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California is in its sixth year of drought, which was barely dented by rains brought by the El Niño climate event and sparked a range of water restrictions in the state. But warming temperatures and uncertain rainfall mean that if more isn’t done to slow climate change, droughts lasting 35 years are likely to blight western states by the end of the century, according to the study, published in Science Advances.

Such a megadrought would impose “unprecedented stress on the limited water resources”

the study predicts a 70% chance of a megadrought by the end of the century,

The U.S. border with Mexico spans almost 2,000 miles from California to Texas, and illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and other security breaches along the border have been issues of growing concern for decades. After 9/11, the call to secure America’s borders increased, and the idea of expanding physical layers of security along the Mexican border began to gain serious traction in the minds of lawmakers.

Signed into law by George W. Bush, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandated the construction of almost 700 miles of barrier fences along the Mexican border

The act also appropriated the expansion of checkpoints, vehicle barriers, and technological systems designed to monitor the expanse of boundary.

The Colorado River basin is experiencing a chronic shortage due to natural flows along with a short-term problem of the current drought conditions. Additinally, Lake Mead’s natural flow patterns are projected to drop about 20 feet during 2014. An informative piece on this river rcently ran in the New York Times.

Reducing dependence on the Colorado River through voluntary agriculture-to-urban water transfers is one of the benefits of the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA)

The QSA defines the rights to a portion of water from the Colorado River for four water districts in Southern California