The Multistate Battle over the Colorado River

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/the-multistate-battle-over-the-colorado-river.html

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

47 29 4 years ago

nymag.com

octoberfranklin• 4 years ago

We can’t have a city or agricultural area dry up and wither while others thrive.

The Owens Valley begs to differ...

Like it or not, you’re all part of L.A.

Yes and that's precisely the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Valley

westcort• 4 years ago

Key Takeaways:

* “Right now, the Lower Basin uses over 10 million acre-feet a year, while the Upper Basin uses under 5 million acre-feet,” says Rebecca Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board

* I’m thrilled to death we have infrastructure in place that allows us to use the water when it’s available.” > Utah has the right to use about 1.7 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado, but it cannot collect from Lake Powell (its major aqueduct, the Central Utah Project, connects only Salt Lake City with the river’s tributaries)

* > Colorado River Compact > The fundamental flaw of this compact is that it was signed at a time of unprecedented rain and snowfall in the basin, which led its original framers to assume that 15 million acre-feet of water flowed through the Colorado every year

* “If the last 30 years repeats itself, the Lower Basin will have to cut its use by about 1 million acre-feet,” says Hasencamp

* The writer Marc Reisner described the Colorado as the “American Nile.” The Hualapai call it Hakataya, “the backbone.” > Colorado River > described > Hualapai > Starting in the early 20th century, much of the Colorado’s natural majesty was corralled into a system of reservoirs, canals, and dams that now provides drinking water for 40 million people, irrigation for 5 million acres of farmland, and sufficient power to light up a city the size of Houston

* Currently, the Upper Basin uses only about 4.5 million acre-feet of water every year, leaving roughly 2 million acre-feet that the four states are theoretically entitled to as they keep adding population

* While the explosive population growth of Arizona and Nevada originally put pressure on California to draw down its use in the 1990s, now the Upper Basin states of Utah and Colorado — each of which added over a half-million residents in the past decade — are adding strain to the system

* John Fleck has authored several books on the Colorado and serves as a writer-in-residence at the University of New Mexico; he says the tension between the two basins was palpable at the Stegner conference, with many Lower Basin negotiators expressing their frustration with those from the Upper Basin seeming to cast the current crisis as one that California, Arizona, and Nevada have created and are responsible for solving

* But that framework is set to expire in 2026, giving officials in the seven states through which the Colorado and its tributaries flow — along with their peers in Mexico and the 29 tribes whose ancestors have depended on the river for millennia — an alarmingly narrow window to come to a consensus on how to share a river that’s already flowing with one-fifth less water than it did in the 20th century

cameldrv2• 4 years ago

Seems like sort of a classic debt vs. equity problem. The government obviously cannot deliver on a promise of X amount of water regardless of rainfall. It would make a lot more sense if the rightsholders received a percentage of the inflow. The good thing about the dam is that it can absorb fluctuations on the scale of a few years, but as we see, it can't absorb a decade long decline, and they should reduce allocations proportionately without having to declare an emergency to do it. That way, farmers would have at least a few years to make adjustments.

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

The thing is, there’s more than one dam. Keeping Lake Powell ‘full’ means Lake Mead gets less water for their electric generation. And the upstream lakes have to release more water than they want to.

They’ve been haggling over that water forever and no one is going back to their constituents admitting defeat so Phoenix can have more golf courses per capita than any other place on earth. Maybe making that up but I’ve lived in the Phoenix valley for almost 25 years and there’s a lot of golf courses.

dybber• 4 years ago

For anyone else not understanding these weird measures: “The acre-foot is a non-SI unit of volume equal to about 1,233 m3”

That is, 1 million acre-feet is around 1.2 million cubic meters

komadori• 4 years ago

1.2 billion cubic metres, no? That comma is a thousands separator, not a decimal point.

bradleyjg2• 4 years ago

The article is deceptive by omission. It only vaguely hints that the entire issue is agriculture. Stop farming the desert and there’s plenty of water for drinking regardless of population growth.

bitxbitxbitcoin• 4 years ago

The simple answer that moneyed interests aren’t interested in.

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

* Currently, the Upper Basin uses only about 4.5 million acre-feet of water every year, leaving roughly 2 million acre-feet that the four states are theoretically entitled to as they keep adding population
* While the explosive population growth of Arizona and Nevada originally put pressure on California to draw down its use in the 1990s, now the Upper Basin states of Utah and Colorado — each of which added over a half-million residents in the past decade — are adding strain to the system
* John Fleck has authored several books on the Colorado and serves as a writer-in-residence at the University of New Mexico; he says the tension between the two basins was palpable at the Stegner conference, with many Lower Basin negotiators expressing their frustration with those from the Upper Basin seeming to cast the current crisis as one that California, Arizona, and Nevada have created and are responsible for solving

The Upper Basin states have been using less than their allotment for decades, and allowing the Lower Basin states to use more than their allotment. If the Upper Basin states want to use more (up to their actual allotment), and that creates a crisis because the Lower Basin states have grown used to using more than their allotment, it seems fair to me to claim that the crisis is in fact the fault of the Lower Basin states. If the one giving charity doesn't keep doing so forever and a crisis results, that's not the fault of the one who stops giving charity...

noasaservice2• 4 years ago

Maybe its just me, and my appalachian view here: but if the west is so dry, and getting worse, why isnt California, Washington, and Oregon running massive desalination plants with solar or nuclear, and start the water flowing at a massive scale? The water rights show just how dire this is. The need is definitely there. Why's that not happening like 10y ago?

Of course, it's also probably a bad idea to plant water-thirsty stuff in a desert too. You plant what the climate and area supports.

drewnick3• 4 years ago

I live in Carlsbad, CA. We procure 50M gallons a day from the Pacific Ocean. [0] San Diego saw this coming 10y ago and took action.

0. https://www.carlsbaddesal.com/

margalabargala• 4 years ago

For the curious: 50M gallons is 153 acre-feet. Multiply by 365, that's just shy of 56000 acre feet per year.

So three of these plants would be approximately 1% of the water allocated in the original Colorado River compact.

Melting_Harps2• 4 years ago

I live in Carlsbad, CA

When I worked in Carlsbad driving in from Southern OC, I remember seeing the construction for Poseidon, it was in the midst of the financial crisis but Carlsbad is an affluent city with mainly older residents and I recall thinking to myself: these guys know how to spend their money right.

If I recall correctly Poseidon supplies not just all of Carlsbad but also to the greater San Diego area and parts of Riverside and OC and is on track to recover it's costs ahead of schedule, right?

toast0• 4 years ago

Desalination is quite expensive, but some plants are operating and more are planned. Agricultural customers will probably not use desalination because of costs; it's more economical to plant their fields with signs decrying the 'congress created dustbowl' (at least for the highway adjacent signs); and residential customers likely increase conservation efforts, but it's an option (and if Wikipedia is correct, it tends to be less expensive than importing water from nearby agencies). Determining where to build the plants and environmental review, and the size of the projects make it a lengthy process, and there are often other project options which could be less costly and may be synergistic with other government efforts; for example expanding wastewater reclamation can meet sewage treatment goals and reduce potable water needs or excess reclaimed water can be directed towards aquifer recharging.

noasaservice2• 4 years ago

I knew it was expensive, but I really thought most of the costs were in the energy. And, being in a desert means that solar is really effective - the latitude certainly helps too.

I also saw that drewnick also posted that San Diego has a desal plant. That one sounds small - but I could see that scaled up x10, and then drop 20 of them along the coastlines.

Reclamation should also be definitely part of the overall plan too. But if the water input is gown that far down, no amount of reclamation will fix low source.

cameldrv2• 4 years ago

Because the least economically valuable use of the water is agricultural, which is also by far the highest use of water. It makes no sense for a city to desalinate water for ten times the price that it's being sold for agricultural purposes. Unfortunately the politics and property rights of water in the West prevent economically rational water allocation. Instead, city dwellers are legally required to buy ever lower flow shower heads, which make approximately zero difference in overall water usage, while rice farmers flood their fields.

silisili• 4 years ago

This is the real problem. In most of southern NM and even west TX, these farmers use so much water that mosquitoes become a problem for parts of the year. In the desert....

Agriculture needs big reform here. Either cut it out, or make them pay their big share of water. But I guess nobody wants to buy a 50 dollar bag of almonds or pecans.

Personally, I might miss pecan pie once a year, but otherwise wouldn't even notice if both products ceased to exist.

Agingcoder• 4 years ago

This reminds me of bacigalupi's excellent novel, 'the water knife'.

The Multistate Battle over the Colorado River

Related Stories