Drought, climate change and population growth
The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time in the water supply for 40 million Americans.
If you kids can’t stop fighting over the cookies/toys/puppy/front seat/ice cream Mommy and Daddy will just have to take it all away.
The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in American history, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, climate change and population growth have caused water levels in the lakes to plummet.
Pretty basic. “You have to come up with a plan because the water is not there. We’re not being big meanies, we’re not doing this for fun, the water is gone.”
Negotiators say the odds of a voluntary agreement appear slim. It would be the second time in six months that the Colorado River states, which also include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have missed a deadline for consensus on cuts sought by the Biden administration to avoid a catastrophic failure of the river system.
The high desert states, that are useless for farming because they are so arid.
Without a deal, the Interior Department, which manages flows on the river, must impose the cuts. That would break from the century-long tradition of states determining how to share the river’s water. And it would all but ensure that the administration’s increasingly urgent efforts to save the Colorado get caught up in lengthy legal challenges.
During which, no doubt, the states will continue to use more water than they have until every last drop is gone. What a clever species we are.
The electoral consequences of this shit are worrying… That same unsustainable population growth is why Biden was able to rack up enough electoral college votes to win the presidency.
Nobody wants to be the one taking away the punch bowl from the party, which is why there’s no leadership at the state level about reducing water use as well as limiting growth. So the federal government will begin to reduce water allocations to each state and each state in turn will take them to court over it, all while the supply of water continues to shrink. I think what states will end up doing is buying out agriculture for their water, which will work for a while I suppose. It’s not like we can’t grow broccoli elsewhere where there is water.
Interesting point about the votes. I didn’t even think of that.
Just as an aside, while the desert states get a lot of guff for using up that water (and rightly so), the problems of water rights and over-usage are huge even in Colorado itself. Most of the water for the city of Boulder, for example, comes from melt from the Arapaho Glacier (really just a big ice-field, not a true glacier), which has lost over 50% of its historic mass in the 20th century. In Colorado Springs, the city has had to extend water lines far outside of the city itself because developers keep destroying the aquifers that fed the wells that most of the people living on the edges used to depend upon. Denver gets half its water from the South Platte River which, if you’ve ever seen it, is a sad little trickle of a stream as a result of historic over-use. Colorado has an “arid alpine climate” that is only barely survivable in many areas, and that only with adequate water, but each year the population grows larger and the water sources grow fewer.
James, Texas is another. They use way over the (already high) average usage for the US – like, twice the average usage. Western Texas is drawing down the Ogallala Aquifer way faster than it”s recharging; so is eastern New Mexico.
People take water for granted. They assume it will be there…then one day, when it isn’t, they assume no one could have predicted. My husband and I manage to use less water in a month between us than the average person uses in a week. We don’t live a deprived or impoverished existence where water is concerned. We rarely even think about it, because we established our habits and now they are second nature.
When I was growing up, we were on well water. You don’t take water for granted when you’re on well water, because it is expensive to dig new wells, and my father made sure we knew that money didn’t grow on trees. That little tidbit got me off to a great start when I studied Botany; I didn’t make that mistake!
ikn, yep. I used to live in Amarillo back around 1990, and the water supply even then was a huge concern, with constant fights between the ranchers and the farmers and the city. I can only imagine that it’s gotten worse in subsequent decades.
Speaking of New Mexico, I used to attend a conference in Taos every year, and one of the things that I remember in the local news were complaints from the wealthy people living there, about water restrictions. They had the mindset that if they had the money to pay for it, they should be allowed all the water they want. They didn’t seem to grok the notion that there was not an unlimited supply.
James: “If I didn’t do / drain / use / whatever / it, someone else would.”
In these situations, it trickles off the tongue, so to speak. And the rest of it is pretty much going to the 1972 script of The Club of Rome.
https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/#:~:text=Published%201972%20%E2%80%93%20The%20message%20of,long%2C%20even%20with%20advanced%20technology.
Sorry. That link looks like it is past its use-by date. Just google .