These are desperate days for the Colorado River.
The pulsing lifeblood of the U.S. southwest is increasingly parched. To avert catastrophe, the U.S. government will, within weeks, propose historic cuts in water access. It’s a frantic move to protect a river that provides so much: drinking water for tens of millions of people, electricity and food. Lots of food.
The Supreme Court is extremely strict about what can be brought into its chambers during oral arguments. In addition to obvious items like guns and knives, visitors must leave just about every other personal item outside when they enter. Cameras, cell phones, laptops, and the like are left outside—even if you’re a reporter. No snacks or drinks can be brought in. Not even water.
Snow scientists identify April 6 as the typical date to best evaluate the snowpack levels for the runoff to the Colorado River each year.
This year, with a month to go, things are looking good. And it’s about a lot more than just how deep the snow is right now.
The Review-Journal’s Feb. 15 editorial promoting federal intervention to solve the Colorado River crisis contains many inaccuracies.
Let’s start with the inference that a six-state proposal is an actual “accord,” lacking only California’s acquiescence. It is not. A “consensus” solution based primarily on reducing the entitlements of water users not involved in the discussions, or in concurrence with the final proposal — and namely the most senior water right priority tribes, lower Colorado River agricultural water users, California contractors and Mexico — is not consensus or an implementable solution to the crisis.
Tom Brundy, an alfalfa grower in California’s Imperial Valley, thinks farmers reliant on the shrinking Colorado River can do more to save water and use it more efficiently. That’s why he’s installed water sensors and monitors to prevent waste on nearly two-thirds of his 3,000 acres.
But one practice that’s off-limits for Brundy is fallowing — leaving fields unplanted to spare the water that would otherwise irrigate crops. It would save plenty of water, Brundy said, but threatens both farmers and rural communities economically.
The three states that comprise the Colorado River’s Lower Basin – Arizona, California and Nevada – are weighing in on a proposal to pause some water releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in an effort to prop up Lake Powell.
Those states essentially agreed with the idea of suspending water releases, but said water managers should wait a few months to see the full effects of spring runoff, and leave the door open for additional releases if warranted. They also stressed the need for input from all of the states which use water from the Colorado River.
There is an old saying in the water world that it is better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a law book, which is the position California finds itself in as it stands apart from its neighbors on the Colorado River in negotiations over the use of the river’s water.
On Jan. 31, representatives for the six other basin states submitted a proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, describing the measures by which the supply deficit on the Colorado River should be closed in the near term.
Meteorologist Bo Svoma hopped down into the 4-foot-deep pit he had shoveled and grinned like a school kid on a snow day.
“Bo is happy!” shouted one of his Salt River Project colleagues working snow survey duty on Tuesday.
There’s a lot for the metro Phoenix water supplier to be happy about this winter. What was supposed to be an unusually dry winter because of the return of the ocean and atmospheric phenomenon known as La Nińa has instead shaped up as the Arizona rim country’s second-snowiest season in 30 years.
This weekend brought San Diego county one of the season’s biggest winter storms.
A cold storm from the north on Thursday brought low temperatures and snow levels down to 2,000 feet of elevation. Then conditions warmed as an atmospheric river brought tropical moisture to the region.
It’s not even March yet, but the mountains that feed the Colorado River already have seen more snow this winter than they normally would through an entire snow season.
And with some snow in the forecast, there’s still more time for that snowpack to grow.
