Center News and Notes

On May 22, a tentative deal to reduce water use by entities drawing from the Colorado River was reached, averting near-term potential disaster and predictions that the river could all but stop. While still pending federal approval, the deal marks a…

Sycamore Street in the Mission Fields neighborhood of Carmel in January 1995. Orville Myers/The Monterey Herald

  • & the West
The floods driven by winter storms are nothing new in Monterey County, but the early March catastrophe that swelled the Pajaro and Salinas rivers and drowned farmworker communities exposes the extreme inequality built into flood-control systems.
The Colorado River basin supplies water to over 40 million people and five million acres of farmland across two countries, seven U.S. states, and up to 30 federally recognized Native American Tribes. Since 2000, consumptive uses and losses of the…

The Bill Lane Center team at Rural West 2023

  • Rural West
On Friday, March 31 and Saturday, April 1, 2023, the Bill Lane Center for the American West convened its 9th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. Bringing together academics, practitioners, and experts on the urgent…

As part of UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, the Bill Lane Center's Eccles Family Director Bruce Cain participated in a conference on March 17 called