Feds demand compromise on Colorado River while states flounder

https://nevadacurrent.com/2025/12/22/feds-demand-compromise-on-colorado-river-states-flounder-despite-water-shoratge/

by mooreds • 7 months ago

46 69 7 months ago

jmclnx• 7 months ago

What make this fun are many chip and data centers have been building plants in those areas, and the plants require lots of water for manufacturing and cooling.

How about building these plants in areas with plenty of water. Many places located to these areas (Arizona) due to their lax labor and environmental laws.

darth_avocado2• 7 months ago

How about building these plants in areas with plenty of water

That’s the problem. There aren’t that many areas with plenty of water.

ch4s311• 7 months ago

There are in the US, those places just have more hostile legislatures and regulatory regimes that make construction impossible. See the debacle around the Foxconn Wisconsin project which happened under a very industry friendly governor. The great lakes are has nearly infinite water, and cold aim all winter. What they don't have is the ability to build anything.

RobotToaster• 7 months ago

Genuine question: why not build them in Alaska? It has plenty of cold.

eikenberry• 7 months ago

What about building along the ocean coastlines and/or pipe water in from coastlines? If you can't use it unless it is desalinated, then figure out how to desalinate it and what you'll do brine/salt.

tacomeow• 7 months ago

An excellent contemporary book was written about this by Zak Podmore called Life After Deadpool: https://www.torreyhouse.org/life-after-dead-pool

I just finished reading it and can highly recommend it. Zak's writing is enjoyable and refreshing.

almog• 7 months ago

Thanks, will add it to my reading list while I'd also recommend the classic on that topic, Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

Hansenq• 7 months ago

Water allocation in the American West has been a mess ever since the beginning, when Prior Appropriation was decided as the way to claim water rights. Essentially, the first person to put a claim of water into "beneficial use" gets those rights.

This is why you see California with such a large share of the Colorado River's water rights, even though it "touches" the river the least: they were the earliest fast-growing state to "use" that water. And that's why you see so many water-hungry crops being grown in the West--the owners have the rights already, and to them, if they don't use it, they'll lose it.

So any agreement here needs to make a compromise between states, the federal government, prior settled law, and owners with effectively "free" water that don't want it taken away from them.

It's a complicated issue, but one step would be to force private owners of water rights to list their rights on an open market (right now some owners of water rights, like the Imperial Irrigation District can choose to never sell them). At least that way you can start the conversation somewhere.

(In fact, John Wesley Powell, namesake of Lake Powell, argued strongly against "prior appropriation" before the area was even settled, and instead argued against a collective approach to the limited and volatile amount of freshwater. He did not succeed.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell#Environment...

Veserv• 7 months ago

You do not even need to force water rights owners to list their rights on the open market. They already want to, it is just illegal for them to sell their water rights (separate from their land) to entitys with more productive uses of the water.

username223• 7 months ago

That's not a solution, either. See William Mulholland buying up the water rights in the Owens Valley to feed Los Angles, thus turning Owens Lake into toxic dust that is costing $1 billion and counting to manage. Mulholland is long dead, and we're just getting started paying for that.

Water rights in the West are hard, and we've known that since John Wesley Powell was in charge, as a nearby commenter explained. The Colorado was divided up during an unusually wet year a long time ago, and rising demand and falling supply have only made things worse ever since.

jandrewrogers5• 7 months ago

force private owners of water rights to list their rights on an open market

You don't need to force them, they've done it for decades to the extent it is allowed. I've owned titled water rights in Nevada. They are worth something but not nearly as much as many people likely assume.

Nevada has additional complications due to the structure of the aquifers. It is difficult/impossible to move water from where it is to where it may be needed.

bell-cot2• 7 months ago

complicated due to the structure of the aquifers

Guess - you're referring not to the aquifers themselves, but to the shape of the watersheds. Especially to the "water doesn't naturally flow along roller coaster tracks" topography of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province

bb88• 7 months ago

If you look at water usage in Nevada, 75% of it goes to agriculture [1]. Agriculture provides a lot of jobs and food. Unfortunately the resources are no longer there. You can eliminate landscaping (yards, golf courses, las vegas fountains, etc), but it still won't make a dent in the water use.

It's not just Nevada, but Nevada is the poster child here for everything that's gone wrong with water use.

So something's gotta give. And it turns out that farming in deserts may not have been the best use of the land (or water).

[1] https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=4764

mothballed3• 7 months ago

The Desert Land Act under which a lot of desert land was claimed (and, the only remaining way I know of state land can still privately be claimed) only gave it to you if you established irrigation and agriculture.

The government basically asked for it, and then made it the only way to get much of the land. And now of course, many heads in government now complaining about the evil private land owner who did the thing the government asked for and precondition.

Tostino• 7 months ago

Yay, they own the land. A hundred plus years later, I don't see why the descendants (or corporate owner) should have the same water rights now after things have changed. Don't strip them of the land...but something has to give.

tracerbulletx• 7 months ago

Nevada gets 4% of the water in the first place. Almost all of that 4% goes to Ag and mining as you said. The things people use as "the poster child" like fountains and golf courses are rounding errors.

uoaei3• 7 months ago

Here's a question, why are we putting all those resources and efforts into farming in a desert?

bell-cot2• 7 months ago

Desert land was cheap. Water seemed plentiful and cheap. And back when the system was set up, doing that looked like "Progress".

chneu2• 7 months ago

Cows mostly.

Like 60-75% of all ag land in the US is to grow feed for cows. Mostly in dry environments. This is because the old water rights were distributed on a "use it or lose it" basis which encourages wasteful use.

jandrewrogers5• 7 months ago

In some desert areas there is no other use for the water because the aquifers are fragmented. People don't live there, you can't readily move the water to somewhere useful, and it won't flow anywhere useful on its own. Agriculture is a way to convert water into something easily transported.

This doesn't apply to many places but in the desert Mountain West this is often the case. Also, while it may seem surprising, a few crops really thrive in the high desert e.g. onions.

dragonwriter• 7 months ago

Here's a question, why are we putting all those resources and efforts into farming in a desert?

Because moving water to where the fertile land is is easier than vice versa. And because agriculture is the base on which civilization rests.

jameslk• 7 months ago

I’m not sure why Nevada is always brought up negatively when mentioning CO river usage but Nevada uses the least amount of water out of all states:

https://www.snwa.com/water-resources/where-water-comes-from/...

https://www.snwa.com/assets/images/colorado-river-allocation...

For indoor usage in Las Vegas for example, it recycles 99% of it:

https://lvgea.org/water/

Using water in the desert is a problem, but point to CA or AZ as poster children of abuse for that

metalman• 7 months ago

we can go back to Leonardo Davinci(and further), to how Davinci was promised the income from a certain amount of flow from a river as a payment for services rendered, and as an ongoing retainer and support, but how in his own note books he laments how he had been strung along and never given anything amingst the wranglings of those "better conected". there is nothing more provocative to the mindlessly greedy people in the world than a resource, just, JUST!, LAYING THERE! for which the French created "the argument that ends all discussion"

kayo_20211030• 7 months ago

Spellcheck?

josefritzishere• 7 months ago

Maybe farming in the desert isn't a good long-term plan.

Feds demand compromise on Colorado River while states flounder

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