By JIM SPEHAR
Smoke obscuring the Bookcliffs, Grand Mesa and Colorado National Monument. Frequent closures of Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon due to mud and debris sliding from fire-ravaged slopes. The two largest reservoirs on the Colorado River barely above one-third capacity, jeopardizing not only water users but power production. Ranchers selling off their cattle due to lack of grazing and feed. Farmers losing their irrigation water prematurely. Anglers asked to avoid waters so abnormally warm that fish are stressed. Campers facing fire bans earlier than usual.
All-time record heat in Grand Junction and other areas of the West. While 107 degrees here only upped our record by a degree and 130 degrees in Death Valley might not be surprising, 116 degrees on the northwest coast in Portland, Oregon, kinda grabs your attention.
Nah, there’s nothing to this climate change stuff. Fake news! A hoax. Just wait … it’s a natural cycle that’ll soon reverse itself.
Me, I’m recalling this recent drought-related statement via a spokesperson from Ute Water: “Hope is not a strategy.”
I’m also reminded, thanks to eight years representing Western Slope municipalities on the board of directors of the Colorado Water Congress and time as a youngster out on 21 Road learning which end of the shovel went into the ditch, that things can get a little testy when water supplies are short. That includes everything from fist fights at head gates to high stakes legal and political battles.
The freshest example came late this past week as water users from the Colorado River’s Lower Basin (Nevada/California/Arizona) gathered at Hoover Dam, viewed the expanding “bathtub ring” surrounding Lake Mead, and called for a moratorium on upstream pipelines and diversions. That’d include the Upper Basin states of Colorado/Utah/Wyoming/New Mexico.
That group included everyone from enviros working to halt a Utah pipeline project to the Imperial Irrigation District which has rights to 20% of Colorado River water and serves agricultural areas of southern California.
“It is simply madness that as the Colorado River reaches its lowest levels in recorded history that we will be proposing a new water diversion upstream. While the lower basin is going to diet and cutting its water use, we should not let the upper basin go to an all-you-can-eat buffet,” one speaker said.
Never mind, I suppose, those pesky legal niceties of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which originally over-allocated Colorado River water based upon measurements from one of the wettest periods in its history. Or that fact that some Lower Basin house-of-cards economies are partially based upon water originally allocated to but unused by the Upper Basin states. Just shut off access to what might be considered water savings accounts in the Upper Basin in order to maintain historically overspent accounts, particularly in Arizona and California.
“We’re here to say, ‘Damn the status quo,’ ” said Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Great Basin Water Network. “No more business as usual.”
If you assume that “status quo” includes the Compact, Roerink’s statement is especially troubling. As is the fact that the Imperial Irrigation District, whose rights exceed those of Arizona and Nevada combined, has withdrawn from collaborative efforts to deal with the water crisis along the Colorado.
Here’s some arithmetic that ought to make you sweat, whatever the temperature, if indeed the Compact comes into question in its authorizing body, Congress.
We have a total of 15 members of the U.S. House from the four Upper Basin states and eight U.S. senators. The Lower Basin has a total of 66 U.S. representatives, including 53 from California alone, and six senators.
If the Colorado saying that “water flows uphill to money” is true, it might also be true that more water in the Colorado River, which services 40 million people in two countries, seven states and several Native American tribes, might someday flow downstream to potentially overwhelming political power.
There are many strategies besides “hope” that might collectively help resolve shortages. Enthusiastically avoided is what may be the ultimate necessity — the idea of limits. While Grand Junction has a relative abundance of water to accommodate growth, perhaps it’s time to “Just Say No” in areas like Douglas County and the northern Front Range where flowing water is in short supply and groundwater is being depleted.
Just as more than a year of COVID-19 is propelling us to a “new normal,” what may be the most extensive drought in the recorded history of the West will most assuredly do the same.
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