Colorado River Compact and bad assumptions by High Country News

This is a few weeks late, but I'm sure that, per this HCN story, the deadline for states to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact has passed.

So, the feds step in, right?

Well, theoretically:

Scott Cameron, acting leader of the Bureau of Reclamation, has said the federal government expects a finalized plan in May or June 2026. This gives policymakers time to get the necessary approval from state legislators and to implement any changes before the new water year begins next fall. Should the states fail to produce a joint plan, though, he said that the feds will step in. But the details of how they’d intervene are unclear and the administration’s complete dismissal of climate change and recent cuts to funding have only added confusion about how much federal support there will be moving forward.

That said, here's where we're at bad assumptions, starting with HCN never mentioning the name "Donald J. Trump."

Will he have BuRec step in, or are we first due for a round of his "personal negotiations"? If so, will small-water states like Nevada, with Trump personal friends like Miriam Adelson, to whose late husband he owes his 2016 election, per James Bamford, step in and upset the applecart? 

Also, per the "acting" with Mr. Cameron, how many directors might BuRec go through in the next few years? 

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. 

Declining Rio Grande reservoirs aren't all Mexico's fault

They're Texas' as well.

Note to Strangeabbott et al? It's called climate change.

As for the degree this might have been New Mexico's fault, before a Texas-New Mexico settlement that a 6-3 SCOTUS majority rightly nixed?

Note to Tiffany Lashmet Dowell, who I thought was better than this? The feds rowing their oar in on the Texas-New Mexico Rio Grande deal is not some new version of Agenda 21 or something.

Given that the Texas-New Mexico water settlement could affect "deliverables," which in turn might affect treaty obligations, even if the Supreme Court ruling in the case didn't explictly mention the US-Mexico treaty of 1944 covering both the Rio Grande and the Colorado, it DID mention the nation of Mexico, and thus, the empirical issues behind that treaty. The majority opinion was the right one.

Blame the special water master for not looping the feds in from the start, as the feds had requested.

To use an analogy? And to take it from conditions on that other river of international treaty?

Assume, hypothetically, that there are still portions of the All-American Canal that are not lined by concrete. Picture the state of California claiming that leakage water flows into Mexico. (It probably flows more into the Salton Sea, if there is any, but play along.) Picture, whether as part of negotiations to extend and update the Colorado River Compact, or just a unilateral California declaration, it telling the other six states in the compact that it thinks that water should count as part of US deliverables to Mexico under treaty and so it will increase its take.

The six other states would, in general, laugh. Well, Aridzona would get irate, not laugh.

The feds would also laugh — and then row their oar into the issue. The analogy is complete because both the Colorado River Compact and the original Texas-New Mexico deal on the Rio Grande were completed before the US-Mexico treaty.

There's also the framing issue. Below El Paso, this isn't "Texas" delivering water to Mexico; it's the US. I didn't really care for Dowell going there; it felt close to Texas exceptionalism. The analogy holds here, too. Below Yuma, it's not Aridzona delivering water to Mexico, it's the US.

And, Lashmet also doesn't tell you, which NPR does (though ignoring why Mexico is holding some bits of water) that it has one full five-year cycle after a current one when it's behind the curve to make up a water deficit. As for that why, otherwise? Mexican president Lopez Obrador has been water-stingy since Strangeabbott started putting the razor wire in the river.

Contra High Country News, yes, banning alfalfa IS the answer

Specifically, contra High Country News' Jonathan Thompson and specifically, banning alfalfa from being irrigated off the Colorado River and tributaries.

Two years ago, HCN's editor at large Thompson claimed, straight up: 

So, banning alfalfa is not the answer.

And, I fired back at him.

Last year, a year later, the NYT of all people weighed in with a story on the Colorado's woes, that noted that livestock feed off all types uses a bit over half of total Colorado River basin usage.

And now, the LA Times, with more regional skin in the game than New York has, drops the hammer even harder. Alfalfa and other hay by itself — no corn, no milo, no other feedstocks — uses one-third the total water usage in the Colorado River basin.

And, more specific to the HCN plaint by Johnny Peace, who was looking at the San Juan River drainage in southwest Colorado? This:

In the upper basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — cattle-feed crops consumed 90% of all water used by irrigated agriculture on average.

Nails it.

Sadly, some of the researchers, like Brian Richter, while they get the math right:

“We need to get very serious about shifting to a different mixture of crops, and we need to reduce the overall footprint, the acreage of land, that is being used for farmland,” Richter said.

Miss the political science. This:

Richter said that as a scientist, he is reluctant to tell people what to eat, and thinks everyone should “act on their conscience.”

Is just wrong. The personally:

“Personally, once I started this research, I gave up beef consumption altogether,” Richter said.

Is nice. (I'm at near-zero on beef, and only modest-moderate amounts of pork.)

But, the other part? Wrong.

We use scientific information all the time to tell people not to do stuff. We use it, in another issue related to climate change, for private insurers to jack rates as hurricane and wildfire dangers increase.

Richter does get this right:

As the region’s water managers continue negotiating long-term approaches for reducing water use, Richter said it will be vital to create a fund with federal and state support to help farmers change crops or retire some cropland.

In other words, putting alfalfa on a glide path to extinction in the Colorado River drainage.

But, we should only do that in combo with other things, like the SEC requiring the ag sector overall to account for carbon emissions.

AND, in terms of the matter at hand? Contra that neoliberal nutter John Fleck, IMO, the new, post-2026 Colorado River Compact needs to get rid of the "Upper Basin" / "Lower Basin" division. Fleck, like Thompson, is also an alfalfa lover, per that second link.

To put it another way? Thompson needs to read Lyle Lewis' "Racing to Extinction." Amazon reviews here.

==

And, it's on the other side of the Rockies, on the High Plains, but, Thompson, there's a replacement that's gaining popularity. Grow millet.

Texas Progressives say "So long, Kenny Boy" (sort of)

Note: Per various sources, the Texas Senate will meet June 20 to discuss rules of Ken Paxton's trial. Lite Guv Dan Patrick has already named a committee of senators who will report to the full Senate then. Quorum Report says the trial will be held no later than Aug. 28.

With that all said, I want to laugh at members of the Texas division of #BlueAnon who claimed a week ago on Twitter that Patrick would have no such trial. I knew then that Goeb has no trouble throwing away former allies or political friends of convenience once their usefulness to him has expired. 

Off the Kuff was all over the impeachment proceedings against Ken Paxton. (With large chunks of quote-texting MSM sources.) In a further update after sending out the Roundup, he speculates about why it happened now as well as how he hopes the Senate trial plays out, and how this ties to Dems' 2024 state race chances.

Also on the Kenny Boy impeachment, Harold Dutton showed that at least one Democrap in the Lege can be just as cynical as any Rethuglican, and in addition, be as naive about Dems' statewide chances as Gilberto Hinojosa, Democrats' captain of the SS Minnow. Harold, meet Kuff. Kuff, meet Harold.

And, with that, on to the rest of the Roundup.

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SocraticGadfly explained what the new short-term tweak to the Colorado River Compact does and does not mean.

Multiple sites and people paid tribute to the great Houston-based writer and Texas original John Nova Lomax, who died this past week at the age of 53. A sampling, from the people who knew him and the places where his writing flourished: Houston Chronicle Houston Public Media Texas Highways Texas Monthly CultureMap Houston Houston Press The Press also dug up JML's classic series of stories called "Sole of Houston" in which he'd walk the entire length of an iconic Houston thoroughfare, sometimes over more than one day, and documented the experience in word and photo.

The Observer attended a memorial service for Uvalde victims on the one year anniversary of that massacre, which the Republicans in the Lege completely ignored.

Steve Vladeck wrote about being singled out for criticism by Justice Sam Alito for daring to mention the "shadow docket".

Mean Green Cougar Red offers a bit of perspective on the potential for a relocated NHL team in Houston.

"Congrats" to Boris Kagarlitsky for implying only Russia, not Ukraine, has draconian thought censorship, and "congrats" to Counterpunch for finding a Russian Eric Draitser.

Zionists trying to call Roger Waters a Nazi can fuck off. Sincerely, Mondoweiss.

Colorado River deal is not all that

The New York Times actually has a decent story.

Here's the biggies on what the Lower Basin states of the Colorado River Compact — California, Arizona and Nevada — have agreed to, and the four Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have tentatively signed off on.

First, this is a three-year deal. It merely postpones a long-term rewrite of the Compact by three years. Neoliberal John Fleck is probably doing huzzahs and hosannas somewhere. Don't follow his hype.

Second, the 3 million acre-feet of cuts? That's total over the three years. It's not bad, but, it's the minimum that needs to be done permanently in the Lower Basin. See Science Magazine from last year for what really needs to be done at a "minimum." But, they're not going to make a permanent deal until they get at least a bit of Upper Basin help.

More here on how this deal essentially is a boondoggle. With the "bribery" angle in place (for 3 years, $1.2 billion of Inflationmonger Joe's Inflation Reduction Act), alfalfa farmers will dig in their heels in four years. And, it ignores dams in the pipeline on the river's Upper Basin.

Third, it doesn't really address the elephant in the room. Aridzona can bitch about Saudi people buying up land there and irrigating alfalfa for Arabian horses — or Chinese beef. But, that doesn't excuse Aridzonans, or Californians on the west side of the river, from doing it themselves.

Fourth? While NOAA notes El Niño effects can be relatively weak in summer, that expected El Niño is already projected to be parking a dry high over the Southwest this summer. Hope you enjoy all the snowmelt because it's possible there won't be much of a monsoon season this year. 

Fifth? Follow the money. Federal "bribery" achieved what Basin states couldn't last year.

Fifth, part 2? BuRec's threat to void current appropriation percentages in the lower Basin? Surprised California apparently thought that was real, given BuRec's fake banhammer last summer.

Sixth? Per that fake banhammer link, the odds of California preserving the Salton Sea just dropped further.

Robert Glennon has more details, noting that the feds are paying for 2.3 MAF of the 3MAF  of cuts. He says more needs to be done, but given how hard it was to put together the original Compact, says that it should be within its framework and not starting anew. That said? The original deal expires in just 3 years, or, at the same time these temporary additional cuts go away. And, whatever the Supreme Court rules on Arizona v Navajo Nation, Indian water rights will loom much larger in 2026 than before. And, speaking of Thompson, he also weighs in; per him, it's most likely that the federal bribery is to take enough of that water-guzzling alfalfa out of circulation for three years by a short-term, specific, version of something like the Conservation Easement Program. So, not only is this short-term, it's short-term in a way that will backfire in three years. In addition, what if any of those people paid not to grow are the Arabs in Aridzona?

That said, that problem is not just on the Colorado. Look at what New Mexico does on southern New Mexico stretches of the Pecos and Rio Grande. Irrigation-driven dairy farming is wrecking Western water.

That's not to excuse irrigation-driven beef ranching, or the nostalgia of the likes of Jonathan Thompson. Nor is it to ignore ongoing PR by the National Cattleman's Beef Association pretending that sustainable beef is OK in our climate change world. (I ran into a guy on Medium making that claim, and now I wonder if he was a paid psyops.)

Finally, all of this ignores American Indian water rights issues, namely Navajo water rights claims on which the Supreme Court could rule later this month, per above comment. And, it's just possible that, even if the feds, behind Arizona, win, the victory would be Pyrrhic. See here.

Update to the last point? This HCN/Pro Publica piece about Aridzona screwing over Indians in general on water rights begins by noting just how this water could be used, but can't currently be used. A new hospital on the Big Rez stands unused because it doesn't have a guaranteed adequate water supply.

The future of Lake Powell, and the whole Colorado

First, per Yale Climate, and rightly so, it will NOT be "solved" by one year of heavy snowpack. (As of Feb. 6, we were at 129 percent of the 10-year average.) In fact, it won't be "solved" within current parameters, period. (The only problem I have with Yale's piece is way too much quoting and referencing of neoliberal Kumbaya environmentalist John Fleck and his partner in neoliberal environmentalism crime Eric Kuhn.)

The key on the good, yet bad, is that Powell (and Mead) are now only at 10 percent danger of "power pool," per a BuRec update. As Bob Henson notes at the Yale piece, this of course drops a sense of urgency among the member states of the Colorado River Compact. It also lessens the possibility of BuRec threatening a banhammer, let alone following through on it, after its fake banhammer last summer.

In fact, contra Kumbaya Fleck, I expect one, or more, lawsuits to be the nudge to a new version of the compact. One lawsuit would be by one individual state vs. another. (Looking at you, Aridzona, vs. California, given early post-compact history.) A second would be by Upper Basin vs. Lower Basin states. A third would be one or more American Indian tribes suing one or more states and/or the federal government.

Bob's piece is creative in some ways. As people who are from the Colorado Plateau and surrounding areas note, evaporation, from both the two big lakes and the irrigation canals, is a problem. And a growing one. So, why not cover them with floating solar panels? Boaters would push back on the lakes, but push back on the pushback. They can steer around. And absolutely on the canals.

That said, the price for this would be huge on one or both of the lakes. You'd have to have transmission antennas beaming the electricity to some grid connection, for example. Panels fixed in place over irrigation canals wouldn't have such problems.

Outside of Nevada's conservation — which Bob didn't note was largely a one-off effort — the biggie, especially on the lower Colorado? Agriculture. Sorry, Johnny Peace, but the alleged romance of grazing cows on river-raised alfalfa? De-romanticize it.

For the unknowledgable, Yale then gives readers the nickel version of the Colorado River Compact. They then talk about climate change's impacts — important, as the snowpack numbers are based on just the seven previous years.

The biggie? Can the Compact be saved? Bob says yes, if there's enough flexibility in a highly overhauled new Compact. Color me skeptical, since, per Bob and big snow, the seven Basin states procrastinated past Jan. 31, as I expected, part of the impetus for his article.

That said, there's a flip side to that bathtub ring at Lake Powell, even if the lake itself is never fully restored. 

That's the unveiling of Glen Canyon itself, and its own self-restoration, documented in detail at High Country News by author Craig Childs and photographer Elliott Ross. The recovery of the canyon, with people now knowing about it, might partially replace the recreation dollars of Lake Powell, even as Jim Stiles shudders. Lessening total boating would also lessen fuel burning of the boats, and of driving them to the lake, too.

As for the actual vistas? I'd love to see at least a fraction of the re-revealed natural beauty from before Powell started filling, as in, see it in person wearing my own hiking boots. Ditto on seeing if some of the Anasazi or Fremont or Basketmaker or Archaic ruins, petroglyphs and pictographs survived 50 years or so of inundation.

Colorado River sound and fury, symbolizing nothing, in Las Vegas

Plenty of talk from state-level and lower-level water folks 10 days ago, from all seven member states of the Colorado River Compact, in Las Vegas, but no action.

Upper Basin states still want Lower Basin states to take more of a water haircut. Lower Basin states, like wingnut Aridzona, continue flooding land for alfalfa — for Chinese and Arab owned dairying, among other things, but Aridzona by god will give Xi Jinping himself a fucking hug rather than cut one acre-foot of water, especially if the Californicators in California stand to benefit.

And BuRec? Plenty of hand-wringing:

“I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty in this room and in the basin,” said Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation.

But not much else.

This Pro Publica piece makes that clear. That starts with Touton, though "feeling the pain," refusing to comment further about it.

Will she actually do anything by Jan. 31? Or will it be another head fake, like last summer?

She won't do anything because, per her Wiki, she's a political hack. (Congresscritter staffer for years, starting with Harry Reid. Nuff ced.)

And, per the first link, she shot herself in the foot with last summer's head fake:

Some state officials here blame the Biden administration. When it became clear this summer that the federal government wasn’t ready to impose unilateral cuts, the urgency for a deal evaporated, they said.

So, in Vegas, nobody's showing their hole card.

And, much of the low-hanging fruit's already been harvested. As a reader told High Country News editor Jonathan Thompson on his Substack:

Finally, it is true that we in Las Vegas were able to reduce water use while almost doubling our population over 20 years. However, this involved a one-time rebuilding of the entire valley’s wash system to capture and recycle all the water we used to let runoff. Now that it is done, we can’t repeat this feat for the next population increase. It is easy to cut back the first time (when starting with a wasteful system), but is progressively harder as system develops more efficiency 

Sascha Horowitz Las Vegas, Nevada

Very true.

That said, as I've noted before, Thompson himself is as much problem as solution.

Finally, as the Post story notes, there WILL BE a potential "nature bats last" fix for the Lower Basin.

In recent years, the worry of "dead pool" has been more at Lake Powell. Well, if it hits dead pool, and in an unmanaged way, hoe long before Mead hits dead pool?

And, all of this shows how laughable New Mexico neolib environmental journalist John Fleck is.

BuRec drops a semi-hammer on the Lower Colorado; will Aridzona OR California listen?

For those not following the news in the Desert Southwest, the Bureau of Reclamation's announcement last week that it was putting the three lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada under Tier 2 water cuts because of how low Lake Mead had fallen is big news.

For Arizona, which along with California is the biggest grower, ahead of Florida, of wintertime "truck farm" crops — lettuce, tomatoes, etc. — this is a biggie. A 21 percent cut. Nevada, which uses the least amount of the three states, faces an 8 percent cut. California? None. Not yet.

Why? Because of Aridzona's decades-old obstinance, that put all of its water rights "junior" to about all of California's and Nevada's, until it realized that the only way the Central Arizona Project, which pumps water to farms in southwestern Aridzona, as well as metro Phoenix and Tucson (with massive electric costs). Marc Reisner covers all of this, including the stupidity of a 1930s Aridzona governor sending his National Guard to the Colorado River border with California, in his magisterial "Cadillac Desert," reviewed but only in brief by me here. (I've read it half a dozen times or more; my copy is heavily annotated, highlighted and underlined.)

So, why these mandatory cuts? Because, as I blogged last month, and as discussed here at NM Political Report (even though NM, in the Upper Basin, faces no cuts) actual people in Colorado River Basin states, and above all, Aridzonans, refuse to engage in anywhere near the amount of voluntary cuts BuRec pushed for a year ago.

However, again, this is only a semi-hammer, per the paragraph above. High Country News has a good explainer of how states had agreed to this level of cuts already in 2019. So, really, it's not even a semi-hammer being dropped. It's a trigger being automatically pulled.

In terms of acre-feet, it's less than half of what BuRec had been pushing states to do on their own, and threatening to do forcefully if states didn't do it on their own. And, so, it's really close to a nothingburger, despite all the bitching, and Upper Basin states got no cuts at all.

That said, per that second link two paragraphs above, at NM Political Report, Upper Basin states, even with a good monsoon this year, shouldn't sit so smug. BuRec may force increased releases from Lake Powell next year, and increases from dams above Lake Powell on the Upper Colorado and its tributaries so that Powell doesn't hit "power pool," where it can no longer generate electricity, by sending more water to Mead. James Powell covers this in "Dead Pool." The High Country News piece notes that Powell is expected to be just 32 feet above power pool next year. (Depopulated Wyoming, unsuitable for crops but growing alfalfa, may become the Aridzona of the Upper Basin in a few years, and it should, contra neoliberal pseudoenvironmentalist John Fleck of the University of New Mexico.)

The LA Times (via Yahoo News) has more on not the failure of voluntary cuts, but the failure of state negotiations on how to apportion voluntary-by-state but forced-within-state cuts. It notes that Upper vs Lower Basin tensions, and urban vs. rural/agriculture, as well as state vs. state, are all issues, and all seemed to have increased during the failed negotiations. 

This also proves wrong John Fleck's bullshit claim that neoliberal negotiations always solve Western water problems. On many past cases, the threat of a hammer was needed for negotiations to get real. And, in some cases, that didn't even work. Like now.

Since the hammer wasn't nearly as severe as it could have been, it seems unlikely that the states are going to stop their squabbling. So, what's the next rabbit inBuRec Commissioner Camille Touton's hat?

In addition, I do not salute a blank check (as far as I know, it's a blank check) of $4 billion in Inflation Reduction Act money to bail out farmers in this area. Again, per the likes of "Cadillac Desert," most have grown water-thirsty crops like alfalfa, and have refused to switch to more drought-tolerant (or salt-tolerant, as salinity rises) crops, first. It's that same mindset behind failed negotiations; "rugged individualist" farmers, especially in the most socialist state in America, wanting a bailout.

On the other hand, per the Times story, not only did negotiations fail, but even before Touton dropped the faux hammer, some people were saying "bring it on," in terms of gearing up for lawsuits. Or, if not "bring it on," at a minimum, "we're ready for it." Like Bill Hasencamp, who manages the Lower Colorado River portion of water for Southern California's Metropolitan Water District?

“If the federal government does have to take unilateral action, it will likely lead to litigation, which will make it even harder to develop new guidelines for the Colorado River. So that's a big risk,” Hasencamp said. “I think everyone would agree that a consensus-based plan is better than either the courts or the federal government taking action to determine our future.”

Remember "Chinatown," the real version of that also discussed by Reisner? You ain't seen nothing yet!

Yale Climate Connections, in talking about this, noted this winter is expected to be another La Niña, which means dry, and likely warm, so another year of small snowpack, which means another spring and early summer of small runoff.

Californicators also shouldn't be too smug. Per the link in the first graf, if Mead falls yet another 5 feet below where it's expected to be this January, IT will face mandatory cuts too, for the first time, unless people there, who have faced their own water conservation pushes due to declining Sierra Nevada snowpack, look across the river at Aridzona and take stock of reality.

Within California, if that happens? Even the pretense of "fixing" the Salton Sea goes away. That, in turn means southeastern California and southwestern Aridzona, even as far as Phoenix, get toxic agrichemical dust blown in on west winds. Assuming that the 21 percent Aridzona cuts force some farms to go fallow, it's going to have that even before desiccated Salton Sea detritus blows over the Valley of the Sun.

And, to once again go to that High Country News piece? These seven states are nowhere near seeing light at the end of the tunnel. First, the long-term drought plus heat plus less snowpack in winter issues will keep getting worse. Second, American Indian tribes weren't included in this summer's negotiations. Many of them have substantial water rights but have not fully exercised them. Some of them are involved in water rights litigation as I type. (Shut up, John Fleck.) Third, the Colorado River Compact as a whole expires in four years. Without either real negotiations, or a BuRec Commissioner willing to drop an actual hammer, per Hobbs, this will turn into "a water war of all against all."

Finally, was Touton right, as far as hoped-for longer-term results, to only drop the semi-hammer instead of what she really could have done? It's arguable that she hoped that going lighter might still encourage a voluntary deal, especially in the face of the original Compact expiring in 2026. OTOH, it's arguable that that is neoliberal Kumbaya John Fleck thinking, that all the River states have shown their true colors and nobody's budging. I tilt that way.

Can Lake Mead be semi-saved?

With the kick-in of a federal Drought Contingency Plan earlier this year, Arizona, California and Nevada all have to cut the amount of lower Colorado River water they use. But, because of past deals Aridzona made with California so it wouldn't block progress on the Central Arizona Project, Aridzona will take the biggest hit, and California isn't really hit at all by Phase 1, as I discussed when the trigger hit.. That's even more true if Phase 2 of the DCP is triggered in just two years, which many people believe likely.

The Arizona Republic, via Yahoo, talks about a new voluntary plan hammered out among the three states that claims it will get deeper cuts than Phase 1 of the DCP mandates and so, hopefully, avoid Phase 2. 

Color me skeptical. We've already seen that  California water conservation seems to have hit a brick wall. While Pinal County, Aridzona farmers are drilling even deeper water wells, what if some of them start bringing up either sand or brine, and sooner rather than later? Or, some of this starts leaching from aquifers that are supposed to be part of the guaranteed 30-year water supply of new residential developments?

Per that second link, I expect negotiations to fail.

That said, what about DCP Phase 2, if it kicks in? Who's going to enforce the cutbacks? Them's fighting words.

That second link also indicates the lack of reality still in place.

Aridzona is talking about building desal plants in the Sea of Cortez and swapping that water with Mexico for a share of its Colorado River allotment. Desal plants, especially larger ones, have generally been a massive failure.

That ain't all. Lake Powell now reportedly has a 17 percent chance of hitting power pool in just three years. Power pool, per previous blogging, is when the lake falls below the level of the penstocks to generate hydroelectricity. That CAP water ain't going to Pinal County if there ain't juice to pump it there. And, considering that projection is by BuRec itself, the actual odds are surely higher.

Oops, that may be out of date. New BuRec report, per CNN, says 1-in-3, and by 2023. Same piece offers 66 percent chance of Mead hitting 1,025. That's DCP Stage 3. The first stage hit earlier this year at 1.075 feet; Stage 2 is at 1,050. At 1,000 feet, Vegas gets cut off. Also, at that point, Mead nears power pool.

Lake Mead water cuts invite Aridzona to face climate change reality; will it actually do so?

The question, of course, is, will it?

Yesterday, the feds announced that Lake Mead had fallen below the level to trigger the first round of water usage cuts next year. Within the three Lower Basin states (Google, and/or click the Wiki link, if you don't understand the Colorado River Compact), for a variety of reasons, the cuts hit Aridzona much more than Nevada. They don't hit California at all, though the next round, if triggered (the story is almost certainly correct that the next round WILL be triggered in just two more year), will hit all three states. 

(Update: Early predictions for US winter weather confirm that drought will remain and that the lower half of the West will also have dry weather. Those 2023 cuts WILL happen.)

(Update: As this piece at The Conversation reminds, canyons like the Black Canyon that holds Lake Mead, or the Glen Canyon of Lake Powell, narrow more and more as you get lower and lower, meaning that each additional foot of drop in elevation cuts water more than if you just had vertical square sides.)

The cuts on the lower Colorado start Jan. 1, 2022. Nevada must cut 7 percent, though it says it's already prepared. Aridzona must cut 18 percent. YES, you read that right.

Most of it will come out of the hide of agriculture, which makes the expansion of mega-dairies in Aridzona yet more problematic. Depleting groundwater for dairy cows and/or their alfalfa feed is beyond stupid.

But, what about urban water? The Aridzona Lege, several years ago, required new residential developments to prove they had a 100-year sustainable water supply. But, the language is loophole-ridden and is as much Jell-O as the Paris climate accords (which were similarly deliberately made so by Dear Leader and Xi Jinping). But, what about water banking? Well, Nevada (I think) is claiming that it's OK in part due to water banking. But, what if, in reality, such an account is already overdrawn? This is not like the federal government budget deficit, where you ignore it, or print more simollians if you have to. There is no more water to "print."

In addition, as of a couple of years ago, at least, it seems Aridzona did not have any withdrawal structure for water banked from the CAP. Since some of that water was banked for the state of Nevada? Erm, see above! In addition, per this piece, water banking was started for two reasons: one, as is true with most things Aridzona and water, as a reaction to those damned water-greedy Californians. Second, it was foisted as an idea for interstate water-banking and resale, as in, "we'll give those water-greedy Californians water if they pay us enough." But, it's hard to do that one, too, if you don't have a good mechanism for withdrawing water from the bank. See above! (The Wiki link also has thumbnail information on Aridzona's history of water animosity toward California.)

 

Robert Glennon, the University of Arizona prof who wrote the Conversation piece, agrees with me that cities and developers likely aren't yet going to smell the coffee.

Being ignored in this is how this affects hydroelectric generation. Mead has had new lower-elevation turbines installed in its penstocks which PARTIALLY alleviate the reduction in generation from a lower, lighter, lesser water load. But, it can't totally address that, and that's a one-time fix; if the lake falls to 950 feet elevation, it's near enough to "dead pool" to be a write-off. Per Glennon, the shape of canyons on water loss is a hydroelectric as well as a water issue, of course.

In essence, all of this above is part of Aridzonans wanting to continue to live in a "Cadillac Desert."

And, yes, I'm referencing Marc Reisner's book, which I own and have read cover to cover half a dozen times. (Reisner was good, as part of this, at tackling the socialism [no other word for it] that is the reality on Western water, and other thing, behind the myth of Western "rugged individualists.") As well as Donald Worster's "Rivers of Empire," which was able to pick up the climate change portion of the ball from where Reisner left it after his untimely death. And, the most recent installation in this on my shelves is James Powell's "Dead Pool," speaking of that subject. (Meanwhile, commenters at Glennon's piece are a mix of uninformed and delusional, mentioning things like pumping water from the Mississippi that Reisner already discussed 30-plus years ago, largely as wet dreams of hydrologist engineers with no connection to fiscal reality.)

And, with that, Glen Canyon Institute's proposal to reverse an atrocity, to "fill Mead first" and let Lake Powell essentially go away, seems to make sense. That said, what if water drops below outlet level there? How much does it cost to blow a hole in the dam, or the lesser option of "blowing multiple holes" in it by creation of new outlet tunnels? What about silt removal? (Powell did some initial looks at that.)

 

Related to that, Glennon reminds us of one other thing. Upper Basin states are required, by the Compact, to provide X acre-feet per year (on a 10-year rolling average, to be precise) to the lower basin. So dams of tributaries above Powell, like Flaming Gorge Reservoir, will be opening their penstocks wider and wider in the future.

And, this is only scratching the surface. Reisner discussed one other issue that has plagued irrigation-based civilizations throughout history — salinization. Especially if the rivers one uses for irrigation projects run through land with high salinity levels, also especially if irrigation canals are not carefully engineered with precise and even "drops," as in, say, 1/4 inch per foot, soil salinity builds up. Leaching is one tool to "flush" salinity from soil, when used with drainage, but ... it requires extra water beyond normal irrigation. Oops, that's not so available.

It's why, before Columbian, or Coronadan, contact, the Hohokam abandoned their canals in the Valley of the Sun. It's why a massive desal plant was built near the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers. It's why clay 

We end with, what else? Two quotes from Cactus Ed Abbey:

"The desert always wins."

And:

"Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell." 

The Saudis milk Arizona for all it's worth, but state woes were at least partially preventable

I hope Arizonans like growing alfalfa for Saudi Arabia even as their own towns and counties that aren't getting Central Arizona Project or other Colorado River moisture dry up. And cave in. No, literally, per that link. The silver lining, to the degree there is one? After enough of the state literally implodes enough from ground subsidence, maybe more of them will move back to Iowa, Illinois or Minnesota. You know, where the water is.

IMO, Obama, as part of the Great Recession bailout, should have bought out free and clear people in Phoenix and Vegas who were underwater (reverse pun recognized) on mortgages — but with a legally binding stipulation they didn't move back to anywhere in the Colorado River Basin for 20 years. And, since the bailout would ultimately benefit banks, they'd have to sign off on not "replacing" these people.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on teevee. But I'm sure this would have been doable, in one or another way, shape or form.

If banks squawked on the "no replacement homeowners," a real prez simply would have given cash equal to the base payment value of what was left on the mortgage (base payment, as in no interest portion) and then required the same deal out of these folks. In exchange, if the banks kept squawking, a real prez would have offered a wink and a nod to these migrating homeowners about what federal law, at least, would not do to them. If the banks squawked further, some FDIC audits might have been a wake-up call.

Unfortunately, Dear Leader, compromising the compromise away in advance, and putting Lil Timmy Geithner in charge of most financial elements, wasn't a real prez.

John Fleck is NOT Marc Reisner

I stumbled across his blog about two years ago while Googling for information about Colorado River annual precipitation, basin snowpacks and related material.

While I recognized that he had good information about those numbers, I saw more and more that his "framing" was horrible. Like a junior president Obama, he thought all problems within water allocations could be — and had been, in cases already solved — fixed by "Kumbaya."

Along with this, he, and even more, a second-level co-blogger, slammed Marc Reisner, along with newspaper journalists and others, for promoting "conflict narratives." The co-blogger on the site was worse, claiming Reisner was out of date and other things.

Well, this summer, Fleck started touting his own new book, and how it would build on his previous book of years ago. So, I decided to make an interlibrary loan request for said first book.

I got it.

It was horrible.

I gleefully savaged it.

Here you go.

Intellectually dishonest, in my opinion.

I have Fleck’s blog (with some coauthors, mainly Eric Kuhn, the coauthor of his new book, but it’s primarily his) on my blogroll.

He knows the numbers stuff, or has friends and blog coauthors that do.

But, he’s Kumbaya on Colorado River stuff, as in like Preznit Kumbaya, aka Obama. And, on his blog, he sneered about Marc Reisner. And, yes, IMO, sneered is the right word. Look for yourself.

 So, knowing Fleck had written this book, and that he had a new one coming out, I wanted to see what he was like in more than blogging depth.

Answer?

Worse than on the blog.

Let’s start with the most egregious issue. A 2016 book about Colorado River water issues doesn’t even use the words “climate change” until page 199? UNACCEPTABLE.

Second, and the point behind the header?

Much of the “Kumbaya” that Fleck mentions was only achieved with the threat of a legal mailed fist behind it. Kumbaya by force of law is hardly Kumbaya.

Other issues that pop up early on?

More dissing of Reisner. After initial mention, simply ignoring James Powell, author of “Dead Pool.” I have re-read “Cadillac Desert” half a dozen times and “Dead Pool” twice. Both are in my small “keepers” library.

Next? More Kumbaya, even as places like today’s Aral Sea basin, Jordan River, Tigris-Euphrates and Nile show that Kumbaya ain’t working so well as we speak.

We don't even need to go outside the Colorado Basin! The fate of the Hohokam should indicate that Kumbaya doesn't always win.

Next next? Ignoring that Colorado River water usage has been mitigated by ever-heavier drawdowns of groundwater, both in groundwater basins connected to the Colorado (Arizona) and in those not (California), though there it’s more to reduce Sacramento-San Joaquin water u se in the Central Valley.

Next next next? Ignoring the connection between groundwater basins and river recharge. Anybody who knows the godawful state of southern Arizona tributaries of the Gila also knows why.

And, we’ll keep going. In supporting growing alfalfa as a flexible crop, he ignores that the methane farts of the cows it feeds contribute to the climate change that is making the Colorado ever drier. But, since he doesn't mention climate change until the end of the book ...

A lot of the Kumbaya cooperation Fleck cites, like in SoCal, has the fist of threatened legal power behind it, in specific, just as has most Colorado River stuff. Doesn’t matter if the threat is rarely invoked; it exists. That’s “forced Kumbaya,” not Kumbaya.

Also, it comes off as a bit cherry-picking to discuss a couple of small Southland water districts and never discuss the massive water headaches in the Central Valley, which were a large part of Reisner’s book.

One other reviewer notes water fights in the Central Valley (speaking of) are even worse than in the Colorado, and large scale corporate farms have no problems putting their thumb on the scales.

Back inside the Colorado basin, and after the date of this book, Arizona’s state Speaker of the House Bowers nearly gutted a needed agreement for new water use reductions earlier this year with a proposed rider on the bill. Only the threat of the Maricopa affiliation of Indian tribes forced his hand. Fleck made light of it.

Speaking of that, that water agreement was required because of Lake Mead hitting 1.075 elevation. Fleck, near the end of the book, notes that a previous agreement didn’t directly address 1,075, but appears to believe there that this point wouldn’t hit until after 2020.

Well, Fleck, it hit before then, and it hit before then in spite of a record Rockies snowpack in 2019. Did you talk about climate change in your new book?

One other point vis-à-vis the Anglo water world in the Southwest in general, American Indian water rights are the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Fleck does eventually discuss them – for half a dozen pages or so in the last 10 percent of the book. But he doesn’t go into detail.

Next, he never considers whether a “moon shoot” shouldn’t overhaul the current Upper / Lower Basin divisions. (I say it should; I’d put the Virgin River in the lower basin and the Little Colorado in the upper.) Related to that, on his blog, Fleck appears wedded to giving the Upper Basin just as much water despite its lesser population and its agricultural challenges.

Something almost as inexcusable as not mentioning climate change until the end of the book? Talking early on about the Mormons and the amount of water management ideas they spread around the West while ignoring that they got much of that, in turn, by learning from the majordomos who ran (and still run, in many cases) acequias in New Mexico. It’s doubly inexcusable not to mention this since Fleck is a long term reporter at the Albuquerque Journal.

(Update: It now becomes triply inexcusable. New research from the U.S. Geological Survey shows the river has lost 20 percent or more of its flow since 1913 and more than half of that is definitely attributable to climate change. More information from that study shows that, in just 30 more years, it will lose another one-quarter of its flow. Maybe more. So, Fleck is not only "criminal" for not discussing climate change in his first book, he's also "criminal" for its effects playing out, and he's criminally stupid in his Kumbaya belief if he things the future's going to be addressed without elbow-throwing lawyering.)

That’s even though he mentions it in his blog. While, at the same time, it's a throwaway line.

Look, some "gloom and doom"  newspaper reporting and books over the state of the Colorado may have been too much. BUT, they were reasonable extrapolations from the status quo at the time they were written. Killing a perhaps sometimes overdone angle the way Fleck has done is proverbial gnat meeting sledgehammer.

Of course, a sledgehammer can't be swung quickly and accurately enough to actually kill a gnat.

Finally, beyond the thumb-on-scales slant, I just don't think the book is that well written. The throwaway nature of the Mormon comment would be one example.

==

Update, Feb. 5, 2020: Apparently I've been ghosted out of commenting on his blog. I could just use a new email address, but he's not worth it.

Kumbaya is not a solution to Western water rights

That's even though John Fleck claims it is.

Fleck, a former Albuquerque Journal reporter, is now an adjunct professor at UNM and director of its water resources program. He is right that collaborative water governance is needed in the Colorado basin and elsewhere in the Southwest, but his blog (with a sometimes co-author, Eric Kuhn) tends to go overboard. He claims that most past reporting on the issue has been unduly alarmist and achieved little. He's half right on that.

A lot of it has been alarmist. Unduly? Maybe, maybe not. As for whether the alarmism helped prod collaboration under fear, maybe it didn't but maybe it did.

He's wrong that past history of water issues indicate that "Kumbaya" type interactions have been how all this collaborative governance has been achieved. Often, collaborative government has only resulted after legal threats. I don't consider a mailed fist in the background, even if not actually used, to be "Kumbaya." (And, that's setting aside the times that collaboration between different water governance entities only happened AFTER the mailed fist hit something.) And unlike alarmist headlines (or even books: Fleck semi-sneers about Marc Reisner's renowned "Cadillac Desert"), where benefit or lack thereof is near-impossible to determine, lawsuits, or even the threat of them, causing change can be clearly measured.

And, yes, IMO, sneered is the right word on "Cadillac Desert." Look for yourself.

Another red flag of sorts, that I noted as I wrapped this up? Fleck's UNM position is in its department of economics, not Geography and Environmental Science, which probably says something right there.

With that in mind, I eventually decided to read his 2016 book. What's below is an adapted Goodreads review.

Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West by John Fleck
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Intellectually dishonest, in my opinion.

He, or his friends, know the numbers stuff. But, he's Preznit Kumbaya on his framing.

So, knowing Fleck had written this book, and that he had a new one coming out, I wanted to see what he was like in more than blogging depth.

Answer?

Worse than on the blog.

Let’s start with the most egregious issue. A 2016 book about Colorado River water issues doesn’t even use the words “climate change” until page 199? UNACCEPTABLE.

Second, and the point behind the header?

Much of the “Kumbaya” that Fleck mentions was only achieved with the threat of a legal mailed fist behind it. Kumbaya by force of law is hardly Kumbaya.

Other issues that pop up early on?

More dissing of Reisner. After initial mention, simply ignoring James Powell, author of “Dead Pool.” I have re-read “Cadillac Desert” have a dozen times and “Dead Pool” twice. Both are in my small “keepers” library.

Next? More Kumbaya, even as places like today’s Aral Sea basin, Jordan River, Tigris-Euphrates and Nile show that Kumbaya ain’t working so well as we speak.

We don't even need to go outside the Colorado Basin! The fate of the Hohokam should indicate that Kumbaya doesn't always win.

Next next? Ignoring that Colorado River water usage has been mitigated by ever-heavier drawdowns of groundwater, both in groundwater basins connected to the Colorado (Arizona) and in those not (California), though there it’s more to reduce Sacramento-San Joaquin water u se in the Central Valley.

Next next next? Ignoring the connection between groundwater basins and river recharge. Anybody who knows the godawful state of southern Arizona tributaries of the Gila also knows why.

And, we’ll keep going. In supporting growing alfalfa as a flexible crop, he ignores that the methane farts of the cows it feeds contribute to the climate change that is making the Colorado ever drier. But, since he doesn't mention climate change until the end of the book ...

A lot of the Kumbaya cooperation Fleck cites, like in SoCal, has the fist of threatened legal power behind it, in specific, just as has most Colorado River stuff. Doesn’t matter if the threat is rarely invoked; it exists. That’s “forced Kumbaya,” not Kumbaya.

Also, it comes off as a bit cherry-picking to discuss a couple of small Southland water districts and never discuss the massive water headaches in the Central Valley, which were a large part of Reisner’s book.

One other reviewer notes water fights in the Central Valley (speaking of) are even worse than in the Colorado, and large scale corporate farms have no problems putting their thumb on the scales.

Back inside the Colorado basin, and after the date of this book, Arizona’s state Speaker of the House Bowers nearly gutted a needed agreement for new water use reductions earlier this year with a proposed rider on the bill. Only the threat of the Maricopa affiliation of Indian tribes forced his hand. Fleck made light of it.

Speaking of that, that water agreement was required because of Lake Mead hitting 1.075 elevation. Fleck, near the end of the book, notes that a previous agreement didn’t directly address 1,075, but appears to believe there that this point wouldn’t hit until after 2020.

Well, Fleck, it hit before then, and it hit before then in spite of a record Rockies snowpack in 2019. Did you talk about climate change in your new book?

One other point vis-à-vis the Anglo water world in the Southwest in general, American Indian water rights are the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Fleck does eventually discuss them – for half a dozen pages or so in the last 10 percent of the book. But he doesn’t go into detail.

Next, he never considers whether a “moon shoot” shouldn’t overhaul the current Upper / Lower Basin divisions. (I say it should; I’d put the Virgin River in the lower basin and the Little Colorado in the upper.) Related to that, on his blog, Fleck appears wedded to giving the Upper Basin just as much water despite its lesser population and its agricultural challenges.

Something almost as inexcusable as not mentioning climate change until the end of the book? Talking early on about the Mormons and the amount of water management ideas they spread around the West while ignoring that they got much of that, in turn, by learning from the majordomos who ran (and still run, in many cases) acequias in New Mexico. It’s doubly inexcusable not to mention this since Fleck is a long term reporter at the Albuquerque Journal.

That’s even though he mentions it in his blog. While, at the same time, it's a throwaway line.

Look, some "gloom and doom" newspaper reporting and books over the state of the Colorado may have been too much. BUT, they were reasonable extrapolations from the status quo at the time they were written. Killing a perhaps sometimes overdone angle the way Fleck has done is proverbial gnat meeting sledgehammer.

Of course, a sledgehammer can't be swung quickly and accurately enough to actually kill a gnat.

Finally, beyond the thumb-on-scales slant, I just don't think the book is that well written. The throwaway nature of the Mormon comment would be one example.


View all my reviews

And, it's not just the book.

Here's a post from late September about how much Albuquerque has cut its water use.

My thoughts back?

Of course, not all of this is due to Kumbaya let's all be nice.

Any water reduction agreement with the threat of a legal mailed fist behind it is NOT Kumbaya.

And, it's not just from other Anglos or whatever. Fleck's own former paper noted how the state is fighting Navajos winning new San Juan water rights. That's even though it says it agrees with the result.

And, less non-Navajo water right on the San Juan means less water to divert to the Chama.

Various pueblos had water rights confirmed in 2017. Again, mailed legal fist, or threat of it, to established municipal users. 

There's also the issue of water purity. I'm sure that Fleck knows Isleta won a ruling on that 20 years ago. It's indirectly related to water rights, though the main issue was about treating water for quality. Non-Puebloans using less water means that water that remains, or treated water that is better treated when returned to the river, will more easily meet the requirements.

Also, the carrot of tax credits for low-flow showerheads, low-flush toilets, etc. and the stick of higher water rates have been part of the mix. The carrot could be called Kumbaya; the stick not so much.

High Country News has done a number of stories on Indian water rights. Here's one from a year ago. An important takeaway from that is that it often takes decades for the rubber of a new Indian water rights legal confirmation to hit the road of reality on how that affects other water users.

No wonder Ted Nordhaus' Breakthrough Institute has a page on him. And, you know, if you look at Breakthrough's board, tech-libertarians and their likes abound.

Yeah, Reisner is dated. That said, despite one commenter on Fleck's page, he's NOT that dated; the revised edition is 25 years old, not 40. And Powell, who DOES mention climate change, is only half a decade old and not out of date at all. Worster's not out of date either. And, he's spot on about noting issues of class and water rights, which play out especially on American Indian issues but also somewhat elsewhere.

And, instead of reading this book, or Fleck's new one, read Powell. Or the new "Downriver" from Heather Hansman. Or, beyond the narrow issue of water, Christopher Ketchum's new "This Land." Just don't bother reading John Fleck.

'The desert always wins': The last word on California drought

The quote above, whether most popularized by Cactus Ed, good old Ed Abbey, or someone else, is true indeed. indeed.

As Marc Reiser demonstrated in "Cadillac Desert," along with many others, some before, many since him, the Colorado River was highly overappropriated among its seven basin states because the 1920s were an outstandingly wet period within a larger wettish period. While Colorado River system water is not the same as the snowmelt from the Sierras that fills (Californians hope) in-state reservoirs, it too is snowmelt-based, with all that implies in our era of global warming, El Niño-related oceanic oscillation changes and more.

Let's not forget that the Los Angeles Aqueduct of "Chinatown" fame was built less than 20 years before the Colorado River Compact, also during a wet period. And, although the 1960s of California State Water Project fame were less wet than the 1920s, they were far wetter than today, or than long-term droughts we know hit the Southwest in the past and are likely to do again in the near future. And, while that megadrought is expected to center on the Four Corners, not California, it will have its "fair share" of effect on the Golden State. And, for students of paleo-American history, this drought is expected, at least in the Southwest, to be worse than the one that shuttered Chaco Canyon and destroyed Anazasi culture. In other words, anthropogenic climate change, while part of the problem, is not all the problem. Rather, it is, in part, intensifying what's more "normal" than European settlers thought, 100 years ago.

So, that leads to Abbey's most famous statement certified statement: "Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell."

This NYTimes graphic, from the linked story about
groundwater regulation, shows the amount of sinkage
in many areas; the largest red dots have shown
more than 100 feet of sinking. See story for more.

And thus, the quasi-rhetorical, yet seriously asked, question in this long New York Times piece has but one answer: "no." Relentless growth has limits. There is no perpetual motion machine in general and certainly not with water supplies. Meanwhile, even as Jerry Brown has imposed water cuts (that don't affect agriculture, don't affect oil fracking and don't start until July 1), there's really a bigger scandal in California water issues: groundwater, unlike in most western states (but, unfortunately, very much like in Texas) is currently not regulated at all, and under a weak-tea system the state finally, recently, adopted, will not be semi-effectively regulated until the 2040s.

By that time, the groundwater may be almost gone, with storage capacity, flow, and more of reservoirs irreversibly damaged.

(In turn, this is part of why I said last week that Californians should recall Jerry Brown.)

Now, Reisner did not directly cover these issues. But he did indirectly cover them when he wrote about overpumping of the Ogallala Aquifer.

Having grown up in New Mexico, and been the editor of one newspaper in that state, I personally know this.

Most Western states have a state water engineer, who is god and czar of the state's water supply, with the partial exception of any rivers that come under interstate compacts.

For example, in New Mexico, at least at the time I was editing there, if a person wanted to drill a new water well, they had to run an ad in the newspaper three weeks straight, giving a precise metes-and-bounds description of the well's location AND its planned depth. At the end of said legal notice had to be a date for a public hearing about that well. The regional office of the state engineer conducted that hearing.

From what I understand, even if California does have a state engineer, said office has nothing like that regulatory power.

Meanwhile, fallowing of the fields could damage the fields themselves.

Reiser, whether the water source was irrigation or groundwater, wrote about improper irrigation and the salination problems it caused to land. As California farmers are having to fallow more land, the salinity problems are apparently starting to show up in places in the Central Valley.

Add in that the current drought is worsened by climate change, and many Californians' blithe belief that the state will "escape again," like it escaped Enron gaming its electricity nearly 15 years ago, is kind of appalling. It's also a proof that blue states aren't exempt from the delusion of American exceptionalism.

Abbey addressed that, too:

“There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”

So, Californians? (And, Arizonans, Nevadans, etc.?) It's time for a lot of you to move back to Minneapolis, or Cleveland, or St. Louis — where the water is.

And, speaking of Arizonans and Nevadans? Here's Part 1 and Part 2 of what's going to be a three-part series on drought in the Colorado River basin, from the Arizona Republic.

For those who think desalinization is the answer? In the Colorado River Basin, per that Part 2 link immediately above, maybe think again. In coastal California, even if the price drops a lot, and quickly, which is open to debate, you have the issue of thermal pollution from "wastewater" being dumped into a coldwater ocean current. The only plant currently under construction is only going to meet 7 percent of San Diego's needs, a drop in the bucket for overall California use. If desalinization in Florida is any indication, it will probably not run as well as expected, and be pricier than expected. (Right now, the San Diego project will deliver water at twice the current cost, and the same company that built that troubled Florida desal plant is doing the one in San Diego. It would probably be cheaper to move people back to the Midwest.)

Salvific technologism, as I've called it before, has no guarantees. Re-read those Abbey quotes.

Get rid of those damned dams — and BuRec!

Glen Canyon Dam/Wikipedia photo

Daniel Beard, a former chief of BuRec (that's the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to you non-Westerners) talks about "deadbeat dams" and other ideas for dealing with Western drought in an interview with High Country News.

The interview is based on his new book of that same name, "Deadbeat Dams," which just came out last month and which sounds like a must read.

Beard is not playing around.

He wants to get rid of the Bureau of Reclamation, and as far as all the "deadbeat dams" costing us money, misuse of precious Western water and more, replace it with a dam decommissioning commission similar to the military base closure commission, so as to remove removal of dams from politics and Congress.

The biggest, beyond the "deadbeat" dams, is selling, or rather, "selling" water at subsidized rates, just pennies on the dollar.

The Western farmer is possibly America's biggest socialist, followed by the American rancher and his below-market grazing fees. Next on the list is the Western politician who decries socialism while protecting this.

Example Numero Uno? Modern conservative legend Barry Goldwater.

He repeatedly called for abolishing the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1964. But, was there ever a peep from him about abolishing the Bureau of Reclamation? About not building Glen Canyon Dam?

Absolutely not.

Just like his pale successor, Schmuck Talk Expresser John McCain, Barry Goldwater was a Grade A hypocrite on such issues who got a pass at the time from conservatives and later from the national press.

Beyond that, as drought looks to intensify another year in the West, as some states clamp down on groundwater pumping because of that and more, like a possible 30-year drought cycle in the southern Plains/Southwest, or a 200-year cycle in California, our broken water system, like our broken hydrocarbon use system, needs to be acknowledged as broken.

And, the Archdruid of Reclamation, Floyd Dominy, would be turning over in his grave if he could. John McPhee, who wrote a book partially about him as among his many Western and naturalism books, is still alive ... maybe kicking enough to do a follow-up of sorts. Sadly, Marc Reisner is not alive to update "Cadillac Desert."

Requiem for a river: The Colorado

Lake Mead and its infamous bathtub ring, behind Hoover Dam./NYT photo

Good piece here from the New York Times, especially for Easterners unfamiliar with how overtapped the Colorado River already is, and its likely future.

Its likely future? For the man-made version of the river, in which almost none of the river flows "free" below Grand Canyon, and almost none ever reaches the Gulf of Mexico? Grim.

And getting grimmer.

The keys to the central and lower Colorado are two massive dams, Glen Canyon and Hoover, starting from upstream to downstream, and two massive (for now) man-made lakes behind them, Powell and Mead, respectively. (The two are, respectively, the second-largest and largest man-made lakes in the U.S.)

Mead, with both its water supply and its dam being closer to major user areas, and being the older of the two, is the biggie. And, "getting grimmer" indeed:

Lake Mead currently stands about 1,106 feet above sea level, and is expected to drop 20 feet in 2014. A continued decline would introduce a new set of problems: At 1,075 feet, rationing begins; at 1,050 feet, a more drastic rationing regime kicks in, and the uppermost water intake for Las Vegas shuts down. At 1,025 feet, rationing grows more draconian; at 1,000 feet, a second Las Vegas intake runs dry. 

But, Powell isn't off the hook.

Lake Powell is another story. There, a 100-foot drop would shut down generators that supply enough electricity to power 350,000 homes.

The story notes how the early 20th century was, as we now know, far wetter than normal, and thus water appropriations in the seven states of the upper and lower Colorado basins were "oversold." Sometimes massively so.

And, here's another part of the problem. Let's call it the "ostrich effect."

The federal Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month forecasts of water levels at Powell and Mead do not contemplate such steep declines. But neither did they foresee the current drought. 

But, BuRec, as it's known out west, has no excuse for making such over-optimistic forecasts — other than pandering to all of the river's overallocated water users.

A fellow federal agency, the National Weather Service, says so. Per maps at the link, the Southwest is supposed to be above average on temperatures for all of 2014. (So much for the climate change denialists.) And, precipitation is supposed to be average through May. Given that, especially in the upper basin, the majority of precipitation is winter snow, this is a biggie.

Given that other research has said, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, there's a 50-50 probability at least one of the two lakes hits "dead pool" by 2021, and that they hit minimum electric power generation by 2021, pandering to overallocated water (and electric) users is long past its expiration date.

The report unveiled Tuesday by the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography places Lake Mead's chances of running dry by 2021 at 50 percent, better than your odds of winning at any casino.

According to Scripps researchers, there is also a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will fall low enough to shut down power generation at Hoover Dam by 2017, and a 10 percent chance the lake could be dry by 2014.

But the study's co-author, Tim Barnett, said those doomsday dates aren't as important as the overall message.

"The point is this is coming in 10 years, not 20 or 30 or 40. We're looking it in the face now," said Barnett, a research marine physicist who wrote the paper with climate scientist David Pierce.
Indeed. Pandering to users is long past its shelf life. The original report, here, has more detail. That's especially true since the report is now more than 5 years old and BuRec keeps its head buried in the (ever-increasing) sand.

As for claims that this will never happen, per the Review-Journal story? The BuRec is being ignorant, probably willfully so, of past history. It took decades of ongoing suits before Arizona finally joined the Colorado River Compact. It took more suits before the Central Arizona Project took off. It took an international lawsuit PLUS the first Arab oil embargo before we as a nation agreed to guarantee any Colorado River water to Mexico.

The idea that we would never let either lake reach dead pool has about as much guaranteed truth value as the idea that we'd never kill off every one of those 100 million passenger pigeons.

And, it's not even dead pool. If Lake Mead falls just over feet this year, instead of 20 feet, water rationing starts. This year. Not some date in the future.

And, it's possible. Beyond above average temperatures predicted for the Southwest through at least mid-summer, as of right now, the Rockies' snowpack is, overall, average to below average. And, the West Coast is just bone dry. Here's the details.

Plus, it's not just water issues. Note the other issue — power generation at Hoover Dam could die by 2017. Even if Las Vegas has some water, do people want to live there with almost guaranteed summer brownouts? Also, the lower the lake sinks, and the lower you have to run tubes to get water out of it, the more electricity you have to use to pump it, as Las Vegas, at 2,000 feet, is well above the bottoms of those siphons.

And, soon enough, the pressure's going to come for more water to be released from Lake Powell. Besides the lawsuits that will trigger, that will cut electric generation there. Phoenix gets to duel with Las Vegas as to which one has more brownouts and blackouts, then.

The answer? Far beyond what the Times quotes federal and state officials as saying. Rather than bailing out people in Arizona, Nevada, and exurban L.A's Inland Empire when the housing bubble burst, we should have paid to move them back to the Midwest.

Instead, if the Central Arizona Project is indeed taken out of commission by, say, 2025, and another one-third of the Imperial Valley in California faces the same fate, Phoenix, in addition to becoming even hotter, will face another problem.

Those haboobs that tea partiers think are the name for a Muslim incursion? They'll be carrying more and more agrichemicals from fallow desert farmland to the west and dumping it in the Valley of the Sun. People who either moved there themselves, or had ancestors do so, for their lungs, will be living in one of the most unhealthy areas in the country.

There is a bit of schadenfreude here. The area around the Valley of the Sun, plus Orange  County and San Diego County in California, are hardcore red staters. Climate denialists. Swelter away in intermittent summer electricity, and croak away in diminishing water.

It's also a bit of caution for Texas. The Rio Grande involves international compacts and the Pecos has an interstate one. Even where rivers are all in Texas, like the Colorado of Texas, the ones that start in West Texas, as heat and possible drought continue, are under similar pressures. And, given how the current Texas government has far more ostrichitis on climate change than BuRec, they're likely to mismanage addressing that pressure even worse than the feds.

Why the concept of '100-year events' in nature is wrong

Homes are reflected in flood waters in Minot, N.D. on Saturday.

As the Souris River in North Dakota moves as much as 5 feet above an 1881 flood record, and as the Missouri River Valley worries about flooding in weeks ahead, and faces its own fair share now, we continue to hear about "100-year-floods" and other 100-year events.

This is just wrong.

First, we don't know how much anthropogenic global warming is skewing the issue. But, here's a bit of insight by Penn State's Michael Mann:

"Even a couple degree warming can make a 100-year event a three-year event," Mann, the head of the university's earth systems science center, told AFP.

"It has to do with the tail of the bell curve. When you move the bell curve, that area changes dramatically."

I'm also wondering, per the Wall Street meltdown and the failures of the "quants" to know it could happen ... is that "tail" getting fatter until we hit a new equilibrium?

Second, beyond that, in much of the U.S., we've only been taking detailed weather measurements for about 100 years. To measure just 100 years of anything, and assume that represents an average out of a longer period in history, is simply wrong. It's intellectually stupid.

It's like looking at world history since 1914 and making assessments about a 100-year average of world violence.

It's unbelievable that people do this anywhere, just for the second reason. For both reasons, it's doubly unbelievable that professional climatologists and meteorologists still talk like this.

It makes the public think, even short of AGW, that we can predict severity of climate issues with more accuracy than we can. It's probably been a factor in continued building in floodzones that may not be 100-year floodzones, but 50-year floodzones for all we know.

Ditto on the flip side in overbuilding in the vicinity of Western river basins, as anybody who knows the history of the Colorado River Compact and the acceptance of a series of heavy flow years as "average."