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‘Borrowing From the Future’: What an Emerging Megadrought Means for the Southwest

/in , , /by /Cronkite News (Arizona PBS, Phoenix)by Madison Staten

It’s the early 1990s, and Park Williams stands in the middle of Folsom Lake, at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills in Northern California. He’s not walking on water; severe drought has exposed the lakebed.

“I remember being very impressed by the incredible variability of water in the West and how it’s very rare that we actually have just enough water,” said Williams, who went on to become a climate scientist at Columbia University. “It’s often the case there’s either too much or too little.”

Williams is the lead author on a report out this month in the journal Science detailing the extent of drought conditions in the American West.

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Tensions Emerge as a Top Arizona Official Discusses Tribes’ Unresolved Water Claims

/in , , /by /Arizona Republicby Ian James

Many of Arizona’s Native tribes have long-standing claims to water rights that haven’t yet been settled, and a discussion of efforts to negotiate possible agreements took center stage at a meeting of Gov. Doug Ducey’s water council.

The meeting grew tense after Arizona’s top water official gave a presentation on the status of tribes’ unresolved water claims, and then didn’t allow leaders of four tribes to speak.

Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said he sent letters a week ago to all 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona inviting them to speak about the issue at upcoming meetings later this year.

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‘This System Cannot Be Sustained’

/in , , /by /High Country Newsby Anna V. Smith

The Colorado River Basin is the setting for some of the most drawn-out and complex water issues in the Western U.S. In 2019, the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan — a water-conservation agreement between states, tribal nations and the federal government for the basin, now in its 20th year of drought — passed Congress. This year, it goes into effect.

2020 will also see the start of the renegotiation of the Colorado River Interim Guidelines. The guidelines, which regulate the flow of water to users, were created in 2007 without tribal consultation and are set to expire in 2026. The 29 tribal nations in the upper and lower basins hold some of the river’s most senior water rights and control around 20% of its annual flow.
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Lawmakers Angle for a Seat at the Table in Colorado River Drought Negotiations

/in , , /by /Casper Star-Tribuneby Nick Reynolds

CHEYENNE – For nearly a century, the Colorado River Compact has practically been seen as scripture for states from Wyoming all the way down to the Mexican border.

The compact – written in the years populations in the American Southwest first began to explode – has been the code by which life along the Colorado River Basin has been granted, a strict allocation of the snowmelt from the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the Arizona desert and the parched reaches of the expansive fields of Southern California.

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Climate Change Has Stolen More Than a Billion Tons of Water From the West’s Most Vital River

/in , , /by /Washington Postby Juliet Eilperin

The Colorado River’s average annual flow has declined by nearly 20 percent compared to the last century, and now a new study has identified one of the main culprits: Climate change is causing mountain snowpack to disappear, leading to increased evaporation.

Four recent studies have found that up to half of the drop in the Colorado’s average annual flow since 2000 has been driven by warmer temperatures. Now, two U.S. Geological Survey researchers have concluded that much of this climate-induced decline — amounting to 1.5 billion tons of missing water, equal to the annual water consumption of 10 million Americans — comes from the fact that the region’s snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier. Having less snow to reflect heat from the sun, known as the albedo effect, creates a feedback loop, they say.

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Water is Colorado’s Most Critical Resource. So Why isn’t it Central to Every Local Land-Use Decision?

/in , , /by /The Colorado Sun (Denver, Colo.)by Moe Clark

In the early 1980s, the small city of Woodland Park started strategically planning how to protect its water supply for the future.

“Because we have all junior water rights and a limited water supply, we knew we must be very careful about how we grow,” said Sally Riley, planning director for Woodland Park, which is home to approximately 7,500 people in the mountains west of Colorado Springs. “We’ve pretty much mapped out exactly how our 6.5 square miles are going to grow.”

To ensure that they don’t develop beyond the limits of their water supply, Riley says the city has closely integrated its land-use decisions with local water conservation and efficiency goals that align with the Colorado Water Plan.

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Calexico-QSA-Imperial Irrigation District-Imperial Valley

Imperial Valley Conservation Efforts Benefit San Diego, Southwest

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The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors visited the Imperial Valley January 30 for a day-long tour that highlighted areas critical to the agency’s Regional Conveyance System Study.

Board members approved a study in July 2019, to evaluate a new regional water conveyance system that would deliver water from the Colorado River to San Diego County and provide multiple benefits across the Southwest.  The Board will hear results from the first phase of the study this spring before deciding whether to move ahead with Phase B.

Imperial Valley tour of potential routes for regional conveyance

The tour started in southwestern Imperial County, where the All-American Canal meets the Westside Main Canal, an historic location where, starting in 1919, water from a canal system in Mexico first flowed into the western half of the Imperial Valley. It is also the place where three potential routes for a new water conveyance system, now being analyzed in the study, would begin.

“The goal of the study is to determine first, whether there is a cost benefit to the Water Authority and its member agencies in the long-term to build a regional conveyance system to transport our independent Colorado River supplies from the Imperial Valley directly to San Diego County,” said Dan Denham, the Water Authority’s deputy general manager.

One specific benefit to the Water Authority, the Imperial Irrigation District, and farmers in the Imperial Valley, would be the proposal to build an operational storage facility in the valley’s western area. The facility could help manage water deliveries to serve the needs of agriculture in the valley, while helping the Water Authority manage its transfer supply.

The trip included visits to several agriculture fields for a first-hand look at the latest conservation techniques used by farmers under the 2003 Colorado River Quantification Settlement Agreement.

Tom Brundy: Conservation is ‘extremely important’

Tom Brundy has been farming in the Imperial Valley for more than 40 years, and today he grows hay on 4,000 acres. Most of the hay produced by the farm is sold to customers in San Diego County, one of many connections between Imperial and San Diego counties.

“Every farmer in Imperial County is conserving water, and quite a bit,” said Tom Brundy, president of the Imperial County Farm Bureau. “I have subsurface drip on alfalfa, we’re using soil monitors and soil sensors to help us in our water scheduling, and we continue to modify our methods using new technology that saves water.”

Farmer Alex Jack: ‘out of the box thinking’

Jack Bros. Inc. also is an innovator in on-farm conservation. Alex Jack is a third-generation farmer using pump back systems and permanent drip irrigation. Many of his crops, from lettuce to cauliflower, are grown with zero water runoff.

Jack calls his progressive approach “out of the box thinking.”

“My goal is to be the best farmer possible,” said Jack. “If I happen to conserve water, that’s fantastic, but most of the new high-technology methods are conserving water.”

Salton Sea Restoration Program

The east side of the Salton Sea was the final stop on the Imperial Valley tour. Board members got an update on restoration efforts, including the 500-acre Red Hill Marina Wetlands Project, one of the first Salton Sea Management Program projects.

Representatives from the California Department of Water Resources, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Imperial Irrigation District described how the area was once a prime bird-watching location before the Salton Sea began receding. The 500-acre project will decrease dust emissions by creating a shallow marine habitat using water from the Salton Sea and a nearby river.

The project is a partnership between the federal and state government, and the Imperial Irrigation District – with a portion of the funding coming from a federal assistance program that the Quantification Settlement Agreement Joint Powers Authority helped fund. Work is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The Imperial Valley tour, which highlighted the partnerships between San Diego and Imperial County, was part of an on-going series of tours led by the Water Authority’s Colorado River Program.