As adjacent Western states, California and Nevada share similar
issues related to drought and limited water resources. Both
states are participants in the 1922 Colorado River Compact and
the 2003 and 2007 Quantification Settlement Agreements to
allocate Colorado River deliveries. Also, about two-thirds of
Lake Tahoe lies in California and one-third in Nevada, and the
two states have formed a compact to work together on
environmental goals for the lake.
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.
Summer has not officially started yet, but wildfire season has
already arrived in the US. Now an intense heat wave coupled
with extreme drought is threatening to make things worse. Large
wildfires have already burned 981,000 acres this year to date,
more than the 766,000 acres burned by the same time last year,
according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Arizona,
more than 208,000 acres have burned, sending smoke into
Colorado.
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.
As the Southwest prepares for what’s forecast to be another
mercilessly hot and dry summer, tensions over water scarcity
are rising like the mercury. Farmers are facing bleak growing
seasons and the possibility of farm failures in several areas
due to cutbacks in water allocations for irrigation, creating
friction between the ag community and cities on the dwindling
water supply in the region. Rural communities in Nevada and
elsewhere, already wary of incursions by urban areas into their
water supplies, are on high alert as the water crisis deepens.
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.
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.
With Lake Mead approaching critically-low levels, the Southern
Nevada Water Authority recently turned to the Legislature to
double-down on its existing strategy for using less water: turf
removal. … [Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager
John] Entsminger, in a recent interview, said the prohibition
would result in significant water savings. The removal of an
estimated 3,900 acres of decorative turf could save roughly 9.3
billion gallons of water annually — about 10 percent of the
state’s entire Colorado River allotment.
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.
Storms from the Pacific set to swing into the rain-starved West
Coast this week may end up turning detrimental, AccuWeather
forecasters say, by whipping up gusty winds and heightening the
risk of lightning-induced wildfires. With over 87% of the
Western states in moderate to exceptional drought, the news of
Pacific storms poised to sweep onshore may sound good on the
surface. However, the pattern will be a double-edged sword.
Each storm is expected to arrive with “very limited moisture,”
according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex
Sosnowski.
In Sin City, one thing that will soon become unforgivable is
useless grass. A new Nevada law will outlaw about 40% of the
grass in the Las Vegas area in an effort to conserve water amid
a drought that is drying up the region’s primary water source:
the Colorado River. Other cities and states around the US have
enacted temporary bans on lawns that must be watered, but
legislation signed Friday by the state’s governor, Steve
Sisolak, makes Nevada the first in the nation to enact a
permanent ban on certain categories of grass.
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.
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.
With California’s rivers running low after two consecutive dry
winters, state officials and local water agencies have pumped
out a steady stream of drought declarations and calls for water
conservation in recent weeks. It’s clear the Golden State is in
a drought and it could escalate to a crisis, but, you may be
wondering, just how bad is it?
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.
Assembly Joint Resolution 4 passed both houses of the Nevada
Legislature. The resolution now urges Congress and the
President to protect certain land containing swamp cedar trees
in Spring Valley, Nevada by designating the site a national
monument or expanding the Great Basin National Park to include
the area.
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.
After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water
repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after
rainfall events – a phenomenon that many scientists have
attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry.
But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by
wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new paper
from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada.
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.
The Arizona Legislature wants to look into the feasibility of
pumping water from the Mississippi River to Arizona. But the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has already studied the idea, and
weighed in on the project in 2012. The agency studied factors
such as cost, legal issues, power use and the amount of time
the project would take. A report estimated the project could
cost up to $14 billion; the timetable was around 30
years.
The 2021 legislative session is an anomaly. Notwithstanding
COVID, the bad water bills died early and the good ones pressed
on. That is not the norm. But it appears that more folks are
beginning to believe these are not normal times. Indeed,
this year is different. Long-time foes are singing kumbaya in
praise of AB356. The legislation, which passed both
chambers, saves 10 billion gallons of water annually in
Southern Nevada –– defending the dwindling supply of Colorado
River water by mandating the removal of all non-functional turf
by 2027 in Southern Nevada. -Written by Kyle Roerink, executive director of
the Great Basin Water Network.
Beginning next week, the Bureau of Reclamation plans to reduce
overnight releases from Davis Dam on selected dates in an
attempt to decrease the local caddisfly population – following
a request from the cities of Laughlin, Nevada and Bullhead
City, Arizona. The reduced flows along the river reach below
Davis Dam will help with an ongoing pest abatement study being
conducted by the downstream communities to combat this nuisance
species that negatively impacts businesses and visitors to the
area.
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.
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 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.
Tiny specks of degraded plastics have been documented in the
snowpack around Lake Tahoe — and in the lake itself. They
have been found in the Las Vegas Wash. The phenomenon is not
unique to Nevada. Microplastics, the end product of our plastic
consumption, have been found in ecosystems across the
world, even in remote areas. Microplastics are small
— less than 5 millimeters — but they are not uniform.
They can have different shapes and vary in size. Microplastics
from clothing can appear as synthetic fibers, whereas degraded
plastic from bags or water bottles might take on a different
composition.
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.
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.
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year,
and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t
realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond
the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking
water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the
blaze. … Since 2017, multiple fires have
impacted drinking water systems … including the CZU
Lightning Complex, Camp and Tubbs fires in California.
Thousands of private wells have been affected too.
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.
A recent report looked into why Indigenous communities within
the Colorado River Basin are struggling to get clean, reliable
running water. A household in tribal lands is 19 times more
likely than a white household to not have indoor plumbing, and
during the pandemic this had catastrophic effects on some
Indigenous communities. According a 2019 report outlining the
action plan for closing the water access gap throughout the
United States, “race is the strongest predictor of water and
sanitation access,” and it’s Indigenous people who face this
problem most.
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 Nevada Assembly voted Thursday to approve a non-residential
turf removal proposal brought by Southern Nevada water
regulators, who say it will save the water-shy Las Vegas Valley
12 billion gallons of water per year. With little debate from
lawmakers, the Assembly voted 30-12 on Assembly Bill 356,
sending the proposal to the Senate. Four Republicans — Glen
Leavitt, R-Boulder City, Heidi Kasama, R-Las Vegas, Melissa
Hardy, R-Henderson, and Jill Tolles, R-Reno — crossed party
lines to vote with the 26 Democrats.
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 first automated dust-on-snow monitoring technology in the
mountains of Northwest Colorado is expected to be installed
this fall to study the impact of dust from arid landscapes on
downwind mountain ecosystems in the state and in Utah. McKenzie
Skiles, who is a hydrologist and a University of Utah assistant
professor, will use close to $10,000 from a National Science
Foundation grant to purchase four pyranometers, which measure
solar radiation landing on, and reflected by, snow.
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.
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.
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.
Water law adjudication, already a complicated field, will only
become more so because of the climate crisis, extended
droughts, and increasing demand for groundwater in Nevada, the
Supreme Court was told last week. The court Friday held its
first meeting for the newly created commission to study the
adjudication of water law cases. Members of the commission
range from ranchers to conservationists to mining industry
representatives and scientists.
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.
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.
A desert city built on a reputation for excess and indulgence
wants to become a model for restraint and conservation with a
first-in-the-nation policy banning grass that nobody walks on.
Las Vegas-area water officials have spent two decades trying to
get people to replace thirsty greenery with desert plants, and
now they’re asking the Nevada Legislature to outlaw roughly 40%
of the turf that’s left. The Southern Nevada Water Authority
estimates there are almost 8 square miles (21 square
kilometers) of “nonfunctional turf” in the metro area — grass
that no one ever walks on or otherwise uses in street medians,
housing developments and office parks.
The state is slipping further into more serious levels of
drought as it enters the second year for dry conditions and the
records the third driest rainy season on record. The US
Drought Monitor has downgraded areas in far Northern
California, the Central Coast, and Southern California to
reflect recent drought data. The top level “Exceptional”
(D4) drought remains at 5% in the Owens Valley and Mohave
Desert. Extreme (D3) drought now covers 35% of the state, an
increase from 32% last week. Most of the direct impacts
from various stages of more severe drought impact agriculture
and grazing areas. Many areas have only seen 50% of normal rain
or less. Areas that receive snow have seen well below average
snowpack levels.
Lack of monsoon rainfall last summer and spotty snowfall this
winter combined to worsen the Western drought dramatically in
the past year, and spring snowmelt won’t bring much relief.
Critical April 1 measurements of snow accumulations from
mountain ranges across the region show that most streams and
rivers will once again flow well below average levels this
year, stressing ecosystems and farms and depleting key
reservoirs that are already at dangerously low levels. As
the climate warms, it’s likely that drought conditions will
worsen and persist across much of the West. Dry spells between
downpours and blizzards are getting longer, and snowpack in the
mountains is starting to melt during winter, new research
shows.
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.
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.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes will receive $209,000 for
irrigation canal projects, Congressman Paul Gosar announced
Tuesday. The federal funds were awarded by the U.S. Department
of the Interior to help CRIT pay for canal lining. The project
is intended to help stop water seepage from the canal. CRIT
relies on the Colorado River as its primary source of water,
and water conserved with help the Tribes meet existing demand
during times of drought, Gosar said. The project will line
nearly 4,000 feet of the earthen canal with a membrane covered
in sprayed concrete. The stretch of canal has been identified
as having the most significant seepage rate of all 232 miles of
canals in the Colorado River Irrigation Project, according to
the Bureau of Reclamation.
Las Vegas water officials want state lawmakers to require the
removal of thirsty grass landscaping that isn’t used for
recreation. Southern Nevada Water Authority lobbyist Andy
Belanger told lawmakers Monday that climate change and growth
in the Las Vegas area would require communities to take more
significant measures to conserve water. The agency estimates
that more than 5,000 acres of “nonfunctional turf” — grass not
used for recreational activities like golf, youth sports or
dog-walking — is spread throughout the region.
More snow is melting during winter across the West, a
concerning trend that could impact everything from ski
conditions to fire danger and agriculture, according to a new
CU Boulder analysis of 40 years of data. Researchers found
that since the late 1970s, winter’s boundary with spring has
been slowly disappearing, with one-third of 1,065 snow
measurement stations from the Mexican border to the Alaskan
Arctic recording increasing winter snowmelt…. Their new
findings, published in Nature Climate Change, have important
implications for water resource planning…
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.
Rural water users are panicking over a proposal to create a
market for the sale and purchase of water rights in Nevada,
unconvinced by arguments that the concept would encourage
conservation. Lawmakers on Monday weighed whether so-called
“water banking” would be preferable to prevailing water law
doctrines that govern surface and groundwater rights disputes
in the driest state in the U.S. A legislative hearing about two
proposals to allow water rights holders to sell their
entitlements pitted state water bureaucrats against a coalition
of farmers, conservationists and rural officials.
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.
Utah’s winter sports industry may claim the greatest snow on
Earth, but for skiers and water watchers alike, there is hardly
ever enough powder. For nearly 50 years, the second-driest
state in the nation has been giving natural winter storms an
engineered boost to help deepen its snowpack through a program
largely funded by state taxpayers, local governments and water
conservancy districts. More recently, the states that rely on
water from the lower Colorado River — California, Arizona and
Nevada — have been paying for additional cloud seeding in Utah.
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.
With three-quarters of the US west gripped by a seemingly
ceaseless drought, several states are increasingly embracing a
drastic intervention – the modification of the weather to spur
more rainfall. … Cloud seeding experiments have taken
place since the 1940s but until recently there was little
certainty the method had any positive impact.
But research last year managed to pinpoint snowfall
that “unambiguously” came from cloud seeding … Others are now
looking to join in, including the “four corners” states – Utah,
Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico – that have been ravaged by
the most extreme version of the latest drought.
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.
A Nevada town founded a century ago by pioneers lured to the
West by the promise of free land and cheap water in the desert
is trying to block the U.S. government from renovating a
115-year-old earthen irrigation canal with a plan that would
eliminate leaking water that local residents long have used to
fill their own domestic wells. A federal judge denied the town
of Fernley’s bid last year to delay plans to line parts of the
Truckee Canal with concrete to make it safer after it burst and
flooded nearly 600 homes in 2008.
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.”
The shadow of a controversial plan to pipe groundwater from
rural Nevada to Las Vegas looms as state lawmakers weigh two
proposals to protect groves of swamp cedar trees considered
sacred on Monday. Until last year when the Southern Nevada
Water Authority decided to “indefinitely defer” its pursuit of
permits, the trees were caught in the crossfire of fights over
development and conservation.
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.
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.
The Western US is in the midst of yet another dangerous dry
spell. The drought has been building over the past year, and
since November, a greater stretch of the West has been in the
most severe category of drought than at any time in the 20
years that the National Drought Mitigation Center has been
keeping records. … Ryan Jensen saw the impacts of
California’s last major drought firsthand while working for the
Community Water Center in the San Joaquin Valley. When
residential wells ran dry, students had to shower in their
school locker rooms. To keep toilets running, some rural
households relied on hoses slung over fences from their
neighbors.
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.
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.
Zebra mussels — fingernail-sized mollusks named for their
striped shells — are benign in their native Black Sea and
Caspian Sea ecosystems. But they are disastrous almost
everywhere else. Since they were first discovered in the
Great Lakes in 1986, these rapid-spawning animals have
infested every watershed in the Lower 48 except the
Columbia River Basin….The mussel found in [a pet store in]
Seattle came from the California distributor….
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.
The coal-fired power plant that sat on Navajo Nation land in
the northeastern corner of Arizona did not just generate
electricity. It also drew water from the Colorado River, an
essential input for cooling the plant’s machinery. What
happens to that water now that the plant is being
decommissioned? Who gets to decide how it is used? In a drying
region in which every drop of water is accounted for and
parceled out, the stakes are high and the legal claims are
unresolved.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors in
February 2021 announced a plan to distribute a rebate of $44.4
million to its 24 member agencies across the region after
receiving a check for that amount from the Los Angeles-based
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to pay legal
damages and interest, according to a SDCWA press release.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For years, Southern Nevadans have watched the water level in
Lake Mead inch downward and wondered how long we could avoid
the federally mandated rationing that kicks in when the lake
elevation hits certain thresholds. Now comes a forecast bearing
worrisome news. For the second time since 2019, we may be in
for a reduction. A study issued last month by the Bureau of
Reclamation says the lake level could dip below 1,075 feet by
the end of the year.
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?
The calls came in shortly after the story in The New York Times
announced Wall Street was on the prowl for “billions in the
Colorado’s water.” … The national story raised hackles
across Colorado. It defined agriculture as a “wrong” use of
Colorado River water and detailed a growing swarm of investors
eager to inject Wall Street’s strategies into the West’s
century-old water laws. The idea of private investment in
public water has galvanized the state’s factious water
guardians.
Ongoing drought in parts of the West could trigger water
conservation measures across seven states this year. It would
mark the first time that cutbacks outlined in drought
contingency plans drafted two years ago have been put in place.
Everything from hydroelectric power generation to agricultural
production to the bubbling fountains at Las Vegas casinos could
be impacted. Impacts on hydro generation could have ripple
effects across the Southwest, including solar and energy
storage.
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.
Colorado is headwaters to a hardworking river that provides for
40 million people. The importance of the Colorado River to the
state and the nation cannot be overstated, and its recent
hydrology serves as a reminder that we must continue to find
workable solutions that will sustain the river. History shows
that we are up to the challenge. As Colorado’s commissioner and
lead negotiator on Colorado River issues, it is my job to
protect Colorado’s interests in the river. -Written by Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s current Colorado
River Commissioner and director of the Colorado Water
Conservation Board.
If there’s a dominant force in the Colorado River Basin these
days, it’s the Walton Family Foundation, flush with close to $5
billion to give away. Run by the heirs of Walmart founder Sam
Walton, the foundation donates $25 million a year to nonprofits
concerned about the Colorado River. It’s clear the foundation
cares deeply about the river in this time of excruciating
drought, and some of its money goes to river restoration or
more efficient irrigation. Yet its main interest is promoting
“demand management,” the water marketing scheme that seeks to
add 500,000 acre-feet of water to declining Lake Powell by
paying rural farmers to temporarily stop irrigating.
Several years ago, while studying the environmental impacts of
large-scale solar farms in the Nevada desert, Desert Research
Institute scientists Yuan Luo, Ph.D. and Markus Berli, Ph.D.
became interested in one particular question: how does the
presence of thousands of solar panels impact desert hydrology?
This question led to more questions. “How do solar panels
change the way water hits the ground when it rains?” they
asked. “Where does the water go? How much of the rain water
stays in the soil? How deep does it go into the soil?”
Many in Utah think of Las Vegas as a colony of water waste.
Fountains, swimming pools, golf courses and lawns come to mind.
While those things exist, they are not as widespread as they
once were – nor as profligate. Today, Southern Nevada, with a
small share of the Colorado River and limited
groundwater, is an emblem of responsible water use.
Southern Utah is not. But it doesn’t have to be that way. -Written by Kyle Roerink, executive director of the
Great Basin Water Network.
In a bold step toward a new kind of collaboration in the
Colorado River Basin, the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California and Southern Nevada Water Authority are
partnering to explore development of a drought-proof water
supply that could reduce reliance on the over-stressed river.
Water conservation isn’t cheap. But it’s not as pricey as
300-mile pipelines and water grabs. Last week, the Southern
Nevada Water Authority’s board passed its 2020 Water Resource
Plan — a blueprint detailing the water purveyor’s estimates for
supply and demand in a world with a declining Colorado River,
spiking temperatures and increasing populations. -Written by Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great
Basin Water Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
protecting water resources in the nation’s driest places.
In early November, the Domestic Names Committee of the U.S.
Board of Geographic Names voted unanimously to name a peak in
Nevada’s Amargosa Valley, outside of Death Valley National
Park, for the endangered Devils Hole and the Ash Meadows
Amargosa pupfishes.
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.
In a new study published in Earth’s Future…climate change
projections show consistent future increases in atmospheric
evaporative demand (or the “atmospheric thirst”) over
California and Nevada. These changes were largely driven by
warmer temperatures, and would likely lead to significant
on-the-ground environmental impacts.
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.
For a city built in an arid desert basin in Nevada, the USA’s
driest state with around 10 inches of rainfall a year, this
doesn’t sound too surprising. But the climate emergency and
recent droughts have changed the complexion and urgency of the
problem.
Meadows in the Sierra Nevada are critical components of
watersheds. In addition to supplying water to over 25 million
people in California and Nevada, meadows contain large
quantities of carbon belowground. … A new study led by
researchers at the University of Nevada Reno demonstrates for
the first time that meadows throughout the region are both
gaining and losing carbon at high rates.
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.
Proposals to divert water in New Mexico, Nevada and Utah have
run up against significant legal, financial and political
roadblocks this year. But while environmental groups have
cheered the setbacks, it’s still unclear whether these projects
have truly hit dead ends or are simply waiting in the wings.
Raising salmon in the desert seems like an unlikely mission,
but that is exactly what Norwegian-based West Coast Salmon AS
intends to do. The company announced in early October it had
secured a first round of financing for a land-based Atlantic
salmon farm facility south of Winnemucca near the
Humboldt/Pershing County line.
Located at the Knudtsen Resource Center at the University of
Nevada, Reno, the lab will provide agriculture-focused
analytical services to support faculty- and student-led
research at the University. The lab is also offering analytical
services for a fee to the general public, including property
owners and homeowners, who may need to have soil or water
samples analyzed.
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.
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.
On September 17, 2020, the Nevada Supreme Court issued a
decision on whether Nevada’s public trust doctrine permits
reallocation of water rights previously settled under Nevada’s
prior appropriation doctrine. The majority found that the
public trust doctrine does not permit such reallocation.
In the area that the Moapa Valley Water District serves, water
users are facing an uncomfortable future: People are going to
have to use less water than they were once promised. Over the
last century, state regulators handed out more groundwater
rights than there was water available. Today state officials
say that only a fraction of those rights can be used, which
could mean cuts.
U.S. and tribal officials are celebrating completion of a $34
million fish bypass system at a Nevada dam that will allow a
threatened trout species to return to some of its native
spawning grounds for the first time in more than a century.
Construction of the side channel with fish-friendly screens is
a major step toward someday enabling Lahontan cutthroat trout
to make the same 100-mile journey — from a desert lake
northeast of Reno to Lake Tahoe atop the Sierra — that they did
before the dam was built in 1905.
The recent downgrade in the forecast for the flow of water in
the Colorado River should be a death punch to the proposal to
build a new pipeline out of Lake Powell. The pipeline was
already a major threat to Las Vegas and much of the rest of the
Southwest; now the threat risk is heading off the charts.
According to river flow data, there is currently almost no
water flowing into Walker Lake, a common condition. Today,
where the riverbed meets the lake is an ooze of mud. The lake
is all but biologically dead. But a decades-old public trust
lawsuit made a move forward in its glacial process through
federal courts last week, and advocates are hopeful Walker
Lake, a cornerstone of the regional economy and ecology, can
one day be revived.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation joined its partners,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Farmers Conservation
Alliance, to celebrate the completion of the Derby Dam Fish
Screen Project. The infrastructure modernization project at
Derby Dam will provide Lahontan Cutthroat Trout access to
natural spawning grounds for the first time since 1905.
Lawyers representing Mineral County and the Walker Lake Working
Group announced this week they intend to take a water rights
case with broad implications back to federal appeals court to
ask whether Nevada can adjust already allocated water rights to
sustain rivers and lakes long-term.
The monsoon season — that period from mid-June through
September that each year brings rains to the Mojave Desert and
other areas of the Southwest from the tropical coast of Mexico
— has been a dud this year. Las Vegas is in the middle of a
record-breaking stretch without rain, and residents should be
prepared for it to stay that way, scientists say.
Regional water conservation groups and a Clark County
commissioner welcomed a request by Utah officials Thursday to
extend the federal environmental review of a controversial plan
to divert billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River
to southwest Utah.
We analysed data reported by the Bureau of Reclamation and the
U. S. Geological Survey that describe the primary inflows to
Lake Powell and the Colorado River between Glen Canyon Dam and
Lake Mead, as well as the losses from both reservoir and the
releases from Hoover Dam. … The significance of the
uncertainties we identify can be measured by reminding the
reader that the annual consumptive uses by the state of Nevada
cannot exceed 300,000 acre feet/year…
