Colorado River Compact states up deep shit creek

 

Above: Lies from the Bureau of Reclamation, posted in the visitor center at Glen Canyon Dam. Flood control was already fine with Hoover Dam; it worsened conditions for fish. Author photo. 

Inside Climate News has the details, citing experts saying water consumption needs to be cut "immediately."

How bad is it?

Many of my environmentally minded readers know what "dead pool" is:

The report is stark in its assessment of the situation: Current Colorado River levels require “immediate and substantial reductions in consumptive use across the Basin” or Lake Powell by 2027 would have no storage left and “would have to be operated as a ‘run of river” facility” in which only the inflow from the river could be released downstream.

That bad.

By next year, not even 2027, the river's two main reservoirs, Powell and Lake Mead, may be down to just 9 percent of capacity. 

Not that national, or most state-level, Democrats are THAT environmentally minded, but compared to the Trump Administration? Trump himself probably thinks he can write an executive order ordering one of the other of Glen Canyon and Hoover dams, or both, to simply store more water.

He would, of course, be wrong:

“The River recognizes no human laws or governance structures and follows only physical ones,” the report’s authors wrote. “There is a declining amount of water available in the Colorado River system, primarily caused by the effects of a warming climate—longer growing seasons, drier soils, and less efficient conversion of the winter snowpack into stream flow. Although American society has developed infrastructure to store the spring snowmelt and make that water available in other seasons to more completely utilize the variable runoff, the Colorado River watershed produces only a finite volume of water, regardless of how many dams exist.”

There you are.

Worse, the new report says that one or another of the two lakes don't have to actually fall to dead pool to start having problems:

Adding to the issue is the status of the infrastructure that enables the river to be diverted and stored for use. For example, the researchers write, it was thought that anything above what’s known as “dead pool”—a water level below the reservoirs’ lowest outlets that can pass water through the dams—was “active storage.” But testing last year from the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency overseeing the river and its dams, found that those outlets can only be safely used at water levels higher than previously thought and cannot be used for long durations.

And, that means that power generation becomes problematic even above dead pool.

I posted this on Hucksterman, tagging my sister who lives in Phoenix. She and her hubby are close enough to semi-retired that they're looking for new landing places. I suggested they speed up that process, and I think she doesn't really get it, either. She doesn't get that this is yet more reason for people to "Abandon hope and abandon the Desert Southwest."

"Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell," Cactus Ed said. But, none of the seven basin states wants to listen.

"We'll just pump more groundwater!" is the answer in general, and especially of Aridzona, the worst offender. 

Unfortunately, as that story notes, groundwater is not included in the Colorado River Compact negotiations. And, I highly doubt a solution to renegotiating the compact in general is found before its expiration next year.