Going, going,............?

The photo depicts the Colorado River in Grand Junction taken from the 24 Road bridge on July 24, 2021. Notice the contrast in colors? Less than one mile upstream, the Gunnison River converges on the right south bank side flowing into the Colorado River. Water from the Gunnison appears to be more muddy possibly due to significant irrigation by farms causing increased erosion that causes sediments to runoff into streams.

The Colorado River basin ecosystem with about 40 million people who depend on stable water supplies, hydroelectric power that lights Las Vegas, and food crops distributed around the world, as well as numerous wildlife, are in a significant crisis - an existential threat. Even without the devastating impacts of climate change, there are too many people taking water out of the River than is being created by nature. Water managers call this “over allocation.” People are blaming the current extreme drought conditions but for longer term reasons and solutions we need to revisit our ancestor’s decisions to understand the truth that:

The River is Dying from Dehydration!

How did we get into this situation and what can we do about it? That has been a primary subject of this blog for the past six years and major motivation for advocating people Conserve in order to Prosper. Some of the factors occurred at the start of America’s expansion westward. Politicians did not listen to the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, John Wesley Powell, who famously rafted through the Grand Canyon. He advocated that western states could not support building huge cities moving in from the eastern U.S. Few people really listened to Nature’s distress call when numerous dams were built by Herbert Hoover’s Bureau of Reclamation and subsequent generations - as if nature needed humans to reclaim the barren land. These bathtub evaporation ponds were built 50 years before the government required environmental impact statements which fortunately stopped major dam construction projects more recently.

The information used to determine how much available water the Colorado contained was overly optimistic - only about 10 years of data during a wet decade was used to determine how much water could be taken out. The 1922 compact among seven western states and a treaty with Mexico was based on flawed decisions using insufficient information to literally drain the life blood out of the River basin. A very slow painful death during the past century.

The Colorado River hit a new low this week. For the first time in almost 100 years of the seven state agreement to share water, the Federal Government issued mandatory water restrictions! That means that we all will need to use less and pay more for water, including farmers in Arizona who are growing water intensive crops like alfalfa or in California growing almonds. Homeowners can convert grass to beautiful desert landscaping using drip irrigation for a fraction of the cost and water demand.

For more reports, there is much information in the news including these resources:

National Geographic - The Water Crisis

Vice News - 40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River, Now it’s Drying Up

Washington Post Opinions - What to do about the Colorado River’s megadrought ‘code red’

BBC News - Colorado River: First-ever shortage declared amid record US drought

The Colorado Mesa University newsletter (email subscription to Hutchins Water Center) stated on August 20, 2021 that:

“SHORTAGE DECLARATION
The Bureau of Reclamation has declared the first-ever official shortage for the lower Colorado River basin, which requires delivery cuts to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico under the 2007 Interim Guidelines for operating Lakes Mead and Powell. The determination was made in response to the Mead elevation projected in the August 24-month Study. This Fact Sheet by the Bureau explains how the declaration was made, how much deliveries will be reduced and details about drought response operations. Under the shortage, Arizona will lose about 18% of its Colorado River supplies, the largest cut. This Central Arizona Project page has details on how the cuts will be allocated and how the state is responding.

CO DEMAND MANAGEMENT DISCUSSIONS
The Colorado Water Conservation Board's August 18 Demand Management Workshop included a hydrology presentation by Brad Udall, a summary of the Colorado River District's stakeholder report on Demand Management by General Manager Andy Mueller, and an update from Upper Colorado River Commission Interim Executive Director Sara Larsen on their Demand Management work, as well as discussion of the CWCB's Demand Management Framework and related information. You can watch a recording of the meeting here. “

So let’s all do more to learn how we can try to regain our balance with nature by taking positive individual and collective measures. That seems like something we could all agree on!

Unprepared for the Big Chill

An extreme polar vortex set up stratospheric warming above the Artic pushing colder air south into North America all the way to south Texas. Millions of people are going days without power, water and heat trying to survive the winter blast. The electrical grid that connects most of the United States is deregulated and independent in Texas so the Lone Star State cannot obtain power from plants located in other states. Most of their energy comes from natural gas and lesser amounts from nuclear, coal, wind and solar. News reports indicate the natural gas pipelines were constructed too shallow and not insulated from extreme freezing temperatures.

Updated February 19, 2021:

Obviously our hearts go out to all the people suffering from the catastrophic winter storm across many areas of North America. The crisis continues to get worse. After four days with no power or heat, many people in Texas and other states are now in a food and water crisis. Frozen water pipes are breaking causing flooding as well as loss of water supply. This is a national emergency and it appears a federal response is occurring. Ramifications are felt worldwide as OPEC increases oil supply to compensate for the decreased Texas supply as well as profiting from the increasing oil and gas prices.

Today, I attended a Clean Energy webinar for Southeast Asia where concern was expressed that wind and solar were being blamed by some Texas politicians including the governor. Renewable sources provide less than a quarter of the supply in Texas so this does not hold true to blame green energy for the crisis. Listen to the Dallas, Texas county official Judge Clay Jenkins say he raised the concern several times over the past decade (WFAA). Maybe the people who blame the wind turbines in Texas freezing over is because Texas produces the most wind energy of any US state! So they should be embracing wind power and rather than denigrating renewable energy.

This issue is very important in Asia as well where many countries have set ambitious goals to have a quarter of the total supply coming from renewable energy sources within three years.

Here are more interesting new media reports focusing on the grid, energy supply, and lack of clean water:

Bloomberg: Texas Crisis Shows Need for More Balanced Grid, Analyst Says (interview with Amrita Sen)

NBC News Now: Texas’ Underregulated Energy Grid Responsible for Millions Without Heat, Energy

CBS News: Over 13 million Texans Facing Water Crisis After Brutal Winter Storm

When demand increases and supplies are short, no matter if it’s heating oil and gas, food or water, people are forced in an emergency to conserve what few resources are available. Having lived in Texas for over a year where everything is super sized and Don’t Mess with Texas, I hope people will demand change to come together to rejoin the national grid as well as energy efficiency and renewables. I wonder if this storm will change the mind of Elon Musk to move his Tesla factory from Oakland to Austin?

Washington Post reports Grand Junction Area is in Climate Change Hot Spot!

Today, the Washington Post reported that the Western Slope area of Colorado and Utah is warming at twice the world’s average due to climate change!

“This cluster of counties on Colorado's Western Slope — along with three counties just across the border in eastern Utah — has warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius, double the global average. Spanning more than 30,000 square miles, it is the largest 2C hot spot in the Lower 48, a Washington Post analysis found.”

“Dry areas warm faster for lack of moisture to cool things down, said Chris Milly, a senior resource scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Land use, irrigation and natural variability could also help explain part of the disparity. Milly and another colleague recently found that much of the Colorado River’s climate-induced decline — amounting to 1.5 billion tons of missing water — comes from the fact that the region’s snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier. That’s as much water as 14 million Americans use in a year.”

“The city of Grand Junction recently analyzed whether it has enough water to supply its 30,000 customers even if the drought persists. In the near term, according to its utilities director Randi Kim, the city is fine. But it also looked over the next 50 years — and came up as much as 3,300 acre feet short, which would force it to tap water directly from the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. And that was without calculating the full impacts of climate change.”

To read more about this work from Chris Milly at USGS and predictions for the future of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), see this website and quote: “Continued warming in the UCRB will drive further loss of river flow. Another factor, which might add or subtract available water, will be changes in precipitation, which could either increase or decrease. Considering the effect of warming alone, and using estimates of the rate of warming from global climate models, it is estimated that by 2050 the flow will have decreased by 14 to 31%, relative to the historical average. When the possible changes in precipitation are included, the range of this estimate widens, with losses as great as 40% and, at the other extreme, a flow gain of 3%.”

When we moved to Grand Junction 8 years ago from Las Vegas, Nevada we were shocked at how people wasted precious water resources. In Las Vegas, water conservation is enforced with water recycling systems and expensive utility bills. In Grand Junction, many people plant grass landscapes using irrigation from the Colorado River that is not metered, low cost, and over watered running down the curbs. We’ve discussed water conservation for many years and many people just think if they don’t use it they will lose their water rights which is not true.

Due to the oil and gas industry dominating the area’s economy for many years, climate change has not been a subject many people wanted to discuss. In fact, the local university invited climate deniers to speak on campus a few years ago.

We purposely moved to a subdivision of Grand Junction that is not on the City water supply and obtain water from Grand Mesa lakes providing drinking water and drip irrigation. We planted native plants may of which do not need much water including lavender and trumpet vines. Water conservation is critical more then ever and it is time for public officials to mandate water restrictions as is being done in many other locations.