The Colorado River System at Risk: An Emergency Plan to Improve Water Flows on the Colorado River as Levees Go Crunch or Go Wild

The US Department of Interior announced Friday it is launching an “expedited” process to potentially change water-flow operations on the drought-stricken Colorado River, as Lake Mead and Lake Powell have fallen to alarming new lows.

“We are committed to taking prompt and decisive action necessary to protect the Colorado River System and all those who depend on it,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a Friday statement. The current operating guidelines for Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams need to be changed because of rapidly changing conditions in the Basin.

According to the Bureau of Reclamation, hydroelectricity from the two dams can be distributed to customers in eight Western states, but experts are concerned that the levels of each dam will decline so much in the future that they won’t be able to continue to produce power.

Arizona is one of the last places in the US that should be reckless with its water resources. Climate change and overuse have led to the decline in the Colorado River, which is the state’s primary source of water. Water managers from seven states in the river basin failed in August to meet a federal deadline to make dramatic reductions. As a result, the Bureau of Reclamation ordered Arizona to cut its use of water from the river by 21 percent. Arizona’s cities and rural areas alike are at risk if they lose access to Colorado River water only to find their groundwater reserves sucked dry, too.

Negotiations have dragged on and proved contentious, and still it is unclear whether states can come to an agreement. If they don’t, Reclamation’s Commissioner Camille Touton said this summer, the federal government would act on its own to save the river system from collapsing.

The Bureau was prepared to act on its own, if necessary, when she said she would rather strike a deal with the states.

“To me, it expresses a hope that there would be a consensus agreement, which would make life so much easier for the bureau and Secretary of Interior,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “It’s certainly a signal that the bureau has not forsworn unilateral action.”

To cut 2 to 4 million people off the basin, the seven states were asked by the US Bureau of Reclamation commissioner last year.

The federal government would take action on their own if they were told how much water they needed to cut.

Porter said it might be useful for Interior to include the no action alternative because it would show how bad an absence of action would be to the river system.

Arizona Water Laws: Signs of a Long-Term Firefight? News from Valley Leaders and the AZ Water Secretary Tom Buschatzke

A draft of the changes would be released in the spring of next year, according to the bureau, with a final decision being released in late summer. The decision would go into effect for the next water year, which begins in the fall of 2023.

There is more than farming operations. Other sectors like mining and the military, which have a huge presence in the state, also benefit from Arizona’s lax water laws. It is difficult to understand how much water is being used up by one of the large employers in the state, a company with a presence in Arizona and Saudi Arabia. But manufacturing missiles has a water cost, too. The product is being shipped to Saudi Arabia.

Failing to do so means either of these lakes, the largest manmade reservoirs in the country, could reach “dead pool” in the next two years, where the water level is too low to flow through the dams and downstream to the communities and farmers that need it.

Western state officials wrote a letter in May agreeing to leave 1 million acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Then, they watched as the same amount of water disappeared due to system losses and evaporation.

“Everything we tried to do through the May 3 letter was wiped out by mother nature,” top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN. “We have to understand that could happen to us again. It’s been happening to us almost every year for the past few years.”

Anxiety is growing in the West as reservoir levels plummet. Negotiations between the states on voluntary water cuts have been tense and closely watched, particularly between the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada.

Those talks have stalled amid disagreement on how much water each state should sacrifice and how much money farmers, tribal nations and cities should be paid to reduce their water consumption.

State negotiators are awaiting instructions from the feds on how to distribute $4 billion in relief money for the ongoing heat wave and water shortage.

It is more difficult due to the uncertainty about the difference between the federal government’s money and the voluntary cuts districts will make.

If voluntary cuts don’t come close to what is needed, there is a possibility the federal government will step in. A court challenge would likely be the first reaction to that plan.

The director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University told CNN that they are ready for a possible lawsuit over mandatory cuts because they can demonstrate that it is not an arbitrary action.

At a December conference of Colorado River water users, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior Tanya Trujillo addressed that likelihood, according to Porter.

Overall, the outlook from the National Weather Service’s River Forecast Center for the Colorado River Basin suggest springtime snow melt will be close to average.

Simpson said that climate change is probably going to make dry years worse.

Since the 1980’s, the Southwest region has seen a steady decline in precipitation. Simpson said that decades-long lack of rain and a rise in planet-warming emissions have worsened the conditions.

During extended periods of heat dry air is able to evaporate water from the soil. Air sucks up water from what is left of them when there is enough rain, and this is one of the reasons the Colorado River is experiencing water shortages.

There’s also a high chance that the lack of rain and low snowpack aren’t going away anytime soon, she said. The jet stream, which carries storms around the globe, is expected to shift northward during the winter because of La Nia. That means less precipitation for a region that desperately needs it.

The Great Salt Lake is facing an unprecedented danger as it has fallen to an alarmingly low level due to a megadrought that has tightened its grip in the West.

“Its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy,” the authors wrote in the report. “The choices we make over the next few months will affect our state and ecosystems throughout the West for decades to come.”

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. Benjamin Abbott, a professor of ecology and lead author of the report, stated that it is collapsing. It is jaw-dropping and disarming to see how much of the lake is gone. The lake is pretty much all water right now.

He said that this is a bellwether for the larger river basins. We need to say what we are going to do so that we can make sense of where we are headed.

The Great Salt Lake needs an extra 1.5 million acres of water per year to resupply the lake, and it’s environmental impact on the Northern Hemisphere

The lake needs an additional 1 million acre-feet of water per year to reverse the decline, the report states. Its average inflow would go up to 2.5 million acre-feet a year if it did that. (An acre-foot is the amount of water that would cover 1 acre of land a foot deep — roughly 326,000 gallons.)

The stakes are raised for getting the short-term policies because this is a huge opportunity. There is a chance that we have all of the water, but not much of it goes to the lake. We could divert it and use it for business as usual, but that would be a huge missed opportunity.

The authors of the report would like the governor to make a declaration of a state of emergency and implement emergency water rationing measures that would ensure that the water makes it to the lake to replenish it.

The impacts are widespread. The decline of the lake jeopardizes critical habitat for rare species, as well as the state’s local economy. From the mineral industry to agriculture and recreation, the Great Salt Lake contributes $1.3 billion to the annual economy, according to a state assessment. If the lake keeps dry, the economic toll may be as high as $2.2 billion a year.

The rapid drying of the lakebed also exposes harmful dust that could harm human health. The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, where water can flow in but not out of the basin. When strong winds blow over a lake, they kick up small particles that can cause lung damage, as well as increase the risk of respiratory illness. These pollutants have been linked to health complications such as asthma, heart disease and chronic bronchitis.

The Colorado River Water California-Arizona Climate Rift: Why Six States are Playing with Fire: Wade Noble and the Supreme Court

The states’ model would allow for a maximum of 3.1 million acre feet per year of basin-wide cuts. It accounts for water conservation and evaporation and, if approved, could kick in if reservoir levels fall to catastrophically low conditions.

The rift is the result of a decades-long rancorer relationship between California and Arizona that has contributed to the crisis of a river system due to years of usage and climate change.

Six states are taking a different approach than the law requires, which is troubling. “It is everyone’s best interest to avoid litigation, but being put into a situation like this where you have six states approaching things in this way raises the risk.”

David Hayes, a former top climate aide to Joe Biden, said that California is playing with fire. Water rights holders aren’t the only ones who have bigger issues than this. This could affect the entire state of California’s economy.

Due to the inability of states to agree on a common stance and the growing pressure on the federal government, many are expecting litigation that could wind up at the Supreme Court this year.

Wade Noble is a lawyer representing farmers and irrigation districts and he does not know if the Supreme Court will take it. “I suspect everybody who has been lawyering up wants to make sure their legal team has Supreme Court experience. These are the types of problems that end up there.

Imperial Irrigation District’s senior rights entitle it to use just over 3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water every year, the same amount of water as Arizona and Nevada’s entire allocations combined.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/us/colorado-river-water-california-arizona-climate/index.html

Water Rights in the 21st Century: Is It Really Necessary to Wait Until the Supreme Court Decision is Reached?

“We’re not going to give up a century of history and position and things that people worked for over a century to protect in two days,” Hamby said of the recent negotiations. Doing away with the priority approach is not acceptable.

There isn’t any need for water deliveries to be cut back below the Hoover Dam if a water rights case is going to be heard in the Supreme Court. It can take years, that’s for sure. There will be no legal solution to the problem of insufficient water. That reality needs to be faced.”