breath, you can feel good knowing the air around you is cleaner. Just one tree can remove more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, the equivalent of driving 1,300 miles.
Your low-water-use garden can also benefit your wallet. Beyond lowering your water bill, a beautiful landscape can boost your home’s value by up to 15 percent and even speed up a sale by five to six weeks. (Not that you’ll want to sell – your garden deserves your full attention first!)
Landscaping with water conservation in mind brings a mix of personal, environmental, and financial rewards. And that’s just the beginning…
Water – Plant It Wisely is our special microsite from Water – Use It Wisely, bringing together our best landscaping resources in one easy place. You’ll find practical guidance, inspiration, and plant ideas, including:
The newly updated Landscape Plants for the Arizona Desert
How to transition your yard to Xeriscape
Tips for inviting birds, pollinators, and wildlife into your landscape
Artificial turf: water savings and important drawbacks to consider
Local demonstration gardens to spark ideas
Specialty plant sales across the Valley
Source: SRP: Donna DiFrancesco, Conservation Coordinator with the City of Mesa, AZ, one of 23 Water– Use It Wisely partners to offer water-saving advice and programs.
2. Water Worries Are Top Of Mind For Arizonans, Poll Shows. Water is a major concern across the American West and nowhere more so than in Arizona, according to a new poll.
Why it matters: The numbers from the annual Conservation in the West poll suggest conservation isn’t a niche issue — it’s political bedrock in eight Southwest and Rocky Mountain states.
State of play: The 2026 poll, a bipartisan survey conducted annually by Colorado College, showed 93% of Arizona respondents list inadequate water supplies as a serious problem, and 71% say it’s a very serious one.
Both figures were the highest of any state in the poll.
Zoom in: Respondents from all Colorado River states said they support an agreement requiring reduced water usage, with the largest majorities in Arizona (85%), Colorado (87%) and Nevada (84%).
The poll was completed weeks before Colorado River states missed a key federal deadline for a new agreement on cuts and conservation.
Yes, but: While everyone agreed states need to conserve water to preserve the Colorado River, the poll doesn’t indicate who respondents think should do the conserving.
The lower basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada have repeatedly called for upper basin states Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to take additional cuts, which they’ve strongly resisted.
The big picture: From President Trump’s first term to his second, Westerners have become more intensely concerned about the rollback of environmental protections.
Driving the news: 84% of Western voters say backpedaling on laws that protect land, water and wildlife is a serious concern, up from 68% in 2018.
86% say spending cuts to national parks, forests and other public lands are a problem.
The sentiment crosses party lines. 75% of MAGA-aligned voters agree that spending cuts on national parks and public lands are a serious issue, the poll finds.
The intrigue: Entering the midterm election cycle, 85% of voters say conservation issues are a deciding factor in who they will pick on the ballot.
Between the lines: Arizonans cited population growth (57%), climate change (57%) and aging water infrastructure (57%) as their biggest concerns.
How it works: The poll was conducted by a bipartisan research team from Jan. 2-18 and surveyed 3,419 people from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
479 of the respondents were from Arizona.
Source: AXIOS Phoenix Jeremy Duda, John Frank
3.With No Colorado River Deal In Sight, Risk Of Federal Action Intensifies. Here’s what that means. Coloradans are worried the Trump administration can simply give Colorado River water to favored states. Is that possible.
JB Hamby spent an evening in Southern California last week flipping through pages full of Colorado River meeting notes reflecting the same arguments and negotiating positions over the waterway’s future dating back to 2023.
“I’ve kept all my notebooks since I began this sick, twisted hobby back in early 2023,” Hamby, the state’s top negotiator on Colorado River issues, said Friday. “Our real issue is not that we’ve run out of time. … The problem is that we don’t have sufficient compromise all around to be able to close a deal.”
He’s not the only state negotiator feeling the frustration: There was no love between opposing blocs in the basin as they failed to meet a Valentine’s Day deadline.
The seven Colorado River states, including Colorado, are trying to reach a joint agreement on how to manage the river basin’s water supplies before the current rules expire this fall. Without state consensus, President Donald Trump’s administration will decide what to do. With every missed deadline, the risk of expensive, years long court battles over water heightens, and communities are left in limbo.
Coloradans are nervous the president could contradict a century of water law and give water to states he favors.
“Will Trump step in with a post on Truth Social and decide which states get water and which don’t?” one Colorado resident asked The Colorado Sun in response to a call for reader questions about the river basin.
Colorado political leaders have argued the Trump administration has been targeting the state, referring to decisions to nix emergency funds for flood recovery and a southeastern Colorado water project, plus conflicts over former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters who was convicted of state crimes tied to the 2020 presidential elections.
As another deadline passed with no Colorado River deal, The Sun asked basin water experts what happens next — and what federal action is, or is not, possible in Colorado.
Can Trump decide where the water goes?
Yes, Trump and his administration can make unilateral decisions on how to manage, experts said.
Whether those decisions prompt lawsuits, make it out of courts or can actually be used as the action plan for the river is an entirely different matter.
When it comes to which states face painful water cuts in the Colorado River’s driest years — a central point of contention in the deadlocked negotiations — it’s a matter of federal authority, experts say.
For decades, the federal government has had varied levels of authority within its two subbasins: the Upper Basin, made up of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming; and the Lower Basin, comprising Arizona, California and Nevada.
In the Upper Basin, it’s the Upper Colorado River Commission — not the federal government — that determines whether upstream states must cut back on water use to meet interstate water sharing obligations. (Upstream and downstream states disagree about those sharing obligations.) This is based on a 1948 interstate compact, said Anne Castle, former federal representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Individual states have their own systems to manage which water users get cut off early in drier years. Colorado’s top water cop in charge of this process is State Engineer Jason Ullmann.
In the Lower Basin, the secretary of the Interior is the “water master,” which means the federal official determines when to make water cuts in Arizona, California and Nevada.
The 30 tribal nations in the Colorado River Basin have different situations, but many have treaties or other legal agreements with the U.S. that outline the federal government’s trust responsibilities.
The Gila River Indian Community is a Lower Basin tribe that receives water from the Central Arizona Project, a canal system that supports big cities, including Phoenix, and is likely to be cut first in times of shortage. If the tribe’s water supplies are cut significantly, it could end up suing the federal government to fulfill its legal obligations, according to a tribal attorney who declined to speak on the record because of the risk of litigation.
And if — as The Colorado Sun reader asked — President Trump decided to take Colorado’s water from the Colorado River and give it to another state because, say, he doesn’t like the state’s Democratic leadership, the move would fly in the face of decades of water law and would likely result in legal challenges, the water experts said.
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on federal authority or how it would respond to such a hypothetical decision by the president.
“Colorado is prepared for any litigation, and we will work tirelessly to protect our state’s rights and interests under the Law of the Colorado River,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a prepared statement Friday.
So what’s happening with these negotiations?
The stalled Colorado River negotiations focus on how water is stored and released primarily from two reservoirs, lakes Powell and Mead, the largest reservoirs in the nation.
The two immense reservoirs have the critical job of pacing the flow of water to communities and acting as savings banks in dry years. Both reservoirs have dropped to historic lows, ramping up uncertainty over the future water supplies and hydropower generation.
Between January and February, the expected flow of water into a vital Colorado River reservoir, Lake Powell, has dropped by 1.5 million acre-feet, or about 488 billion gallons of water, according to federal projections.
That drop is roughly equivalent to two Blue Mesa Reservoirs, Colorado’s largest reservoir, or almost six Lake Dillons, a reservoir that stores water for Front Range communities.
Federal officials are leaning on state negotiators to propose a united path forward, saying the basin should decide its own water future. If the states can agree, their joint proposal would become the preferred option for managing the Colorado River’s water supply.
Since 2023, the state talks have been mired in arguments over sticking points, like whether additional reservoirs would be managed under the new plan and how the upstream states can contribute to conserving water.
“We’re being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” Colorado’s top negotiator Becky Mitchell said in a statement. “The Upper Division’s approach is aligned with hydrologic reality and we’re ready to move forward.”
4.Symptoms Of A Measles Infection. If you have children or grand children, you have to know the symptoms to look for. There have been 220 cases reported in AZ since January 1, 2026.
A red, blotchy rash appears 2–4 days later, typically starting at the hairline and spreading to the face, trunk, and limbs. The rash usually lasts 5-6 days. In some cases, measles can become very serious and may lead to pneumonia, seizures, brain damage, or even death.
For lots more information, go to
https://mail.aol.com/d/folders/1/messages/AAEJoYnvJmkgMmSXUAskWTVRSHe
Source: AZ Dept of Health
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