The Colorado River, which allows the desert to sustain itself and powers millions of American homes, is currently engaged in the fight of its life. The rapidly sinking river—victim of a nearly 23-year-long megadrought—stretches 1,450 miles, snaking its way from Colorado through Arizona, Nevada, and California, and finally into Mexico, where it should theoretically dump out into the Sea of Cortez.
California and other southwestern states have been in the grip of a megadrought for the past two decades.
Scientists say that, despite recent storms, these drought-stricken states won’t be relieved from the hot and dry weather for a long time, and not without large amounts of rain.
It may feel like California is flush with water at the moment, after a winter of historic storms that replenished drought-starved lakes and left the Sierra Nevada snowpack at the deepest it’s been in 28 years. But follow the Colorado River, which supplies 15% of California’s water, back to bottomed-out reservoirs like Nevada’s Lake Mead, and it becomes clear the future of water in the Golden State is still very much in flux.
Forty percent or more of all water use in western US cities goes to outdoor watering of lawns, gardens, pools, and golf courses. One of the most effective urban water conservation strategies is to reduce the area of irrigated landscaping, or switching to less water-intensive vegetation.
My research group spent three years collecting water data and other information from 28 water utilities that serve a total of 23 million people in the American Southwest. The task wasn’t easy: 39 researchers were involved in collecting data from 45 different utility employees. Each of these utilities we surveyed is dependent on the Colorado River for some portion or all of their water supplies.
With the Colorado River in crisis, there is still no agreement over which states and regions should have their water allocations cut back and how soon those cuts should go into effect.
Seven states in the western United States take water from the Colorado River, and although six of them have agreed on a framework, the lone holdout is the largest user of Colorado River water in the county: California.
Arizona was girding for war with California over the Colorado River.
The year was 1934 and the place was the construction site of Parker Dam, downstream from the nearly completed Hoover Dam.
Arizona Gov. Benjamin Baker Moeur, irked that a federally approved interstate compact had awarded California more water from the Colorado than he thought it deserved, dispatched a squad of National Guard troops to the river on a ferryboat to block the new dam’s construction.
A multistate quest to protect a dwindling Colorado River has devolved into a high-stakes battle pitting California against its neighbors.
At odds are two dueling proposals as to how seven states should apportion critical consumption cuts that could help save the lifeblood of the Western United States.
You would have to be at least a septuagenarian to remember “Rebel Without a Cause,” a 1955 movie that starred James Dean and depicted the lives of aimless teenagers.
The film’s most memorable scene was a game of chicken in which two boys raced cars side by side toward a cliff and the first one to bail out was the loser. The “winner,” however, died when his car hurtled over the cliff.
The decades-old agreements that outline water rights to the Colorado River Basin are leading to an impasse on an issue affecting millions of people in the American Southwest.
On Jan. 31, the seven states that draw water from the basin had to come up with a plan to voluntarily cut back on using water from the basin. Six states — Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — agreed on one proposal. But California, which is the state the uses the most water, rejected that plan and submitted its own.
The lower Colorado River has been out of balance for about 40 years, using more water than has been available. As their reservoirs empty, the three lower basin states, federal government, and water users are getting around to addressing this problem.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
