3 million acre feet

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We will know in a little more than a month whether Lake Mead will get a flush of “bonus water” this year, and if so how much, thanks to the better-than-average snow pack in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

Right now, things look good. Current snow levels, as measured by the network of federally funded snow sensors around the mountains, are 22 percent about average on the tributaries that feed into the Colorado River above Lake Powell (numbers via the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center). With a bit more than two days left in the month, both Mead and Powell are close to the optimistic side of the probability distribution in the most recent US Bureau of Reclamation “24-month study” (pdf).

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam cutaway, courtesy USBR

A lot is at stake. The current forecast calls for enough inflow into Powell to meet the criteria of “equalization”, which means letting more water out of Powell to “equalize” levels between it and its downstream sibling, Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam. Without equalization, Lake Mead would drop close to the level that triggers a shortage declaration in the lower basin. The US Bureau of Reclamation makes the equalization decision based on a formula that takes into account the levels of both reservoirs. The bottom line is that the forecast calls for Powell to be high enough at the end of the 2011 that all of the extra water flowing into the system this year will be passed straight through, down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead.

As a result, despite the big snow pack, Lake Powell is forecast to end the current water year at pretty much exactly the same level it was at a year earlier – 3633 feet above sea level, 14.2 million acre feet in storage. Lake Mead, on the other hand, will have risen 21 feet, to 1105 feet above sea level, or 11.9 maf in storage.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Let’s follow the numbers. Lake Mead gets 3.2 million acre feet of “bonus water” from Lake Powell – water delivered above and beyond the Colorado River Compact’s required 8.23 maf annual delivery, essentially all the extra water nature delivers in this above-average year. But its end-of-year storage will be just 1.85 maf above last Sept. 30. This is because the states of the lower basin use, year in and year out, more water than nature and minimum compact requirements deliver.

Depending on above-average winters does not a sustainable water policy make.

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the water lawyers…

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Let me preface this by saying I am fond of lawyers. We kid because we love! Please don’t sue!

I had a bright light epiphany yesterday when talking to a smart water policy friend who works both in the United States and internationally. He was hosting a group of Australians here learning about Colorado River management who observed thus. To paraphrase: “Y’all sure have a lot of lawyers involved.”

I spend a lot of time reading and talking to water lawyers. I am fascinated by water lawyers, and like some of them. (I kid! I love you all!) But it occurred to me that there is no other political or policy domain I work in that is as dominated by lawyers as western water.

Why is that?

Water in the Desert: Tempe Town Lake

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Tempe Town Lake

Tempe Town Lake, fall 2009

Reorganizing photo archives as I move to a new computer, I came across this, from a fall 2009 trip to Phoenix. Tempe Town Lake, in the words of its boosters…

embodies a unique vision for the future of the Valley. Town Lake is a regional and national destination, welcoming millions each year.

Recognized as a top attraction in Arizona, visitors and local families spend their time enjoying nature, recreational activities, and cultural events.

Nature? Frankly as a natural amenity I think it’s a little freakish. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but building an urban lake in the heart of a desert city is an attempt to fight off nature, not embrace it. The fact that it was initially filled with imported Colorado River water, pumped up from Parker Dam, doesn’t help. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Also worth noting: the picture was taken before the dam broke last summer and the lake emptied. It was refilled with Salt River Project water from Roosevelt Dam. The flush of water from the dam break seems to have caused no significant problems, and the biggest concern about getting it fixed and refilled seems to have been getting it done in time for the Arizona Ironman triathlon, which says something – I’m not sure exactly what – about the way we’ve become somewhat unhitched in our relationship with water here in the U.S. deserts. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the affair.

Will an Empty Lake Mead Sell Skeptics on the Reality of Climate Change?

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U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is reported to have said in a talk this morning (Thurs. 2/24) in Washington D.C. that he believes the ongoing drought on the Colorado River could be the spark to shift conservative political opinion on climate change. From the Las Vegas Sun:

In comments he delivered at a symposium hosted by the progressive Center for American Progress Thursday morning, Salazar said the worsening situation with the Colorado River — where the water level has dropped about 20 percent in the last decade — is serving as a powerful wake-up call to conservatives to do something about climate change.

“The seven states … are a bastion of conservatism. They recognize … that the water supplies of the Colorado River are directly related to the changing of the climate,” Salazar said. “You further reduce that by 20 percent, what’s that going to mean for the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas?”

“They get it,” Salazar continued. “And so what they’re saying to us is ‘we support, understand, the changes climate change is going to bring to our communities and our states, and we want to get ahead of it.’ ”

I gotta say I don’t see it from where I sit in a Colorado Basin state. What about where you are?

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Megadroughts

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Peter Fawcett has a terrific paper in Nature this week on southwestern megadrought. I’ve been “upstream” (as the science journos like to say) for a while, having been along when Peter and others did some of their very first field work in the Valle Grande in Northern New Mexico back in 2003, and I’ve been talking to Peter (and occasionally writing about the project) ever since. So as a personal matter, this one has been fun on a lot of levels.

It’s also a fascinating paper, using lake sediments to recreate climate signal during Pleistocene. Peter and his colleagues found a couple of very important things:

  • a tight correlation between warmer periods and epic droughts
  • an apparent collapse in summer rains

They also tie their findings to Richard Seager’s 2007 Science paper on the possibility of huge droughts here as a result of climate change. Which is where, from an inner science perspective, this gets interesting to me. Because Seager told me and other reporters he thinks the connection between their work and his is small. From the story (sub/ad req):

A key to Fawcett’s research is evidence he says shows the region’s prolific summer rains shut down during the ancient megadroughts.

That led Columbia University’s Seager to caution that the new research sheds little light on what we can expect in a warming world, when rising greenhouse gases rather than orbital variations are driving climate changes.

“The thing is that the Fawcett megadroughts were … forced by orbital variations, not CO2, and are caused by drops in summer precipitation, not winter as for the projected future, so I think the relevance of the Fawcett paper to the future is slight,” Seager said in an e-mail.

 

 

 

 

 

Kenney on How to Fix Our River Management System

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Doug Kenney, the University of Colorado law school guy who is going bold in his push toward Colorado River management solutions, has a Denver Post op-ed this morning that looks toward innovative solutions that, importantly, work the problem without requiring us to tear up the Colorado River Compact:

If dry conditions continue as predicted, the upper basin states may be unable to make any reliable new claims to use Colorado River water, because the current Law of the River requires them to deliver a minimum amount of flow downstream to the lower basin. Conversely, while the Law of the River theoretically gives the lower basin states the right to receive that flow, actually enforcing that right against the upper basin could take years and cost millions of dollars.

Fortunately, momentum is building for a better approach. A growing body of studies is both documenting the current predicament and beginning to assess a range of possible solutions. To be politically viable, any such solutions must not require altering the core provisions of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which most parties consider inviolate. But what is viable is the concept of using those provisions as a foundation upon which to build new agreements that more effectively achieve the original goals of the Compact. The states have a history of doing just that. Just three years ago, for example, they negotiated the 2007 Colorado River Accord, which established new rules to improve river management under dry conditions. It’s a notable start, although not enough to constitute a long-term solution to the river’s woes.

 

 

 

Add Water

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I’m told that twice in the last few decades enough water spilled past the Colorado River’s dams to wet the old Colorado River Delta and bring back the life – once during the great El Niño season of 1983, when there was so much water in the system that we almost lost Glen Canyon Dam, and again in the late 1990s.

I was reminded of this by a Voice of America story on what’s happening in New South Wales right now:

Heavy seasonal rains that began late last year in Australia caused floods that devastated parts of the country. But experts say the downpours also reinvigorated parched rivers and wildlife sanctuaries, including one of Australia’s most valued wetlands. The Macquarie Marshes in New South Wales, an internationally recognized breeding ground for thousands of birds, are teeming with life for the first time in years following a protracted drought.

Cool, but like here, you can never really go back:

Richard Kingsford, a professor of environmental science at the University of New South Wales, says the rains have brought much-needed relief.

“Look, it’s certainly been fantastic in terms of gaining a reprieve, I guess, for a lot of the wetland communities, the vegetation, fish, the frogs, the turtles and the water birds in the Macquarie Marshes. It’s certainly never going to return to where it was before we started building dams and developing the river system,” he explained.

China’s Water Investment

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China’s latest 10-year plan, which came out in January, includes what seems to me like a staggeringly large investment in trying to better manage its water:

The country will invest 4 trillion yuan ($608 billion) into projects during the next decade to improve water conservation, Chen Xiwen, director of the office for the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee’s Leading Group on Rural Work, said on Sunday….

The country aims to double its average annual spending on water conservation over the next 10 years compared to the 200 billion yuan investment in 2010, according to the document, also known as the No 1 document.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization issued a warning earlier this month about drought conditions in northern China, and the potential impact on the country’s wheat crop:

Substantially below-normal rainfall since October 2010 in the North China Plain, the country’s main winter wheat producing area, puts at risk the winter wheat crop to be harvested later in the month of June.

Low precipitation resulting in diminished snow cover has reduced the protection of dormant wheat plants against frost kill temperatures (usually below -18°C) during winter months from December to February.

Low precipitation and thin snow cover have also jeopardized the soil moisture availability for the postdormant growing period. Thus, the ongoing drought is potentially a serious problem.

China’s current problems suggest that investment and attention to water issues are a welcome development. But even with the money, effectively moving forward on China’s water management problems will not be easy, Chaoqing Yu of the Center for Earth System Science and the Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University in Beijing wrote in last Friday’s Nature. He sketches out a set of problems that will doubtless sound very familiar to folks working on water policy and politics here in the United States:

To tackle water issues in China, one problem that must be addressed is the scattering of authority across different agencies. At present, major rivers are managed by the Ministry of Water Resources, whereas local governments control smaller water courses. Water supply, farmland irrigation, groundwater, water pollution and weather forecasting are separately administrated by, respectively, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the State Meteorological Administration.

Data on precipitation, river runoff, groundwater, land use, pollution and water use are not shared between governmental agencies, or made accessible to the public. It will be difficult to implement the holistic policy laid out in the No 1 Document without breaking down these bureaucratic barriers.

As a starting point, China needs to build an integrated network to monitor surface and groundwater, and use it to assess and set water policies through an integrated water-resource management system. And for this to happen, China needs a law that sets out clear policies on data sharing, and penalties for those who do not comply.