Running dry on the Colorado

Over a hundred dams contain the river water, both inside and outside of the Colorado River Basin. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Waterman; retrieced from: Grist.org

“Climate models for the second half of this century show that up to 70 percent of the snowpack, which supplies the river 90 percent of its water, will disappear. Despite a whopping snowfall and long winter in the Upper Basin, the two biggest reservoirs created by Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams, “Lakes” Mead and Powell, are presently at half of their collective 50-maf capacities and are unlikely to recharge from the winter’s big snowfall after meeting their downstream orders to create electricity and fill irrigation ditches.

“If this nine-year drought continues on beyond a decade, as predicted, life throughout the river basin will be irrevocably changed. First, the sprawling economy created by recreational river and reservoir use throughout the river basin will go bust — crippling scores of towns and small cities along the river. Swimming pools will be drained and lawns browned in Salt Lake City, Utah; Cheyenne, Wyo.; and Albuquerque, N.M. Without Hoover Dam generating relatively clean and rapidly created hydroelectric power, Los Angeles will have blackouts. Without Glen Canyon Dam powering air conditioners, people will abandon sweltering Phoenix, necessitating the construction of more noxious, water consumptive coal plants on the far reaches of the energy grid. Several million acres of farms in the Southwest — including Imperial Valley, the fifth richest agricultural region in the country — will go fallow. Without radical change, citizens in Denver, Colo.; Las Vegas, Nev.; and San Diego, Calif., will have trouble flushing their toilets. Thirty million people will begin losing their drinking water. Finally, thanks to the antiquated Colorado River Compact, lawsuits will lock up what little water remains in what is already known as the most diverted river in the world.

“Like other states in the river basin, Colorado developed around the ability to manipulate water. Financiers knew that “water runs uphill to money,” and so does this ditch, pumped at a one percent grade over the Continental Divide.

“As evidence of this water-as-gold maxim, in Colorado, we cannot legally catch rain in our gutters to water our gardens, because Brad and I live under the doctrine of prior appropriation — or first in time, first in right — meaning that someone below us already owns the water. These rights can be bought and sold separately from whatever rights we’d like to think we own on our roofs, high above and far away from any farmer. In times of drought, the owner of the oldest water right, regardless of distance from the river or its headwaters, reserves the right to use the water. This explains why ranchers and farmers 80 miles to the west in Grand Junction, Colo., or 80 miles to the east in Fort Morgan, Colo., own the water that falls on our Carbondale or Boulder roofs.”

read more: Grist