As California is preparing for their fourth year of drought, the Bureau of Reclamation warns Central Valley Project water contractors of lessened water allocations. Two months after the start of the new water year on Oct. 1, the Shasta Reservoir, the state’s largest reservoir and cornerstone of the Central Valley Project (CVP), is currently at 31% capacity.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has a plan for how the seven states that rely on the Colorado River can protect Lake Mead and Lake Powell. But whether the other six states have any interest in backing that plan remains to be seen. The water authority on Tuesday outlined how it thinks the Colorado River basin states and the federal government can drastically cut back on water use along the dwindling Colorado next year in order to keep water levels at its two major reservoirs from crashing further and threatening putting their ability to deliver water downstream and generate hydropower.
The speeches at the Colorado River summit in Las Vegas last week ranged all the way from pessimistic to panicked. Ted Cooke, the outgoing director of the Central Arizona Project, summed it up: “(T)here’s a real possibility of an effective dead pool“ at Lake Mead, making it impossible to release water through Hoover Dam for downstream delivery to Arizona and California.
The Colorado River’s water levels are the lowest they have been in a century. Scientists fear the reservoirs the river feeds into could reach deadpool level in the next few years. That would mean the water level would be too low to flow downstream from a dam or to drive turbines to generate power. And these reservoirs are integral for surrounding water supply.
After absorbing sunshine all summer, mature rice plants in California’s Sacramento Valley stand as high as three feet tall, in five inches of flood water. Planted in spring, farmers drain their fields in August, and they drive big, loud harvesters into them in September, gently separating the rice stalks from the grain, and blowing the harvest into bankout wagons that they tow beside them.
A plan pushed by Gov. Doug Ducey to use desalinated seawater to address Arizona’s water woes crossed a major hurdle today. Despite transparency concerns from lawmakers, the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority board unanimously approved a resolution today directing the board chairman and staff to begin discussions with IDE Technologies, an Israeli company planning to build a desalination plant on the Sea of Cortez in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.
State officials from across the Colorado River Basin seized on a single message as they gathered here to discuss the future of the struggling waterway last week: The river is in a state of emergency that will very soon reach a crisis for the 40 million people who rely on it, affecting agriculture and municipalities alike. But faced with doomsday projections from the Bureau of Reclamation about major reservoirs, officials agreed that harmony has not yet extended to how best to address the shortfalls triggered by more than two decades of drought, which have dramatically constricted both the river’s flows and water storage.
Water authorities in the Western U.S. don’t have a crystal ball, but rapidly receding reservoirs uncovering sunken boats and other debris lost in their depths decades ago give a clear view of the hard choices ahead. If western states do not agree on a plan to safeguard the Colorado River — the source of the region’s vitality — there won’t be enough water for anyone.
Manuel Machado Gerardo watched the mighty Colorado River Delta die perhaps more clearly than any man alive. Taking the final drags from his cigarette, he steps outside his home to greet the 112-degree heat and survey the hundreds of acres of northern Mexico farmland he’s owned for decades.
The most important piece of California’s water puzzle is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 1,100-square-mile estuary where the state’s two most important rivers meet. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain a watershed of mountains and hills that stretches about 400 miles from Mount Shasta, near the Oregon border, to the Sierra southeast of Fresno.
