Why the Colorado River Basin Crisis is No Surprise
Weekend Edition June 5-7, 2015
They Were Warned 70 Years Ago and Still Haven't Acted
Why the Colorado River Basin Crisis is No Surprise
by JOHN WEISHEIT
Perhaps you have heard how urgent it is for the upper basin states to take water from the Colorado River before those “Californians use it all up?” This us-versus-them attitude, as a justification to take more water from a finite system, will obviously not solve the regional water predicament. Later on, I will explain that scientists from California demonstrated early leadership to create equitable water solutions for everybody.
California’s surface and groundwater allotment from the Colorado River Basin is limited to 4.4 million acre-feet per year and 70 percent of this water is used to grow food and fiber in the Imperial and Coachella Irrigation Districts, which is largely exported. However, it might surprise you to know that the state of Arizona uses as much surface water from the Colorado River system, and if you include the water that Arizona consumes from the water supply underneath the Colorado River Basin, then it exceeds California’s consumption by about 3.5 million acre-feet per year.
Here is the inventory of Arizona’s surface water: The estimated natural flow of the Gila River through Arizona is about 1.8 million acre-feet. The state of New Mexico will use a portion of this surface water, but Arizona consumes the lion’s share and the river bed is dry long before it ever reaches the Colorado River. This includes the flow of the Little Colorado River in Arizona, which is 138,000 acre-feet. Again, New Mexico will use a portion of this water supply and Arizona dominates the rest.
Because the division between the upper basin states and the lower basin states of the Colorado River occurs in Arizona at Lee’s Ferry (15 river miles below Glen Canyon Dam), Arizona has two allocations under the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Arizona’s upper basin allocation is limited to 50,000 acre-feet. The city of Page and the nearby Navajo Generating Station are the consumers of this entitlement. Between Hoover Dam and the Mexican border, Arizona will divert 2.8 million acre-feet directly from the Colorado River for its lower basin apportionment. Like California, about 70 percent of Arizona’s water consumption is dedicated to exporting food and fiber.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/05/why-the-colorado-river-basin-crisis-is-no-surprise/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Because otherwise you're led far, far astray.
The upper river basin is divided. A lot of water crosses from the upper to lower river, and that gets divided. The original forecast was overstated; that there would be occasional lapses isn't a great insight, by any means. That the secular rainfall pattern was not apparent when the forecasts in the early-mid 20th century were made wasn't apparent at all. Dendrochronology was in its infancy and there was no C-14 calibration (or, in fact, C-14 dating). The earlier history was largely a framework of guesses, and one guess was about as good as another. Hindsight is a horribly easy-thinking (lic. 'foolish') excuse for saying you should have been acknowledged as correct all along.
But the "allocation" figures the author cites he admits is a composite: The actual allocation + groundwater. Now, let's face it, California is not obviously entitled to very much lower basin water at all, and has a dubious claim to the groundwater under the lower basin. Why? Because the author leaves out something that's really, really important: A map to define what he means. Without definitions, the words shift and shimmy and mean all kinds of things. I mean, if we let words vary, we get things like, "And the athlete put the shot a record distance. Fortunately, he drank the tequila before he fired glass across the bar and hit the duck in mid flight." I mean, really.
Maps:
Notice where the lower Colorado River basin is. The Gila River allocation goes overwhelmingly to AZ because the Gila River basin is pretty much entirely in AZ. The Navajo Generating Station is in the extreme NE of the state (it's impressive to drive by) and is, absurdly enough, located in the upper Colorado River Basin watershed.
The aquifers are disjointed in AZ, as you'd expect from the Basin and Range topography.
One real focus, after we get past the self-serving "we should have divided up water rights in the 1920s based upon 2015's population numbers and knowledge" drive,l is on the "injustice" of having the water used for agriculture instead of cities. This is a common ideological distinction--Stalin's base was the proletariat, and so urban workers got the benefits of his revolution; Mao's base was rural; American left-of-center thought is predominately urban and deprecates all things rural, unless they're sufficiently elitist or countercultural. It really is often a zero-sum game. Back in the '90s there were all sorts of more fact-based claims that the Southland was heading for a water crisis--the drought just moved D-day forward a bit. The reason was population growth. This was quickly decried as racist because it was soon recognized that most of the population growth was composed of Latino immigrants and, once they'd settled down and formed families, their larger 1st-gen family size. Anti-population growth rhetoric on the left was labeled anti-immigrant. (If the immigrants had been from Nebraska, the claim would have been no more true or false.)
One problem with the urban/rural distinction is that it leads to the kind of internal inconsistency we see in dealing with places like Sa'udiyya: They practice water conservation and have low water-usage rates. On the other hand, they also outsource water usage and, if you take into account the water resources they use in *other* parts of the globe, don't really rank high in water conservation. That beef requiring a large expenditure of water still requires water if you use up Australia's or Argentina's water resources or your own. Calls to outsource water usage are useful in husbanding scarce local resources in dealing with local, very-short-term crises, but don't rank high on the "moral merit" scale.
Another obvious focus is on the degradation of the Colorado River, a longstanding trope that stoked outrage 40 years ago when I was a teenager, but only surges intermittently: A mighty river felled by inappropriate water use so that it no longer reaches the sea. (A third historical complaint is that Mexico's allocation is often just what's left over, bringing racism into the picture.) The California drought is but an overlay on these themes. But AZ's going to have its own water crisis in the not-to-distant future. One thing they all need to do is cover their open canals to reduce surface evaporation and also deal with some of the neighborhood irrigation practices. Many yards in AZ, sometimes large, are designed as small water retention basins--not primarily for retaining rainwater, but to retain the water from the neighborhood water distribution canal network that floods the yards with a few inches of water a couple of times a week.
This crisis, should it actually occur, has many mothers and fathers. Only some can be discussed without objection, making the solution set both politically charged and more difficult.
