The Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 committed the U.S. to deliver
1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico on an annual basis, plus
an additional 200,000 acre-feet under surplus conditions. The
treaty is overseen by the International Boundary and Water
Commission.
Colorado River water is delivered to Mexico at Morelos Dam,
located 1.1 miles downstream from where the California-Baja
California land boundary intersects the river. The river’s
natural terminus is the Gulf of California in Mexico, but because
of the dams and diversion facilities throughout the Colorado
River Basin, natural flow rarely reaches the Gulf. Water diverted
at Morelos Dam is primarily used to irrigate Mexicali Valley
farmland, and also supplies the cities of Mexicali, Tecate and
Tijuana.
Colorado River water managers could be pulled back to the
negotiating table as soon as next year to keep its biggest
reservoirs from declining further. The 2019 Drought Contingency
Plan was meant to give the U.S. and Mexican states that depend
on the river a roadmap to manage water shortages. That plan
requires the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead, to drop to
unprecedented levels before conservation among all the lower
basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — becomes
mandatory. California isn’t required to conserve water in the
reservoir until it drops to an elevation of 1,045 feet above
sea level.
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although
human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity —
the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth
and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s
— even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon. …
The American West is once again facing drought, one of the
worst on record. Across a vast region encompassing nine states
and home to nearly 60 million people, the earth is being wrung
dry. -Written by Farhad Manjoo, NY Times opinion columnist.
It might be tempting to shrug at the scorching weather across
large swaths of the West. This just in: It gets hot in the
summer. But this record-setting heat wave’s remarkable power,
size and unusually early appearance is giving meteorologists
and climate experts yet more cause for concern about the
routinization of extreme weather in an era of climate change.
These sprawling, persistent high-pressure zones popularly
called “heat domes” are relatively common in later summer
months. This current system is different.
Lake Powell’s water level is the lowest it’s been in decades,
and the latest 24-month projections from the Arizona and Utah
reservoir show that it’s likely to drop even further — below a
critical threshold of 3,525 feet by next
year. A 20-year megadrought and a hotter climate
has contributed to shrinking water supplies in the
Colorado River. If Lake Powell’s levels continue to dwindle, it
could set off litigation between the seven states and the 40
million people that all rely on the Colorado River.
Record-breaking heat and historic drought in the U.S. West are
doing little to discourage cities from planning to welcome
millions of new residents in the decades ahead. From Phoenix to
Boise, officials are preparing for a future both with more
people and less water, seeking to balance growth and
conservation. Development is constrained by the fact that 46%
of the 11-state Western region is federal land, managed by
agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management that are tasked with maintaining it for future
generations.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced that Carly Jerla will lead
the Department of the Interior’s efforts, as a senior water
resources program manager, to develop updated operating
rules for Colorado River reservoirs. The Colorado River
sustains ecosystems and economies across the southwestern
United States and northwestern Mexico. A number of operating
rules and agreements within the United States and with the
Republic of Mexico expire at the end of 2025.
A heat dome is baking Arizona and Nevada, … At Lake Mead,
which supplies water for 25 million people in three
southwestern states and Mexico, water levels have plunged to
their lowest point since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s.
In California, farmers are abandoning their thirstiest crops to
save others, and communities are debating whether to ration tap
water….And it’s not even summer yet.
Lucía Laguna carries her fate tattooed on her face — from the
corner of her mouth to her chin, black lines surf across her
coppery skin — the tribal art honoring her people will also
serve an important function later on. … But under the
merciless sun, Laguna, 51, worries about the fate of the river
and its impact on the Cucapá, her Indigenous people. A searing
drought is exacerbating the deadly heat in a region that long
ago saw its river flow diminished, after almost a century of
U.S. engineering projects, as well as a focus on water for
agriculture.
The problem, as always, is that water keeps flowing from the
tap. Every other indicator is telling us we should be in red
alert right now about Arizona’s climate and water situation.
But when we turn the valve, even on these blazing days,
drinkable water flows. It’s a luxury in this season and this
place. And it makes it easy to turn away from the news. But we
shouldn’t. -Written by Tim Steller.
Managers of some Arizona golf courses are fighting a plan that
would cut water use at a time when the state is being
forced to confront shrinking water supplies. A group
representing golf courses has been pushing back against a
proposal by state officials that would reduce overall
water use on courses, instead offering a plan that would entail
less conservation. Opposition to the state’s proposal for
golf courses has emerged over the past several months, aired in
sometimes-tense virtual meetings …
With a worsening drought gripping the West and wildfire season
looming, California is bracing for the most severe heat wave of
the year — one that promises to tax the state’s power supplies
while also offering a grim preview of challenging months to
come. The heat wave will bring triple-digit temperatures to the
valleys and inland regions of Southern California as well as
many parts of the rest of the state, heightening fire risks. It
comes as parts of Northern and Central California are turning
to water restrictions as the drought rapidly alters the
landscape.
Water is increasingly scarce in the Western U.S. — where 72
percent of the region is in “severe” drought, 26 percent is in
exceptional drought, and populations are booming. Insufficient
monsoon rains last summer and low snowpacks over the winter
left states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada without the typical
amount of water they need, and forecasts for the rainy summer
season don’t show promise. … The past two decades have been
the driest or the second driest in the last 1,200 years in the
West, posing existential questions about how to secure a
livable future in the region.
Coachella Valley-based architect Nikola Lakic knows how to fix
the withering Salton Sea. Or, at least he says he does.
Lakic believes it’s possible to import water from Mexico’s Sea
of Cortez — or, perhaps, from the Pacific Ocean off the
California coast — through a multi-billion-dollar system of
pipes. He would construct mangrove habitat for natural water
filtration, send desalinated water to geothermal plants and,
amid all this, restore California’s largest lake.
… Lakic is the author of one of 11 formal proposals for
a “sea-to-sea” solution that the state of California is
currently evaluating.
Lake Mead has declined to its lowest level since the reservoir
was filled in the 1930s following the construction of Hoover
Dam, marking a new milestone for the water-starved Colorado
River in a downward spiral that shows no sign of letting up.
The reservoir near Las Vegas holds water for cities, farms and
tribal lands in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico. Years
of unrelenting drought and temperatures pushed higher by
climate change are shrinking the flow into the lake,
contributing to the large mismatch between the demands for
water and the Colorado’s diminishing supply.
A crippling drought in the western US is dropping the water
level at Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam to a historically low
level, putting pressure on the region’s drinking water supply
and the dam’s electric capacity. By Thursday, Lake Mead’s water
level is expected to sink to the lowest it’s been since it
began filling during construction of the Hoover Dam, according
to Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Patricia Aaron.
A punishing drought is gripping much of the western U.S.
Scientists are calling it a “mega-drought” brought on by
climate change. It’s taking a dramatic toll on the Colorado
River system that provides water to 40 million people in seven
states. For more than eight decades, the Hoover Dam has relied
on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But
now at age 85 it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of
the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone.
Drought is taking a dramatic toll on the Colorado River
system that provides water to 40 million people in seven states
– and may force the federal government to make a drastic and
historic decision. For more than eight decades, the
iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s
Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it
finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam
is supposed to be holding back is gone.
The ocean shoreline at Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge
and Border Field State Park was closed Saturday due to
contaminated sewage water that may be moving north into the
U.S., county water authorities said. The San Diego County
Department of Environmental Health and Quality issued the
contact closure for the ocean shoreline Saturday. Ocean water
samples exceeded state health standards, DEHQ officials said.
Arizona and other Western states just lived through the driest
year in more than a century, with no drought relief in sight in
the near future, experts told a House panel last week. The
period from April 2020 to March 2021 was the driest in the last
126 years for Arizona and other Western states, witnesses said.
It capped a two-decade stretch that was the driest in more than
100 years that records have been kept – and one of the driest
in the past 1,200 years based on paleohydrology evidence, one
official said.
Nearly half of the country — from the Pacific coast to the
Great Plains and upper Midwest — is experiencing moderate to
exceptional drought conditions. That’s expected to get worse
throughout the summer. … UCLA climatologist Park Williams:
“This drought is far from over. 2021 is shaping up to
potentially be the driest of all of the drought years in the
last century, and definitely one of the driest of the last
millennium.”
As reality plays out, I continue to read how the drought in the
American West is causing levels in Lake’s Mead and Powell to
plummet. I also continue to see no action or accountability to
take bold action to resolve the issue as uncontrolled
development continues in the greater Phoenix and Las Vegas
areas. … There are 17 desalination plants operating in
California and the one in Carlsbad — the Claude Bud Lewis
Desalination Plant — is the largest in the U.S. -Written by R.B. Provencher, a former manager for the
U.S. Department of Energy and retired in Idaho Falls.
Every time I write about water, I get a similar email from
different folks. It argues that if we can build pipelines to
move oil, we should be able to capture and pipe enough
floodwater from the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Snake or
(insert your river here) to resolve shortages on the Colorado
River. I appreciate the big thinking. But I wish we could move
past this idea. Because we’ve studied this before, in multiple
iterations. Each solution has been projected to cost multiple
billions of dollars. Most would not produce enough water to fix
our problems. And trust me, someone’s going to fight several
hundred miles of pipe being laid across their land to make this
happen. -Written by Joanna Allhands, an Arizona Republic
columnist.
On the federal government’s drought map, the hardest-hit areas
— the driest of the dry — are shaded in crimson red. Looking at
the current map, the coloring makes it appear that someone
plunged a knife into Southern Nevada, and blood flowed to
portions of California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and even
Texas. One glance at this map and any reasonable person would
understand that the region needs to take its water conservation
efforts up several notches.
A crippling drought — largely connected to climate change — is
gripping the Western United States, affecting over 70 million
people and around 40% of the U.S. … Farmers,
scientists, tribal officials, foresters and other groups
affected by the worsening drought testified at a House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing on
Tuesday, asking lawmakers for both short-term relief and
long-term solutions from the worsening conditions.
Arizona and other Western states just lived through the driest
year in more than a century, with no drought relief in sight in
the near future, experts told a House panel Tuesday. The period
from last April to this March was the driest in the last 126
years for Arizona and other Western states, witnesses said. It
caps a two-decade stretch that was the driest in more than 100
years that records have been kept – and one of the driest in
the past 1,200 years based on paleohydrology evidence, one
official said.
Arizona’s drought has lawmakers looking into drawing water from
the Mississippi River to be used here in the desert. “This kind
of project would be looking 20 years down the road,” said
Republican Rep. Tim Dunn from Yuma. Dunn sponsored
House Concurrent Memorial 2004, which got bipartisan support in
the Arizona legislature, and urges Congress to study a plan for
a pipeline that would take water out of the Mississippi River
near Davenport, Iowa.
Millions of people are betting on Arizona. They’re buying
homes, starting businesses, and families. The future of how we
use our water resources may dictate the future of their
success. … That question was addressed four decades earlier
with the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. The idea was the
law would ensure when water was taken out, just as much was put
back in, creating what they called a safe yield goal by
2025. Unfortunately, a new study released by ASU
researchers with the Kyl Center shows the law is not living up
to its promise as deep, thousands of years old aquifers
continue to be over-pumped.
The drought has some members of the Arizona Legislature
wondering if the state should look for a new source of water:
the Mississippi River. Conservationists wonder if lawmakers
should try a different approach. As Arizona braces for a
drought contingency plan to kick in, the Legislature has
floated the idea of damming the Mississippi and piping the
water here. The idea received overwhelming support among
lawmakers, though it is unclear if the project is viable. Sandy
Bahr, with the Sierra Club, told KJZZ’s The Show last month the
state needs to adjust its thinking about water, especially in
times of drought.
[I]n a new study, UCLA researchers found that nitrogen in
treated sewage is driving a massive growth of oceanic algae and
loss of oxygen, which will likely have lasting effects on the
region’s ecosystem. From 1997 to 2000, for example, the growth
of microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton was 79% higher
than it would have been without nitrogen from human sewage in
the waters along the coast from the Baja California Peninsula
to Santa Barbara. The problem occurs in large part because
freshwater from sewage is less dense than the seawater it’s
injected into, which causes the wastewater to rises to the
surface, where phytoplankton live.
A federal appeals court has rebuked the U.S. government for
failing to properly consider the interest of Native American
nations in developing allocation guidelines for the Colorado
River Basin’s waters and ordered it to prioritize obligations
assumed when it signed a treaty with the Navajo Nation in 1868.
The April 28 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
may boost Native American negotiating clout as the basin’s
states ponder how to address impacts of ongoing drought in the
region.
The Colorado River is flowing again in its delta. This is a big
deal for a river that has not flowed through its delta in most
years since the 1960s, resulting in an ecosystem that is
severely desiccated and devastated. Thanks to commitments from
the United States and Mexico in the Colorado River binational
agreement—Minute 323 – 35,000 acre-feet of water (11.4
billion gallons) dedicated to create environmental benefits
will be delivered to the river from May 1 to October 11. The
expectation is that this will create and support habitat for
birds like the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Yuma Ridgway’s Rail, and
Vermilion Flycatcher, and give life to the many plants and
animals in this ribbon oasis of green in the midst of the
Sonoran Desert.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced
on Thursday that a key weather feature that affects global
temperature and precipitation has shifted into a “neutral,” or
average, state. La Niña, one of the factors behind last year’s
extremely active Atlantic hurricane season and a contributor to
below-average rainfall in the South and Southwest, has faded
away….In California, any drought relief associated with the
end of La Niña won’t come during the dry season that runs well
into next fall.
Ben Tobin has questions about the Grand Canyon’s caves. The
University of Kentucky geologist started learning about caves
as a young man, in part because his mother was a geologist, and
a childhood fascination grew over time. … When he was in
college, an internship in Arkansas doing cave tours got him
hooked, and eventually his work brought him out West, to Grand
Canyon National Park. Tobin specializes in what’s known as
karst hydrology. These are underground systems made up of
soluble rock such as limestone. To Tobin, caves are like
another world, with blind animals, fossils and archeological
finds.
Only one week remains to register for our May 20 virtual
Lower
Colorado River Tour where you can hear directly
from experts offering a range of perspectives on the most
contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Practically every drop of water in the
Colorado River is already allocated, but pressure on the
hard-working river continues to grow from myriad sources —
increasing population, declining habitat and climate
change.
As Californians can tell by the already beige hills, the early
fire weather warnings and the dusty umbrellas sitting deep
inside closets, it’s been drier than usual this winter. And
according to decades worth of precipitation data, that’s the
new normal. What’s considered “normal” for baseline rainfall
amounts is determined by a 30-year average that gets
recalculated every decade. The latest recalculation, according
to Jan Null, a forecaster who runs Golden Gate Weather
Services, “show a noticeably drier state” through 2020 compared
to the previous “normal” calculation covering 1981 through
2010.
Spring is generally a time of renewal for the watersheds of the
western United States. Warmed by the lengthening days, the
region’s towering mountain ranges shed their mantle of snow,
releasing freshets of water into welcoming streams and
reservoirs. This year, though, the cycle is in disarray.
Outside of the Olympic and Cascade ranges of Washington state,
winter snows were subpar. The spring melt has been a dud. From
the Klamath to the Colorado and Rio Grande, watersheds are
under stress once again, and water managers face difficult
tradeoffs between farms, fisheries, and at-home uses.
Arizona legislators are looking eastward to ease the impact of
a two-decade drought in the Colorado River Basin. According to
Arizona Rep. Tim Dunn, who represents the area of Yuma, the
Legislature is asking Congress to fund a technological and
feasibility study for diverting floodwater from the Mississippi
River to replenish the Colorado River. Whether that comes in
the form of a diversion dam or pipeline, Dunn says the plan
would benefit both the Midwestern and Southwestern United
States.
Many dryland cities like Los Angeles, Cairo and Tehran have
already outstripped natural water recharge, but are expected to
continue growing, resulting in a deepening arid urban water
crisis. … The situations in arid and semi-arid cities
like Phoenix, Arizona; Bamako, Mali; or Dubai, UAE, differ in
their particulars, but rhyme in their impending disastrous
trajectory. These, and other arid-region cities, are
approaching the edge of an ecological cliff: dependent on
sustaining growth, which itself requires a growth in water
supplied by faraway and finite sources, and delivered by aging
infrastructure. But water in dryland regions is
getting scarcer and supplies
more unpredictable.
Chula Vista resident and Imperial Beach lifeguard Lillian
Burkhart still remembers the sting on her skin after surfing in
Imperial Beach waters one day last summer. Within 24 hours, she
fell ill with a gastrointestinal infection, she said.
… Burkhart’s experience is commonplace and a reminder of
the decades-long struggle to address the recurring sewage
spills from Tijuana that pollute the South Bay shoreline.
The Colorado River Basin appears to be out of miracles this
spring. Five years after a “Miracle May” of record rainfall
staved off what had appeared to be the river’s first imminent
shortage in water deliveries, the hope for another in 2021 “is
fading quickly,” says the Colorado Basin River Forecast
Center’s latest report, released Thursday. That’s one more
piece of bad news for the Central Arizona Project. A first-time
shortage is now likely to slash deliveries of river water to
Central Arizona farmers starting in 2022 but won’t affect
drinking water supplies for Tucson, Phoenix and other cities,
or for tribes and industries that get CAP water.
Early May water supply volume forecasts are below to much below
normal throughout the Colorado River Basin and Great Basin.
Upper Colorado River Basin water supply forecasts range between
15-75% of the 1981-2010 historical April-July average. Great
Basin water supply forecasts are 10-70% of average. … Many
April-July volume forecasts fall in the bottom (driest) five on
record….The Lake Powell inflow forecast is 2.0 MAF (28% of
average), a 17% decrease from April….
Hear directly from a range of experts offering a variety of
perspectives on our May 20 virtual Lower Colorado River Tour as
they put into context the 20-plus year drought on what is the
most contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Among the experts featured are farmers, tribal
representatives, and managers from wildlife agencies, water
districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and others who will
discuss drought impacts, habitat projects, farming and
restoration efforts at the Salton Sea.
The official “new normal” for the U.S. climate is warmer than
ever before — and the changes are ominous for California,
experts say. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration on Tuesday released its new climate averages,
based on the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020. The averages,
known as “climate normals,” are updated every 10 years, and
they show most of the country, including California, heating
up. “The influence of long-term global warming is obvious,” the
NOAA said in announcing the updates to its averages.
In 2021, access to running water and clean drinking water is a
given for most Americans. The Census Bureau has even considered
dropping a question on plumbing access from the U.S. census
questionnaire. But many of the nation’s tribes still lack
running water, access to clean water, and even flushing
toilets. Native American households are 19 times more likely
than white households to lack indoor plumbing, according to the
U.S. Water Alliance, and more likely to lack piped water
services than any other racial group. That problem is at an
inflection point for the Navajo Nation and 29 other tribes in
the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from the Rocky
Mountains to Mexico.
The US Bureau of Reclamation last week warned water users to
brace for a 500,000 acre-foot cut in water from the Colorado
River as a historic drought continues to tighten its grip on
the Southwest. The cutback comes on top of a 200,000 acre-foot
reduction Arizona water users agreed to last year in an effort
to put off this day of reckoning. The Central Arizona Project
provides more than a third of the state’s water. The reductions
will mostly impact farmers. The sparse snowpack this winter
soaked into the ground during the hot, dry spring — producing
little runoff.
With the Colorado River’s largest reservoir just 38% full and
declining toward the threshold of a first-ever shortage,
Arizona water officials convened an online meeting this week to
outline how the state will deal with water cutbacks, saying the
reductions will be “painful” but plans are in place to lessen
the blow for affected farmers next year. Lake Mead’s decline is
expected to trigger substantial reductions in water deliveries
in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The largest of those
cuts will affect Arizona, slashing its Colorado River supplies
by 512,000 acre-feet, about a fifth of its total entitlement.
President Biden’s pick this week to oversee the Army’s vast
natural resources operation would bring to the job decades of
water experience at the Interior Department and on Capitol
Hill. The president tapped Michael Connor to be the Department
of Defense’s assistant secretary of the Army for civil works,
which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and its huge network
of dams and other projects. Connor would play a major role in
some of the most controversial projects facing the Biden
administration in the environmental arena, including the
Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, as well as Clean Water
Act permitting.
In a note of consolation for the pain some Arizona water users
will feel if Central Arizona Project supplies are cut next
year, state water leaders said Thursday: It will be planned
pain. Federal officials have said it’s likely Lake Mead at the
Nevada border will be low enough at the end of 2021 to trigger
the first major cutback in CAP deliveries to the Arizona’s
parched midsection. Arizona will lose 512,000 acre-feet of its
CAP supply — almost one-third of the $4 billion project’s total
supply, according to a 2019 drought contingency plan.
The Navajo Nation can pursue its lawsuit seeking to force the
federal government to secure water from the Colorado River for
the reservation, the Ninth Circuit said Wednesday, reversing a
lower court’s dismissal of the tribe’s breach of trust claim.
The tribe doesn’t seek a judge’s determination of its rights to
the river, which the Interior Department says would fall under
the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, according to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Instead, the tribe
seeks an order for Interior to determine the extent to which it
needs water, to develop a plan to secure…
Water officials in Arizona say they are prepared to lose about
one-fifth of the water the state gets from the Colorado River
in what could be the first federally declared shortage in the
river that supplies millions of people in the U.S. West and
Mexico. Arizona stands to lose more than any other state in the
Colorado River basin that also takes in parts of Wyoming, New
Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and California. That’s because
Arizona agreed long ago to be the first in line for cuts in
exchange for federal funding for a canal system to deliver the
water to Arizona’s major metropolitan areas.
In what may become an iconic image for drought-stricken
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the parched bed of Lake
Mendocino on April 21 to announce an emergency declaration for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties. … [T]he reservoir was at a
historically low 43% of capacity, the harbinger of what could
be a devastating drought cycle not only for the Northern
California counties that fell within his drought declaration,
but for most of the state — indeed, the American
West. -Written by Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
Arizona may be facing its first official declaration of water
shortage next year, a move that would trigger water cutbacks of
512,000 acre-feet — almost 20% of Arizona’s Colorado River
entitlement — affecting mainly agricultural users. The
24-Month Study on the Colorado River system, released this
month by the Bureau of Reclamation, projects that in
June water levels in Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet
for the first time, which would put the state in a Tier 1
shortage.
The Colorado River cuts through the Grand Canyon, providing
water for about 40 million people and 5 and a half million
acres of farmland. To some, the water is as valuable as
oil. In 1922, the seven U.S. states through which the
river flows signed onto the Colorado River Compact, a
water-sharing agreement that divvies up the river’s annual
flow. The water must be shared equally between Upper Basin
states: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico; and the Lower
Basin: California, Arizona and Nevada. There’s been infighting
ever since.
The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir,
has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000,
when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover
Dam. Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River
consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown
warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39%
of capacity. … The river’s reservoirs are shrinking as
the Southwest endures an especially severe bout of dryness
within a two-decade drought intensified by climate
change, one of the driest periods in centuries that shows no
sign of letting up.
Let me introduce myself. I am a California water drop. I
condensed from billions of water vapor molecules in the air
above the North Pacific Ocean to become embedded in the clouds
that evolved into a large storm system. Through alternating ups
and downs, and freeze and thaw cycles, I was carried in a
rotating middle latitude wave cyclone as it drifted southeast
and toward California. As the storm swept across the Golden
State, I was forced to rise higher over the mountains and I
grew as a giant ice crystal until I fell as a
fluffy-turned-heavy snowflake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The Biden administration has launched a working group focused
on addressing drought conditions in the West as the region
continues to suffer from a long period of water scarcity. The
group, which will be co-chaired by the departments of the
Interior and Agriculture, will work with state, local and
tribal governments on community needs in weathering drought,
according to a news release from the Interior Department.
Visit key infrastructure and environmental restoration
sites along the lower Colorado River during our online
tour May 20 of the iconic river as it weaves through the
Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. Our
Lower Colorado
River Tour starts at Hoover Dam near Las Vegas and
stops at major agricultural regions, tourist
destinations and key wildlife areas such as the Salton Sea
and a wildlife refuge in Yuma, Ariz. resulting from a
tribal-city partnership.
If the San Diego-Tijuana region were a human body, it’d have
the stomach flu: Bad stuff is coming out of both ends. But
instead of tackling the complicated source of the infection,
the border towns are fighting over where to put a Band-Aid. Six
miles from the U.S.-Mexico border lie three giant ponds full of
really old poo that regularly flush into the Pacific Ocean and
flow north along the Southern California coast during summer
tourist season.
Just how bad is the drought in the Western US? The
shrinking of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, is a
troubling indicator. The massive man-made lake, which
straddles the border of Arizona and Nevada, is now only
at 39 percent of its full capacity, down from 44
percent in April 2020. That’s equivalent to a 10-foot drop
in the water level, according to the latest data from
the Bureau of Reclamation. Which means mandatory
restrictions on the amount of water surrounding states draw
from Lake Mead could be triggered in the next few months.
More than 20 years ago, aquatic ecologist Michael Bogan
interned with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in
Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevadas. It was 1998, a wet year for
California, and the idea of studying water in the desert lodged
in his brain. Desert streams are approachable subjects,
especially compared to, say, a massive and murky system like
the Mississippi River, says Bogan, now a professor at the
University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the
Environment: … For Bogan, studying those small systems over
the past two decades has meant witnessing their decline.
As drought conditions worsen across Northern California, the
Marin Municipal Water District is about to become the Bay
Area’s first major water agency to make the leap to mandatory
water restrictions. The utility is expected to adopt a plan
Tuesday that would require nearly 200,000 residents of southern
and central Marin County to limit outdoor watering to one day a
week as well as to stop washing their cars, refilling their
swimming pools and power-washing their homes, among other
things. Offenders could face fines of up to $250…
The release of last week’s Bureau of Reclamation 24-month study
felt like very bad news for the Colorado River (See Tony Davis
for details.). But a careful reading of the numbers, and an
understanding of the process through which they are developed,
suggests things are likely even worse than the top-line numbers
in the study. The problem: the assumptions underlying the study
do not fully capture the climate-change driven aridification of
the Colorado River Basin.
The Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs are likely to drop to
historically low levels later this year, prompting mandatory
conservation by some of the river’s heaviest users. The latest
Bureau of Reclamation reservoir projections, which take into
account river flows in a given year, show a likelihood that
Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada stateline will dip below the
critical threshold of 1,075 feet in elevation in May and remain
below that level for the foreseeable future. A first-ever
official shortage declaration from the Department of the
Interior is almost certain later this year.
California has entered another drought. But depending on who
you ask, the last one may have never really ended. Some
researchers believe the region is actually more than two
decades into an emerging “megadrought” — a hydrological event
that is on par with the worst dry spells of the past
millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate
change is driving its severity — and will make it that much
harder to climb back out of.
San Diegans will undoubtedly head to the ocean this weekend as
temperatures warm — but not in Imperial Beach. Sewage spilling
over from Tijuana forced officials on Friday to completely
close the city’s shoreline yet again. The move comes less than
a week after Baja officials said repairs were completed to a
broken water pump in the Tijuana River, which had allowed tens
of millions of gallons of sewage-tainted water to escape
capture starting in late March.
No country is immune from water scarcity issues — not even the
world’s wealthiest country, the United States. The southwestern
states, in particular, have faced frequent and ongoing droughts
over the past two decades, and traditional water supplies are
failing. … Our existing water supplies must go
further, and the technology exists to make this happen — by
turning wastewater into drinking water.
Southern California, like most of the West, is in the middle of
a record dry season. To combat it and keep the metropolitan
area well-watered, they’re relying more heavily on the Colorado
River, with water pumped directly from the south end of Lake
Havasu. Last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Water District began
pumping from Lake Havasu at full capacity for the first time in
years, drawing water from the Whitsett Intake Pumping Plant
located just north of the Parker Dam. The eight-pump flow is
equivalent to about 3,000 acre feet of water being pumped per
day, according to MWD Manager of Colorado River Resources Bill
Hasencamp.
The White House announced the intent to nominate several
officials to serve at the Department of the Interior, including
Tanya Trujillo as Assistant Secretary for Water and Science.
Trujillo is a water lawyer with more than 20 years of
experience working on complex natural resources management
issues and interstate and transboundary water agreements. She
most recently worked as a project director with the Colorado
River Sustainability Campaign. Before then, she served as the
Executive Director of the Colorado River Board of California.
The San Diego County Water Authority is no stranger to conflict
– virtually all of its dealings over the past decade have been
shaped by its feud with the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California. Now that feud is fueling
fights within the agency itself.
The Colorado River is one of the most highly developed surface
water systems in the world, but demand for the river’s water
continues to exceed supply. University of Arizona geosciences
professor Connie Woodhouse discusses the impact of a warming
climate on the Colorado River. She is the featured speaker for
the annual College of Science lecture series April 15. Connie
Woodhouse spoke with Leslie Tolbert, Regent’s professor emerita
in Neuroscience at the University of Arizona.
Extreme drought conditions throughout the West are lowering
levels in the crucial water reservoir, Lake Mead. Scars of long
years of low precipitation are hard to go unnoticed at Lake
Mead, and the hot, dry summers have been felt for the last
several years in Arizona. 2020 was especially dry, with little
monsoon. Now, the West is in uncharted territory. Lake Mead is
projected to drop by several feet this year, from elevation
1,083 to about 1,068, according to officials with the Central
Arizona Project. The lake is hovering around 39 percent of its
full capacity.
[T]he 800 to 900 people in Tohatchi, and another 600 to 800 in
Mexican Springs, eight miles to the west, all depend on a
single well and single pump. If the pump running it fails,
or if the water level in it drops — both issues that have
troubled nearby Gallup this year — water will cut out for the
homes, the head-start center, the schools, the clinic, the
senior center, five churches, and the convenience store and gas
station. … [T]he Navajo Nation has waited more than a
century for pipes and water treatment plants that would bring
drinking water to all of its people while watching nearby
off-reservation cities and farms grow, swallowing up water from
the Colorado River Basin that the tribe has a claim to.
The government of Mexico is on the verge of legalizing cannabis
for industrial, medical, and recreational purposes, legislation
that would make Mexico only the third country to legalize all
aspects of cannabis production and all types of the plant’s
use. … Water theft in California is alleged to be
frequently associated with legal and illegal cultivation of
cannabis. It equally pervades legal and illegal cannabis
cultivation in Oregon and Colorado.
-Written by Vanda Felbob-Brown.
Scientists have been predicting for years that the Colorado
River would continue to deplete due to global warming and
increased water demands, but according to new studies it’s
looking worse than they thought. That worries rancher Marsha
Daughenbaugh, 68, of Steamboat Springs, who relies on the water
from the Colorado River to grow feed for her cattle.
… Recent reports show that the river’s water flows were
down 20% in 2000 and by 2050 that number is estimated to more
than double.
South Bay officials are beginning to run out of patience over
the continued cross-border flow of sewage-tainted water. The
pollution warning signs have been up most of 2021 on the sand
in Imperial Beach. Last Friday, the pollution flowed north to
Coronado, forcing beach closures there. Imperial Beach’s top
officials are fed up.
Rainstorms grew more erratic and droughts much longer across
most of the U.S. West over the past half-century as climate
change warmed the planet, according to a sweeping government
study released Tuesday that concludes the situation is
worsening. The most dramatic changes were recorded in the
desert Southwest, where the average dry period between
rainstorms grew from about 30 days in the 1970s to 45 days
between storms now, said Joel Biederman, a research hydrologist
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Southwest Watershed
Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.
Our two-day Water 101 Workshop begins on Earth Day,
when you can gain a deeper understanding of
California’s most precious natural resource. One of our
most popular events, the once-a-year workshop will be held as
an engaging online event on the afternoons of Thursday, April
22 and Friday, April 23. California’s water basics will be
covered by some of the state’s leading policy and legal
experts, including the history, geography, legal and political
facets of water in the state, as well a look at hot topics and
current issues of concern.
Unrelenting drought and years of rising temperatures due to
climate change are pushing the long-overallocated Colorado
River into new territory, setting the stage for the largest
mandatory water cutbacks to date. Lake Mead, the
biggest reservoir on the river, has declined
dramatically over the past two decades and now stands at just
40% of its full capacity. This summer, it’s projected to fall
to the lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s following
the construction of Hoover Dam. The reservoir near Las
Vegas is approaching a threshold that is expected to
trigger a first-ever shortage declaration by the federal
government for next year, leading to substantial cuts in water
deliveries to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.
The idea of cloud seeding and weather modification has been
around since 1940. There were federally funded programs in
the 1960s—one named Project Skywater that ultimately
had mixed results. In the 1970s and 1980s, the US government
began experimenting on how weather modification could be used
as a war tool. But outside of ski resorts like Vail, where the
technology is used to help increase snow during snowstorms,
interest in cloud seeding largely dropped off.
… According to the North American Weather
Modification Council, there are currently several projects
being run in California, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Utah, among
other states with a project here or there.
It was in 2016 that the state of California declared a
four-year drought had finally come to an end. Now, in 2021, it
could be entering another very dry season. It is in the winter
season that folks on the West Coast welcome dreary days packed
with cloud and rain. California usually sees the most rain and
snow in the month of February. This year, however, was
different: It was quite dry all of the winter season, and we
can blame La Niña for this pattern. … Thirty per cent of
California’s water supply comes from the snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada mountain ranges and only 57 per cent of normal
precipitation has fallen this season. This, coupled with lower
than average snowpack for 2020 as well, could spell trouble
down the road when it comes to water supply.
The blizzard that dumped snow along the Front Range in March
helped Colorado nearly reach its average snowpack for the
winter, federal data shows. But last year’s historically dry
weather means that streams are likely to run lower than normal,
potentially restricting the amount of water some consumers can
use, experts said… Areas east of the Continental Divide
had above average snowpack, but the Colorado River Basin on the
west was below average….
A federal judge has thrown out a legal action from multiple
environmental organizations seeking to halt the expansion of a
key Denver Water storage facility, citing no legal authority to
address the challenge. … The expansion of Gross Reservoir in
Boulder County is intended to provide additional water storage
and safeguard against future shortfalls during droughts. The
utility currently serves customers in Denver, Jefferson,
Arapahoe, Douglas and Adams counties. In July 2020, the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission gave its approval for
the design and construction of the reservoir’s expansion. The
project would add 77,000 acre-feet of water storage and 131
feet to the dam’s height for the utility’s “North System” of
water delivery.
State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on
notice that the continuing drought means a “substantial cut” in
deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year. A
joint statement issued Friday by the state Department of Water
Resources and the Central Arizona Project said an expected
shortage declaration “will result in a substantial cut to
Arizona’s share of the river, with reductions falling largely
to central Arizona agricultural users.” The Central Arizona
Project is an aqueduct system that delivers Colorado River
water to users in central Arizona and southern Arizona,
including farmers, cities and tribes.
When it comes to water in the West, a lot of it is visible.
Snow stacks up high in the mountains then eventually melts and
flows down into valleys. It’s easy to see how heavy rains and
rushing rivers translate into an abundance of available water.
But another important factor of water availability is much
harder to see. Beneath the surface, the amount of moisture
held in the ground can play a big role in how much water makes
it down to rivers and reservoirs – and eventually into the
pipes that feed homes and businesses. Elise Osenga is a
community science manager for the Aspen Global Change Institute
– a nonprofit focused on expanding scientific understanding of
climate change.
Local water providers say the current drought is one of the
worst in Colorado history. Mesa County ranges from extreme
drought to exceptional drought in areas and it doesn’t appear
to be improving anytime soon. Below average spring runoff is
anticipated by local water providers as watersheds are working
to be replenished after last year’s drought. … The wildfires
in the Colorado River basin last summer have scarred
significant portions of the Colorado River which may result in
debris, ash, and dense mud flowing into the Colorado River
watershed, which will impact water quality for many water
entities in Mesa County.
The Fort Yuma-Quechan Indian Tribe is situated at a nexus in
the Colorado River Basin. That’s true in a geographic sense.
The tribe’s reservation overlays the Arizona-California border
near Yuma, Arizona. The two states are heavily reliant on water
from the Colorado River. The reservation also abuts the
U.S.-Mexico border where the river flows into Mexico for use in
cities and on farms. One of the river’s largest irrigation
projects, the All-American Canal, was dug through the tribe’s
land, and flows from the reservation’s northeastern boundary to
its far southwestern corner, on its way to irrigate crops in
California’s Imperial Valley. The confluence of the Colorado
River and one of its historically important tributaries, the
Gila River, is nearby.
About 40 million Americans in the West and Southwest rely on
the Colorado River for drinking water, as do the region’s
massive agriculture and recreation industries. Water has been
the most valuable commodity in the West since the time of the
pioneers. It became a source of modern political power when the
water of the Colorado River was divvied up among seven Western
States in the 1920s — the Jack Nicholson movie “Chinatown”
dramatized California’s legendary water battles. Today, a
rapidly shrinking Colorado River is forced to support
relentless development in California and across the West — very
thirsty development.
Despite the recent history-making blizzard on Colorado’s Front
Range, statewide snowpack sits at 92 percent of average as of
March 19, down from 105 percent of average at the end of
February, according to the Natural Resources Conservation
Service. Just two river basins, the Arkansas and the Rio
Grande, are registering above average at 101 percent and 106
percent respectively. Among the driest are the Gunnison Basin,
at 86 percent of average, and the San Juan/Dolores, at 83
percent, both in the southwestern part of the state.
Many of the wetlands in the western United States have
disappeared since the 1700s. California has lost an astonishing
90 percent of its wetlands, which includes streamsides, wet
meadows and ponds. In Nevada, Idaho and Colorado, more than 50
percent of wetlands have vanished. Precious wet habitats now
make up just 2 percent of the arid West — and those remaining
wet places are struggling. Nearly half of U.S. streams are in
poor condition, unable to fully sustain wildlife and people,
says Jeremy Maestas, a sagebrush ecosystem specialist with the
NRCS who organized that workshop on Wilde’s ranch in 2016. As
communities in the American West face increasing water
shortages, more frequent and larger wildfires and unpredictable
floods, restoring ailing waterways is becoming a necessity.
Water scarcity is often understood as a problem for regions
experiencing drought, but a new study from Cornell and Tufts
universities finds that not only can localized water shortages
impact the global economy, but changes in global demand send
positive and negative ripple effects to water basins across the
globe. … [I]n the lower Colorado River basin, the worst
economic outcomes arise from limited groundwater availability
and high population growth, but that high population growth can
also prove beneficial under some climatic scenarios.
Arizona tribal officials told a Senate committee Wednesday that
the federal government can help address a crisis with water
infrastructure on their lands through more funding, and less
meddling. Navajo Department of Water Resources Director Jason
John and Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores
made the comments during a Senate Indian Affairs Committee
hearing on water infrastructure for Native communities. Leaders
of Oregon and Alaska tribes also testified at the
hearing.
Meager anticipated snowmelt runoff is expected to mean another
challenging year for maintaining even below-optimal levels of
flows in the Colorado River downstream of the Palisade area for
the benefit of endangered fish. … What’s referred to as
the 15-Mile Reach of the river between the Palisade area and
the Gunnison River confluence is of particular concern for the
Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, which
focuses on four endangered fish. The stretch is primarily used
by two of the fish — the razorback sucker and Colorado
pikeminnow. But it’s also used by a third, the bonytail. And a
fourth, the humpback chub, which favors downstream stretches
such as Westwater Canyon, indirectly benefits from efforts to
bolster flows in the 15-Mile Reach.
One of the most critical negotiations for Utah’s future is
coming at a time when Utah’s delegations in Washington D.C. may
be less influential than every other party at the table. The
Colorado River Compact, hammered out in 1922 with few
amendments over the years, expires in 2026. Every other state
in the compact other than Utah has a majority Democratic or
split delegation in Washington. Those states? Colorado, New
Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
A showdown is looming on the Colorado River. The river’s
existing management guidelines are set to expire in 2026. The
states that draw water from it are about to undertake a new
round of negotiations over the river’s future, while it’s
facing worsening dry conditions due in part to rising
temperatures. That means everyone with an interest in the
river’s future — tribes, environmentalists, developers,
business groups, recreation advocates — is hoping a new round
of talks will bring certainty to existing water supplies and
demands.
Much of the U.S. West is facing the driest spring in seven
years, setting up a climate disaster that could strangle
agriculture, fuel deadly wildfires and even hurt power
production. Across 11 western states, drought has captured
about 75% of the land, and covers more than 44% of the
contiguous U.S., the U.S. Drought Monitor said. While
drought isn’t new to the West, where millions of people live,
grow crops and raise livestock in desert conditions that
require massive amounts of water, global warming is
exacerbating the problem — shrinking snowpack in the Rocky
Mountains and extending the fire season on the West Coast.
The Bureau of Reclamation is awarding $42.4 million in grants
to 55 projects throughout 13 states. These projects will
improve the water reliability for these communities by using
water more efficiently and power efficiency improvements that
water supply reliability and generate more hydropower…. In
California, near the Arizona border, the Bard Water District
will receive $1.1 million to complete a canal lining and piping
project. The project is expected to result in annual water
savings of 701 acre-feet, which will remain in the Colorado
River system for other uses.
The Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW) will be accepting
grant applications for quagga and zebra mussel infestation
prevention programs from March 22 through April 30,
2021. All applications must be received by 5 p.m. on
Friday, April 30, 2021. … California water body
authorities have recognized the westward spread of mussel
infestation via the Colorado River System and the potential
harm to state waterways should lakes and reservoirs become
invaded. To help prevent California waterways from infestation,
DBW provides grants to entities that own or manage any aspect
of water in a reservoir that is open for public recreation and
is mussel-free.
After a record dry summer and fall — and with winter snowpack
currently at 70% of normal levels — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox
signed an emergency order Wednesday declaring a state of
emergency due to drought conditions. The move comes after a
recommendation from the state’s Drought Review and Reporting
Committee and opens the door for drought-affected communities
and agricultural producers to potentially access state or
federal emergency funds and resources, according to a news
release. Cox said Wednesday that state leaders have been
“monitoring drought conditions carefully and had hoped to see
significant improvement from winter storms.”
Western water managers are contending with the growing threat
of shortages. Flow has dwindled on major water systems like the
Rio Grande and the Colorado River, which each supply water to
millions of people. With temperatures steadily rising, cloud
seeding poses one attractive solution.
Grain by grain, sandbars are ecologically important to the
Colorado River system for humans and wildlife, say scientists.
How sand, silt and clay move along and become deposited within
the river corridor in the Grand Canyon National Park,
downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, has become an important
question to a number of government agencies as well as to
Native American tribes. The answer impacts the entire Colorado
River ecosystem and will help scientists better understand how
the Colorado River system works.
As Colorado digs out from the recent blizzard, each heavy
shovel full of snow proves the storm brought plenty of
moisture. But is it enough to free the state from its drought
conditions? Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state
climatologist, said the answer largely depends on location. …
Colorado’s drought conditions had improved ahead of the storm.
After record dry weather over the summer and fall, snowpack
levels had inched toward normal throughout the winter, but
western Colorado continued to miss out on the snowfall.
The water flow in the Grand Canyon is temporarily changing and
it could reveal some surprises, geologists said. The U.S.
Geological Survey said Sunday that an 11-day “spring
disturbance” flow will start Monday and will drop water levels
in parts of the Grand Canyon. … While dam maintenance
may not seem exciting, the drop in water could reveal parts of
the Colorado riverbed that hasn’t been seen in decades, USGS
said. It could also impact in the Colorado River
ecosystem. The change in water levels will also
mimic what the Colorado River was like before the dam was
built, USGS said.
I’ve been writing a lot about the broken sewage system in
Tijuana causing spills into San Diego. Part of the concern, San
Diego officials told me, is that Mexico lacks a system to
monitor whether businesses are dumping toxic waste into the
sewer system. That’s part of the reason why it’s risky to reuse
any of that river water because, if we don’t know what’s in the
water, we can’t be sure how to best treat it. San Diego is
about to run into this issue in a big way with its Pure Water
project, a multibillion-dollar system that’s going to recycle
the city’s sewage and treat it so, well, you can drink
it.
Scientists and boatmen with the United States Geological Survey
are preparing for a busy week on the Colorado River as
engineers at Glen Canyon Dam prepare to reduce the water
flowing out of Lake Powell substantially. In order to conduct
maintenance on the concrete apron downstream of the dam,
engineers will be limiting the water that runs through the
dam’s turbines starting Monday and continuing through the rest
of the week.
Sometime in the middle of next year, if Northern Water gets its
way, the bulldozers will start piling earth and rock 25 stories
high to plug this dry basin southwest of Loveland
forever. Four miles to the south, they’ll build another
dam to keep their newly-made bathtub from leaking out the back
toward Lyons. Drill crews will bore a massive pipeline through
the hogback making up the east edge of the bathtub, in order to
feed Carter Lake a few hundred yards to the east. They’ll move
a power line. Help build a surrounding open space park. Upgrade
a sewage plant in Fraser. Four years later, they’ll close dam
gates reinforced to hold back 29 billion gallons of life-giving
water.
Mark your calendars now for our virtual Lower Colorado
River Tour on May 20 to learn about the important role the
river’s water plays in the three Lower Basin states of Nevada,
Arizona and California, and how it helps to sustain their
cities, wildlife areas and farms. Registration is coming
soon! This virtual journey will cover a stretch of
the Colorado River from Hoover Dam and its reservoir Lake
Mead, the nation’s tallest concrete dam and largest reservoir
respectively, down to the U.S./Mexico border and up to the
Salton Sea.
The Grand Canyon Protection Act was recently introduced by U.S.
Rep. Raύl Grijalva and passed in the House and has been
introduced in the Senate by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The bills will
permanently protect about 1 million acres of public lands
surrounding Grand Canyon from the harmful and lasting damage of
new uranium mining. … This legislation is critical
to stopping the threats that mining poses to water quality and
quantity, unique habitats and wildlife pathways, and to sacred
places. -Written by Sandy Bahr, director for Sierra
Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, and Amber Wilson
Reimondo, Energy Program director with Grand Canyon
Trust.
As persistent drought and climate change threaten the Colorado
River, several states that rely on the water acknowledge they
likely won’t get what they were promised a century ago. But not
Utah. Republican lawmakers approved an entity that could push
for more of Utah’s share of water as seven Western states
prepare to negotiate how to sustain a river serving 40 million
people. Critics say the legislation, which the governor still
must sign, could strengthen Utah’s effort to complete a
billion-dollar pipeline from a dwindling reservoir that’s a key
indicator of the river’s health.
A recent report from Colorado River experts says it’s time for
radical new management strategies to safeguard the Southwest’s
water supplies. It’s meant to inform discussions on how to
renegotiate certain parts of the Law of the River that will
expire in 2026. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke about the report
with Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River
Studies at Utah State University.
A bipartisan group of California lawmakers is confronting
pollution problems along the U.S.-Mexico border, especially in
the Tijuana River Valley between San Diego and Tijuana. Several
House members who represent Southern California introduced a
bill called the Border Water Quality Restoration Act. Similar
legislation was presented last week in the U.S. Senate. If
approved, it will give the Environmental Protection Agency the
authority to coordinate all federal, state, and local agencies
when planning construction and infrastructure projects to
mitigate pollution in waterways throughout the southern border.
For the first time ever, rancher Jimmie Hughes saw all 15 of
the ponds he keeps for his cattle dry up at the same time this
year. Now, he and his co-workers are forced to haul tanks
of water two hours over dusty, mountain roads to water their
300 cows. … The Southwest is locked in drought again,
prompting cutbacks to farms and ranches and putting renewed
pressure on urban supplies. Extreme to exceptional drought is
afflicting between 57% and 90% of the land in Colorado, New
Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona and is shriveling a snowpack
that supplies water to 40 million people from Denver to Los
Angeles, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
A coalition of San Diego County elected representatives
introduced a bill on Monday to address water pollution along
the U.S.-Mexico border. The Border Water Quality Restoration
and Protection Act would designate the Environmental Protection
Agency as the lead agency coordinating federal, state and local
agencies’ efforts to build and maintain infrastructure projects
aimed at reducing pollution along the border.
A new Colorado River study predicts we may need to make even
deeper cuts to keep our reservoirs from tanking over the long
haul. But the dire conclusions within the study aren’t what
make it so intriguing. It’s how the group arrived at them. The
Future of the Colorado River project, an effort based out of
Utah State University, has produced six white papers to
evaluate new approaches to water management along the river.
And, most notably, it is using the Colorado River Simulation
System (CRSS), the same modeling tool the Bureau of Reclamation
uses to develop its long-term water availability forecasts for
the basin. - Written by Joanna Allhands, a columnist for the Arizona
Republic.
When [the Colorado River Compact was] signed in 1922,
the Colorado River drainage was divided into two divisions;
Upper: Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah; Lower: Arizona,
California, Nevada. At that time, it was felt the total average
annual flow was 16.4 million acre feet. As a result, each basin
was assigned 50%, or 7.5 million acre feet, with the 1.4
million acre feet surplus allocated to Mexico. … As a
result, the Upper Basin is obligated to provide 7.5M acre feet
to the Lower Basin, regardless of the actual flow of water in
any given year. Obviously, snowpack and the consequent flow is
not a constant and years of drought and low flows create a
problem for the Upper Basin. -Written by Bryan Whiting, a columnist for the
Glenwood Springs (Colo.) Post Independent.
The hot dry conditions that melted strong snowpack early in
2020 and led to severe drought, low river flows and record
setting wildfires across the state could be a harbinger of what
is to come in Colorado. Climate change is likely to drive
“chaotic weather” and greater extremes with hotter droughts and
bigger snowstorms that will be harder to predict, said Kenneth
Williams, environmental remediation and water resources program
lead at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, headquartered in
California.
Much of the western U.S. continues to endure a long-term
drought, one that threatens the region’s water supplies
and agriculture and could worsen wildfires this year. In fact,
some scientists are calling the dryness in the West a
“megadrought,” defined as an intense drought that lasts
for decades or longer. Overall, about 90% of the West is
now either abnormally dry or in a drought, which is among the
highest percentages in the past 20 years, according to this
week’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
A bill aimed at addressing pollution along the U.S.- Mexico
border and improving water quality in the Tijuana and New
rivers was introduced Wednesday. The Border Water Quality
Restoration and Protection Act would designate the
Environmental Protection Agency as the lead agency coordinating
federal, state and local agencies to build and maintain
infrastructure projects aimed at reducing pollution along the
border. It would also require the EPA and other agencies to
identify a list of priority projects and would authorize the
EPA to accept and distribute federal, state, and local funds to
build, operate and maintain those projects.
Anyone who has hosted a good dinner party knows that the guest
list, table setting and topic of conversation play a big role
in determining whether the night is a hit or the guests leave
angry and unsatisfied. That concept is about to get a true test
on the Colorado River, where chairs are being pulled up to a
negotiating table to start a new round of talks that could
define how the river system adapts to a changing climate for
the next generation.
In 1854, the Gadsden Purchase modified a short, 30-mile stretch
of the western border to be the midline of the Colorado River.
The Mexican and U.S. governments soon realized that when these
rivers shifted across their floodplains, questions about
national jurisdiction arose. For example, an exasperated U.S.
agent reported that “the lower Colorado … alters its channel
from time to time, cutting off a large stretch of land on one
bank and depositing the soil on the other or leaving its old
bed and tearing through a large piece of silty bottom land to
form a channel some distance away.” The agent went on to
complain that these movements made it difficult to determine
which land fell on which side of the line…
On Feb. 22, 2021, Lake Powell was 127.24 feet below ‘Full Pool’
or, by content, about 38% full. Based on water level
elevations, these measurements do not account for years of
sediment (clay, silt, and sand) accumulation—the millions of
metric tons on the bottom. Geologist James L. Powell said, “The
Colorado delivers enough sediment to Lake Powell to fill 1,400
ship cargo containers each day.” In other words, Lake
Powell is shrinking toward the middle from top and bottom. The
lake is down over 30 feet from one year ago, and estimates
suggest it could drop another 50 feet by 2026. The Bureau of
Reclamation estimated the lifespan of Glen Canyon Dam at
500–700 years. Other estimates aren’t as optimistic, including
some as low as 50 years.
A Senate committee unanimously approved a bill Thursday to
create Utah’s Colorado River Authority, which would be tasked
with helping the state renegotiate its share of the river.
Originally the bill allowed broad reasons to close meetings and
protect records. It’s since been changed twice to come more
into compliance with the state’s open meeting and record laws.
Critics of the bill said it’s still not enough. Mike O’Brien,
an attorney with the Utah Media Coalition, said having a
narrower scope for open meetings and records exemptions makes
the bill better than when it was first introduced. But he
wishes it would follow laws already there.
Like a giant garbage disposal, three huge new green pipes sit
on Mexico’s side of the border, shredding trash in the Tijuana
River that would otherwise jam this critical piece of the
city’s wastewater system that caused spills on the United
States side.
Federal regulators have issued a preliminary permit for a
pumped-hydropower project using water from Lake Powell, but
conservation groups say climate change could make the plan
unsustainable. The project would pump water from the lake,
drain it downhill to a generator, and send the power to massive
batteries for storage. The 2,200-megawatt project would supply
cities in Arizona, California and Nevada, over lines previously
used by the retired Navajo Generating Station. Gary Wockner,
executive director for Save the Colorado, which opposes the
plan, said falling water levels will make the Colorado River
Basin an unreliable source of water.
Arizona, California, and Nevada will need to cut their use of
Colorado River water by nearly 40 percent by 2050. A
study by researchers at Utah State University, which
the Arizona Daily Star reported this past Sunday, noted
that Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—the Upper Basin
states—will have to reduce their usage, as well, though not by
as much as those pulling water from the Lower Basin.
From California’s perspective, the view upriver is not
encouraging. More than half of the upper part of the river
basin is in “exceptional drought,” according to the U.S.
Drought Monitor, while the Lower Basin is even worse off: More
than 60% of it is in the highest drought level. In January,
water levels in Lake Powell, the river’s second-largest
reservoir, dropped to unprecedented depths, triggering a
drought contingency plan for the first time for the Upper Basin
states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Since
2000, the Colorado River Basin has seen a sustained period of
less water and hotter days. This is, as climate scientists like
to say, the “new normal.”
“Basic climate science reveals that Lake Powell is not a
reliable water source for this ill-conceived project.” The
reference to ‘basic climate science’ refers to recent computer
models that show a drier climate throughout the American
Southwest over the next few decades, allegedly due to the
continued use of fossil fuels all around the globe. But even
without access to clever computer models, we have all seen Lake
Powell and Lake Mead — America’s two largest water reservoirs —
struggle to remain even half full, as we watch water users
extract more water than nature can replace.
Utah House Bill 297 is a dangerous spending bill that provides
its benefactors with exemptions to conflict-of-interest laws
that raises serious moral questions about what is happening at
the Utah Legislature. The bill creates another heavily-funded
and secretive government agency — the Colorado River Authority
— that would receive an initial $9 million, plus $600,000 per
year thereafter, in addition to collecting unknown sums of
money from other agencies. -Written by Claire Geddes, a consumer advocate and former
director of Utah Legislative Watch.
Less water for the Central Arizona Project — but not zero
water. Even more competition between farms and cities for
dwindling Colorado River supplies than there is now. More
urgency to cut water use rather than wait for seven river basin
states to approve new guidelines in 2025 for operating the
river’s reservoirs. That’s where Arizona and the Southwest are
heading with water, say experts and environmental advocates
following publication of a dire new academic study on the
Colorado River’s future. The study warned that the river’s
Upper and Lower basin states must sustain severe cuts in river
water use to keep its reservoir system from collapsing due to
lack of water. That’s due to continued warming weather and
other symptoms of human-caused climate change, the study said.
Big projects aimed at stemming the toxic sewage flowing from
Tijuana into Imperial Beach and the surrounding region are on
the horizon and that’s a welcome development. But any such
improvements come with a nagging question based on historical
experience: How long will this fix last? Cross-border pollution
has been a problem for the better part of a century and has
defied past efforts to solve it. It’s not that previous actions
didn’t help. Some did, and they greatly diminished the health
and environmental threat — and reduced beach
closures. -Written by Michael Smolens, a columnist for the San Diego
Union-Tribune.
Utah lawmakers say drought and the dwindling Colorado River
make it more important than ever for the state to act now to
safeguard its interest in the river.
In the five years since Colorado’s Water Plan took effect, the
state has awarded nearly $500 million in loans and grants for
water projects, cities have enacted strict drought plans,
communities have written nearly two dozen locally based stream
restoration plans, and crews have been hard at work improving
irrigation systems and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.
But big challenges lie ahead — drought, population growth,
accelerating climate change, budget cuts, wildfires and
competing demands for water, among others.
The Colorado River supports over 40 million people spread
across seven southwestern states, 29 tribal nations, and
Mexico. It’s responsible for the irrigation of roughly 5.5
million acres of land marked for agricultural use. Local and
regional headlines show the river is in crisis. The nation
mostly isn’t listening.
A proposed water recycling project in Southern California could
result in Nevada getting some of the Golden State’s share of
water from the Colorado River. The Southern Nevada Water
Authority could invest up to $750 million into the water
treatment project. In return for the investment, it could get a
share of California’s water in Lake Mead. If built, the project
would give the region another tool to protect itself against
the ongoing strain of drought conditions on the Colorado River.
[T]he president of New York-based hedge fund Water Asset
Management … has called water in the United States “a
trillion-dollar market opportunity.” The hedge fund invested
$300 million in farmland in Colorado, California, Arizona and
Nevada as of 2020, including $16.6 million on 2,220 acres of
farmland with senior water rights in Colorado’s Grand Valley
just upstream from where the Colorado River crosses into Utah.
In the gloomiest long-term forecast yet for the
drought-stricken Colorado River, a new study warns that lower
river basin states including Arizona may have to slash their
take from the river up to 40% by the 2050s to keep reservoirs
from falling too low. Such a cut would amount to about twice as
much as the three Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and
Nevada — agreed to absorb under the drought contingency plan
they approved in early 2019. Overall, the study warned that
managing the river sustainably will require substantially
larger cuts in use by Lower Basin states than currently
envisioned, along with curbs on future diversions by Upper
Basin states.
I’ve written in the past about the San Diego County Water
Authority’s efforts to divest from its parent agency the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. That
includes the bad blood between the two agencies stemming from
MWD’s water cutbacks to San Diego in 1991, and how local
leaders felt they were mistreated. What I didn’t realize was
just how far back the tension goes between San Diego leaders
and MWD. All the way back to the Great Depression…
Much has been said about a “new normal” in the Colorado River
Basin. The phrase describes reduced flows in the 21st century
as compared to those during much of the 20th century. Authors
of a new study contemplate something beyond, what they call a
“new abnormal.” The future, they say, might be far dryer than
water managers have been planning for. … In the 133-page
report, they identified a wide variety of alternative
management ideas, not simple tweaks but “significant
modifications or entirely new approaches.”
Utah legislative leaders on Thursday unveiled plans for a new
$9 million state agency to advance Utah’s claims to the
Colorado River in hopes of wrangling more of the river’s
diminishing flows, potentially at the expense of six
neighboring states that also tap the river. Without any prior
public involvement or notice, lawmakers assembled legislation
to create a six-member entity called the Colorado River
Authority of Utah, charged with implementing “a management plan
to ensure that Utah can protect and develop the Colorado River
system.”
It would be arguably the most ambitious public works project in
San Diego history. The envisioned pipeline would carry Colorado
River water more than 130 miles from the Imperial Valley —
through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, tunneling under the
Cuyamaca Mountains, and passing through the Cleveland National
Forest — to eventually connect with a water-treatment plant in
San Marcos. An alternative route would run through the desert
to the south, boring under Mt. Laguna before emptying into the
San Vicente Reservoir in Lakeside. Estimated cost: roughly $5
billion. New water delivered: None.
Migratory birds have followed the same flight patterns for
millennia, searching for abundant food resources. The journey
is often risky, and birds undergo harsh weather patterns—from
storms that can throw them off course to dry arid landscapes
that provide little to no food resources. A new study published
this week in Ornithological Applications found tens of millions
of birds depend on the river and wetland habitats weaved within
the Colorado River Delta and California’s Central Valley while
they make their journey across the dry western landscapes,
reports Corryn Wetzel for Audubon.
Comedian Ron White once joked that we should have two
levels of national security warnings: Find a helmet and put on
a helmet. If such a system were in place
for controversies, Arizona’s water community would
now be in the “put on a helmet” stage. Tensions were
already high over a proposal to transfer Colorado River
water from a farm in La Paz County to Queen
Creek. And now that the recommendation
has quietly changed, some folks in on-river
communities view it as nothing less than the start
of World War III. Heaven help us if it is. -Written by Joanna Allhands, a columnist for the Arizona
Republic
Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years
across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking
and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the
American Southwest. As the latest round of federal
forecasts for the river’s flow shows, it’s plausible, maybe
even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year.
Understanding and explaining the depth of the dryness is up to
climate scientists throughout the basin. We called several of
them and asked for discrete numbers that capture the current
state of the Colorado River basin.
Mayors and county supervisors in towns along the Colorado River
were already upset five months ago when the state water
agency endorsed an investment company’s plan to take water
from farmland near the river and sell it to a growing Phoenix
suburb. Now, they’re incensed that the agency, which initially
suggested holding back a large portion of the
water, changed its stance and will let the company
sell most of the water to the town of Queen Creek. Elected
leaders in communities along the river say they intend to
continue trying to stop the proposed deal, which would need to
be approved by the federal Bureau of Reclamation.
Water suppliers along the drought-stricken Colorado River hope
to tackle another tricky issue after the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation installs a new leader: salty water. The river
provides water for 40 million people from Colorado to
California, and helps irrigate 5.5 million acres of farm and
ranchland in the U.S. But all that water also comes with 9
million tons of salt that flow through the system as it heads
to Mexico, both due to natural occurrence and runoff, mostly
from agriculture. Salt can hurt crop production, corrode
drinking water pipes, and cause other damage.
Jeff Lukas calls the Colorado the “charismatic megafauna of
Western rivers.” This riverine equivalent of grizzly bears,
bald eagles, and humpback whales gets lots of attention,
including national attention. Some of that attention is
deserved. It has the nation’s two largest reservoirs, among the
nation’s tallest dams, and many of the most jaw-dropping
canyons and eye-riveting national parks in the country. It also
has 40 million to 50 million people in Colorado and six other
southwestern states, plus Mexico, who depend upon its water,
and a history of tensions that have at times verged on the
political equivalent of fist-fights.
We are now past the halfway mark in California’s normally
wettest winter months, and the wet season to date has been
anything but. Most of the state has received less than half of
its average annual precipitation to date. Coming after a very
dry Water Year 2020 these conditions are concerning. More
precipitation will certainly occur in February and March, but
will it be enough to erase the state’s large
deficit?
U.S. Reps. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, and Juan Vargas,
D-San Diego reintroduced a bill this week that is aimed at
cleaning up the New River, a highly polluted waterway
originating near Mexicali, Mexico that flows
north, emptying into the Salton Sea. The bill, HR491,
would direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create
an organization to be called the California New River
Restoration Program, which would coordinate funding and cleanup
projects.
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the American West, but
the viability of the massive river basin is being threatened by
climate change. To plan future water use in the region — which
includes Arizona — the Central Arizona Project is teaming up
with NASA and Arizona State University, to evaluate how climate
and land-use changes will affect patterns of hydrology. Using
state-of-the-art satellite imaging, scientists will measure and
evaluate how water flows throughout the basin.
The building of dams on the Colorado River has forever changed
the ebb and flow, flooding, drying and renewal cycle of what
was once Lake Cahuilla, changing its character and changing its
name to the Salton Sea. Entrepreneurs once thought that the
Salton Sea would become a sportsman’s mecca, providing fishing,
boating, and waterskiing experiences like no other. There were
a few decades where that dream seemed to be true. Then it
wasn’t.
The quality of the water crossing into San Diego from Tijuana
during storms is, well, not the greatest. If it could be
successfully recycled one day, that same polluted source would
be valuable to a region like ours that’s prone to drought.But
who owns the Tijuana River and who needs its water the most are
complex questions, because the area is ruled by international
treaties.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River’s hydrology began tumbling
into a historically bad stretch. … So key players across
seven states, including California, came together in 2005 to
attack the problem. The result was a set of Interim Guidelines
adopted in 2007… Stressing flexibility instead of rigidity,
the guidelines stabilized water deliveries in a
drought-stressed system and prevented a dreaded shortage
declaration by the federal government that would have forced
water supply cuts.
The lower Colorado River Basin, which is primarily in Arizona,
is projected to have as much as sixteen percent less
groundwater infiltration by midcentury compared to the
historical record. That’s because warming temperatures will
increase evaporation while rain- and snowfall are expected to
remain the same or decrease slightly.
The U.S. Geological Survey is in the beginning stages of
learning more about this river via an expanded and more
sophisticated monitoring system that aims to study details
about the snowpack that feeds the river basin, droughts and
flooding, and how streamflow supports groundwater, or vice
versa.
Mexico is obligated under a 1944 treaty to deliver to the
United States a set amount of water from the Rio Grande and its
tributaries over a five-year period. … The last-minute
agreement signed Oct. 21 settles the conflict. Mexico will
transfer ownership of water stored in two border reservoirs to
the United States to make up the deficit.
What’s in the Tijuana River? Ammonia, a byproduct of raw
sewage. Phosphorous, an ingredient in soaps and cleaners that’s
banned in the U.S. Metals used in the industrial plating
industry. Parasitic worms. And DEHP, a chemical added to
plastics. And of course, there’s poo.
For weeks, a water dispute between the Mexican government and
Mexican farmers and between the United States and Mexico was
brewing and escalating. October 24 was the deadline by which
Mexico was supposed to have provided the United States with all
of the water from the Rio Grande it owes the United States
every five years. But this year’s expected water delivery set
off months-long protests…
A team of scientists at Utah State University has developed a
new tool to forecast drought and water flow in the Colorado
River several years in advance. Although the river’s headwaters
are in landlocked Wyoming and Colorado, water levels are linked
to sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans and the water’s long-term ocean memory.
Imperial County Supervisor Ryan Kelley wants the board to work
with Congressman Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, and the county’s
lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to draft a legislation to fully
fund a wastewater treatment project to clean the New River.
Despite that reduction in flow, total storage behind Glen
Canyon and Hoover dams has dropped only 2.6 million acre feet.
That is far less than you’d expect from 12 years of 1.2 maf per
year flow reductions alone. That kind of a flow reduction
should have been enough to nearly empty the reservoirs. Why
hasn’t that happened? Because we also have been using less
water.
The bill, which was written by state Sen. Ben Hueso, also aims
to address some of the binational challenges in managing the
watershed. The plan that the California EPA is putting together
will create a framework for how California can work with the
Mexican and U.S. governments.
Tensions between Mexico and the United States over water
intensified this month as hundreds of Mexican farmers seized
control of La Boquilla dam in protest over mandatory water
releases. The protesters came from parched Chihuahua state,
nearly 100 square miles of land pressed against the U.S.
border, where farmers are opposing the delivery of over 100
billion gallons of water to the United States by October 24.
The mayor of Imperial Beach and governor of Baja California are
in a public spat over cross-border sewage spills. Gov. Jaime
Bonilla has held three separate press conferences this month
demanding Mayor Serge Dedina apologize for his public
criticisms of Mexico’s inability to stop sewage from flowing
into the United States.
Mexican farmers in the drought-stricken state of Chihuahua are
pitted against riot squads from the national guard in an
increasingly violent standoff over their government’s decision
to ship scarce water supplies to the United States…Under the
treaty, Mexico sends water from rivers in the Rio Grande basin
to the United States, which in turn sends Mexico water
in the Colorado River further to the west.
In Utah, there is a significant effort underway to build a
water delivery pipeline from Lake Powell to transport part of
Utah’s Colorado River entitlement to Utah’s St. George area. As
the federal environmental review for the proposed Lake Powell
Pipeline in Utah continues, Utah’s six fellow Colorado River
Basin states weighed in as a group, cautioning that unresolved
issues remain.
At the September meeting of Metropolitan’s Water Planning and
Stewardship Committee, Laura Lamdin, an associate engineer in
water resource management, gave a presentation on how the
United States and Mexico built a collaborative relationship,
the many accomplishments that have come as a result, and a look
at the work currently in progress.
Protesters gathered on Sunday in drought-hit northern Mexico in
an attempt to retain control of a dam key to government efforts
to diffuse tensions over a water-sharing pact with the United
States. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has
been working to maintain a good relationship with U.S.
President Donald Trump, said on Friday that Mexico must comply
with its obligations.
For 75 years, through tensions and disputes over immigration,
narcotrafficking and trade, Mexico and the United States have
sent each other billions of gallons of water annually to
irrigate farms along the border under a treaty signed during
World War II. But today, the 1944 agreement is facing
increasingly violent opposition in drought-parched Chihuahua
state, where protesters have seized control of a major dam to
dramatize the plight of farmers…
The cuts are a plan to keep Lake Mead, a reservoir at the
Arizona-Nevada boundary, functional. Water levels have
precipitously dropped as a result of historic overallocation
and a drought that started in 2000. … ASU Now checked in with
Sarah Porter of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at the Morrison
Institute on how these new developments will impact the Copper
State and its residents.
Dizzying in its scope, detail and complexity, the scientific
information on the Basin’s climate and hydrology has been
largely scattered in hundreds of studies and reports. Some
studies may conflict with others, or at least appear to. That’s
problematic for a river that’s a lifeline for 40 million people
and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland.
Mexico’s water wars have turned deadly. A long-simmering
dispute about shared water rights between Mexico and the United
States has erupted into open clashes pitting Mexican National
Guard troops against farmers, ranchers and others who seized a
dam in northern Chihuahua state.
The Mexican National Guard said Wednesday that two people had
died in a gunfight with military police near a protest at a dam
that diverts water away from an area hit by drought to the
United States. … The protest comes amid plans to divert more
to the United States due to a “water debt” Mexico has accrued
under a 1944 water-sharing treaty between the countries.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wednesday the agency
would pay for more water treatment south of the border, and
work with San Diego to control trash coming into the United
States from Mexico by way of the Tijuana River. Wheeler made
the announcement during a visit to Southern California, a
region long plagued by sewage, water, trash, and other
contaminants flowing from Mexico.
The two projects — which will cost $25 million and are funded
by the EPA’s Border Water Infrastructure Program — will control
sewage and wastewater, sediment and trash that flows from the
Tijuana River across the U.S.-Mexico border into San Diego, EPA
Administrator Andrew Wheeler said during a press conference
Wednesday at the U.S. Coast Guard station in San Diego.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced plans to
extend the border wall and have it cut across the Tijuana River
where the river enters the U.S. in San Diego. … Usually, the
river has more debris and old tires in it than it has water.
But there is no barrier between the two countries here.
Above-average temperatures in spring resulted in a paltry 57%
runoff, nowhere near enough water to refill the reservoirs that
remain half-empty. Based on these conditions, the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation recently determined that 2021 will be a “tier
zero” year under the Lower Colorado River Basin Drought
Contingency Plan, with reduced water deliveries for Arizona,
Nevada, and Mexico.
A friend last week pointed out something remarkable. Arizona,
California, and Nevada are forecast this year to use just 6.8
million acre feet of their 7.5 million acre foot allocation of
water from the main stem of the Colorado River. And that’s not
just a one-off.
The latest forecast from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,
released last week, predicts that by the end of 2020, Lake
Mead, which furnishes Central Arizona Project water, will be at
1,085 feet elevation. While that’s 5 feet lower than the lake
stood at the end of 2019, it’s still 10 feet higher than the
water level that would trigger the first major shortage,
slicing more than 520,000 acre feet of water, roughly one-third
of the state’s total supply.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released projections Friday that
suggest Lake Powell and Lake Mead will dip 16 feet and 5 feet,
respectively, in January from levels recorded a year earlier.
Despite the dip, Lake Mead would stay above the threshold that
triggers severe water cuts to cities and farms, giving
officials throughout the Southwest more time to prepare for the
future when the flow will slow.
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again receive less water from
the Colorado River next year under a set of agreements intended
to help boost the level of Lake Mead… The federal Bureau of
Reclamation released projections Friday showing that Lake Mead,
the nation’s largest reservoir, will be at levels next year
that continue to trigger moderate cutbacks in the two U.S.
states and Mexico.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to release
projections Friday that suggest Lake Powell and Lake Mead will
dip slightly in 2021. … Despite the dip, Lake Mead’s levels
are expected to stay above the threshold that triggers
mandatory water cuts to Arizona and Nevada, giving officials
throughout the Southwest more time to prepare for a future when
the flow will slow.
Water-efficient succulents and nitrogen-fixing tree legumes may
take five to 12 years to produce their first nutritional
harvests. Nevertheless, they can produce more edible biomass
over a decade with far less water than that used by
conventional annual crops, while sequestering carbon into the
soil to mitigate climate change…
We deserve complete, dependable information and accurate cost
data including well-reasoned analysis that demonstrates the
need and economic viability of the pipeline. Instead, studies
by the Utah Division of Water Resources and the Washington
County Water Conservancy District are biased, incomplete and do
not fairly consider feasible, much less costly alternatives.
Hot and dry conditions pushed portions of Arizona, southern
Nevada and Southern California either into drought or further
into drought, data from the U.S. Drought monitor show. … The
North American Monsoon, which provides about half of the annual
rainfall in parts of the Southwest, has been a “nonsoon” this
year … The portion of California deemed abnormally
dry grew by almost 7%, mainly in eastern San Bernardino
County.
The newly passed Drought Contingency Plan spurred additional
conservation and left more water in the lake. An unusually wet
year also helped, because it allowed states to fall back on
other supplies. But the fundamental problem remains: The river
still isn’t producing the amount of water we use in a typical
year. We’re still draining the mighty Colorado.
The average annual flow of the Colorado River has decreased 19
percent compared to its 20th century average. Models predict
that by 2100, the river flow could fall as much as 55 percent.
The Colorado River, and the people it sustains, are in serious
trouble.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today introduced the Border
Water Quality Restoration and Protection Act, a bill to reduce
pollution along the U.S.-Mexico border and improve the water
quality of the Tijuana and New rivers.
Demonstrators in northern Mexico have burned several government
vehicles, blocked railway tracks and set afire a government
office and highway tollbooths to protest water payments to the
United States.
Imperial Beach Mayor Pro Tem Paloma Aguirre joined Good Morning
San Diego to discuss a new report claiming that an audit done
by Baja California governor accuses big US companies of water
theft and contributed to raw sewage and hazardous pollutants
ending up in the Tijuana River.
Legal scholars believe that the Lake Powell pipeline would
likely violate the 1922 Colorado River Compact as a
transfer of upper basin water (WY, UT, CO, NM) for lower basin
use (CA, NV, AZ). The lower basin has priority, and the compact
arguably prohibits transfers from the upper to lower basin
absent explicit congressional authorization
The Imperial Irrigation District and farmer Michael Abatti have
been locked in a years-long legal battle with as many twists as
the river over which it has been fought. The saga might finally
come to an end, though, after a California appellate court
handed down a ruling on Thursday that found IID is the rightful
manager of the portion of the Colorado River guaranteed to the
Imperial Valley.
Farmers once again clashed with Mexican military forces Sunday
to protest releases of water from a dam to repay a water debt
owed to the United States. … Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico owes
the United States about 415,000 acre-feet yearly that must be
paid by Oct. 24. Mexico has fallen badly behind in payments
from previous years and now has to quickly catch up on water
transfers.
The Consul General of Mexico in San Diego said there are things
happening in Tijuana that will help. In a written statement
responding to questions by KPBS, Carlos González Gutiérrez said
there are several projects underway.
