Watered-down water policy

Water levels in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are falling worldwide in the face of soaring temperatures and shrinking snow melt, but nowhere has the reality of climate change played out in quite the same way as in the Colorado River Basin.

Fallen water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell now reveal watermarks that pre-date record-keeping.

So how did demand come to so outstrip supply?

The short answer is decades of real estate development and the growth of industrial-scale agriculture. The longer answer is that water management policy has been far more focused on which states and business interests should benefit from the river’s exploitation than on its sustainability. 

Allocation of rights to the Colorado’s water was first formalized by the 1922 Colorado River Compact, an agreement among seven southwestern U.S. states.

Its intent was to safeguard those in the Lower Basin from excessive withdrawals by those in the Upper Basin, and it capped withdrawals by Upper Basin states whenever the river’s flow rate fell below a specified threshold.

Both the allocation calculations and process were significantly flawed. 

• The flow measurements upon which the Compact was based were distorted by unusually wet weather in the benchmark 10 years preceding. The distortion is so great that – even long before the current drought – the flow has dropped to less than one third of the benchmark on more than one occasion.

• The 1922 Compact excluded Native American nations (some of which are now demanding an allocation).

• Mexico’s allocation was only 9% of the total, but it has also has born another consequence of U.S. water withdrawals and diversions. Resulting silt deposits have choked out what was once a lush, green ecosystem in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta.

The water allocations also failed to anticipate the rise in both residential and agricultural demand within the service area. Populations in the region’s major cities have mushroomed by more than 16-fold since 1922.

As consumption spiraled upward and climate change predictions gained increasing credence, policy began to focus on how to adjust allocations in the event of a shortfall.

• In 2012, the U.S. and Mexico updated an agreement that established how Mexico’s share of water would be affected by drought conditions.  It is pegged to the surface elevation of Lake Mead.

• In 2019, the seven Basin states agreed on a plan to manage Colorado River water withdrawals as Western drought entered its nineteenth year.

Despite years of dire forecasts, it was not until 2015 that California’s Jerry Brown became the first governor to address the demand side of the equation by ordering a statewide, mandatory water use reduction.

More recently, California has announced plans follow the example of cities in India by covering open aqueducts with solar panels to reduce evaporative loss.

But demand continues to be managed largely by local water authorities.

Both Las Vegas and Phoenix now now claim to recycle over 95% of water used indoors, and but desert heat takes a heavy toll on outdoor water use.

The Bellagio’s famous fountains lose over 12 million gallons of water every year to evaporation.

California produces almost 14% of the nation’s food, and over 90% of its water allocation goes to winter fruit and vegetable crops, or to forage crops for beef and dairy herds.  It has long been drawing on allocations unused by other states, but population growth and declining river flow make it clear that surplus is increasingly a thing of the past.

So even as local water districts in the Colorado River Basin struggle with shortages, it is becoming abundantly clear that what the effect of western water shortages will ripple across food costs for the entire nation.