The White House announced today it has appointed Anne Castle as the federal representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Anne is former Assistant Secretary of Interior For Water and Science, where she helped steer the federal boat through chaotic Colorado River rapids. She’ll be an important asset now that the rapids seem that much worse.
Count me among those in the Colorado River community who was disappointed last month with the lack of Department of Interior action on its threats should the states not come up with a plan to sufficiently reduce their water use.
But let’s remember the core issue here: the states of the basin, especially the Lower Basin, and especially California and Arizona, are using too much Colorado River water.
The very fact that we’re having this conversation about a need for federal action is a direct result of the fact that California and Arizona have been unwilling to act to save themselves.
As I’ve written before, I believe in the importance of federal threats in spurring Colorado River progress. But let’s remember why they’re needed.
They’re needed because the water users have been unwilling to save themselves from the increasingly frightening results of their own excesses.
As we watch the quivering uncertainty about the nature of the federal threat on the Colorado river, it is perhaps worth a look at past moments of progress in Colorado River governance, and also past roadblocks.
Anne Castle and I ran this stuff down for a paper we published last fall.
Some history shows a pattern – low river flows, combined with a federal threat.
Low flows
The initial trigger came at the height of the 2002 drought, the worst inflow year in recorded history.
Federal threat
At a meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association in mid-December 2002, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton warned that California’s deliveries would be reduced unilaterally by the Interior unless QSA was executed by the end of the year. In fact, however, the Lower Basin states were not able to reach an agreement by the deadline, and surplus water that had previously been available to California water users was cut off. Deliveries to California water users were abruptly limited to 4.4 million acre feet (5.4 bcm) in 2003, a reduction of approximately 800,000 acre feet (1 bcm) from previous levels. Importantly for the future of water agreements in the basin, despite predictions of doom, California absorbed the reductions with only modest impact.
Low flows, federal threat
However, the drought persisted and again, in 2004, Interior officials warned that cutbacks in deliveries would be imposed unless the Basin States agreed to a drought management plan on their own. In 2005, the Secretary of the Interior directed Reclamation to develop additional Colorado River management strategies to address operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead under low reservoir conditions. After much discussion, haggling, and evaluation of alternatives, the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (Interim Guidelines) were adopted in 2007.
Low flows
Continuation of low flows in the river system in the second decade of the 21st century resulted in the realization that the accommodations made in the 2007 Guidelines and agreements with Mexico were insufficient to balance supply with demand.
Federal threat
In 2013, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell urged the states to take immediate action and come up with a contingency plan to address the potential for lower flows caused by climate change [70]. Referencing her predecessors, she said that she would not ignore her responsibility “to act if conditions worsen and if the states can’t reach consensus on contingency actions
More low flows (and inaction)
However, by the end of 2018, while many component parts of the plan had consensus, there was still no final deal. The remaining hurdles were not disagreements about the basic components but rather the intrastate allocation of reduced supplies and desired commitments for environmental restoration efforts.During 2018, Lake Powell dropped significantly, but the water levels in Lake Mead remained relatively stable water leaders in Arizona—the key holdout in approving the deal—saw fewer reasons for quick action
The Commissioner of Reclamation Brenda Burman then warned that if the plans were not completed by 31 January 2019, the Department of the Interior would adopt a course of action prior to the following August.
The Birds, by Irot
Saw the Birds above from the train window yesterday, and went back today on my new ebike for a closer look.
The ebike is primarily an accommodation for my age and failing knee, allowing me to ride more longer when I feel like it – hauling groceries, or books and laptops to work, or searching out distant tacos, that sort of thing. But with its motor and giant everything-proof tires, it also proved a useful workhorse this morning for getting up the railroad tracks in Albuquerque’s near North Valley for a closer look at Irot’s Birds.
If we have learned anything from the current crisis on the Colorado River, it is that we have to know what we’ll do next if the current thing we’re doing isn’t enough.
That’s a bloggy shorthand for a deep argument that Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, and I made in comments we submitted this week in response to the U.S. Department of Interior’s request for input on the development of new river operating guidelines.
As we begin discussing what replaces the soon-to-expire Colorado River operating guidelines, we argue that there are important lessons to be learned from a careful examination of the way the current guidelines have failed us.
In its Final Environmental Impact Statement in support of the 2007 Interim Guidelines, Interior identified the purpose and need of these Guidelines as an effort to provide “predictability” – “a greater degree of certainty to United States’ Colorado River water users and managers …, thereby allowing water users … to know when, and by how much, water deliveries will be reduced in drought and other low reservoir conditions.”
“Predictability”? “Certainty”? Crisis of 2022 says “nope”.
We’re trying to use language here – “purpose and need”, the National Environmental Policy Act terms of art – that burrows into the heads of the hard-working feds who will be reading it (we wave – you know who you are).
The failure, which Eric, Jack, and I talked about here in an argument developed while we were working on these comments, was a set of operating rules keyed on reservoir elevations in a way that managed to hold them steady, but never refilled them. That left us vulnerable to the crash that we’re now seeing.
New operating rules must be keyed to the actual flows of the river, not simply the levels of the reservoirs: “[S]tream flow should be used as a component in triggering different operating regimes, not solely reservoir elevation levels.” This was the great failing of the ’07 guidelines. We need to fix it.
In some sense this seems obvious, because hydrology is now imposing this constraint on us – “long-term average consumptive uses and losses will not exceed the average natural water supply provided by the watershed”.
We recognize that there are multiple devils in the details of this recommendation including the duration of years during which balance is sought and the mechanisms by which reductions in use must be implemented to maintain a balance. Nevertheless, there is no alternative to balancing the system. We estimate that the natural supply for the period 2000-2022, including inflows within Grand Canyon, has been 12.8 maf/yr, and there is no alternative but to at least reduce basinwide water use to that value. Should watershed runoff decline even further, then basin-wide use must be further reduced.
And if or when it gets wetter again?
[I]f relatively wetter periods return, consumptive uses must remain low to recover reservoir storage.
And all of this must be done in a way that recognizes who’s been left out of past discussions like this:
We are fully cognizant of the conflict between full development of currently unused or unquantified Tribal water rights and the need to reduce overall water uses in the Basin. We believe, however, that an appropriate balance of water supplies and uses cannot ignore the unquestioned right of Tribal nations to the water necessary to fulfill the purposes of their reservations.
And this (we wave again – you know who you are):
We recognize that these goals are broad, extending beyond what some in the basin are advocating – a narrow reconsideration of reservoir operations. We are sympathetic to the burden that the breadth of analysis we are advocating will place on the dedicated and hard-working staff at Reclamation and the Department of the Interior during the next years. But anything less than an expansive view of the task at hand will fall far short of what is needed at this moment in history.
There’s lots more in the way of specifics. We encourage those interested in river management to give it a look.
Agricultural heritage?
Welcome new readers!
With the current attention on the Colorado River’s crisis, I’ve had a great many people sign up for my blog feed in recent weeks. I’m so happy to have you join our Inkstain community! But an up front apology may be in order, as this might not be what you expected.
I’m John Fleck, a former journalist turned academic. I spent five years as director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources program, and I’ve recently joined the Utton Center, a natural resources policy group at the University of New Mexico School of Law, as the center’s Writer in Residence.
I’ve written a couple of books about the Colorado River, and at times I use this blog to perform a sort of “post-journalism”, sharing important stuff that I have learned. After 35+ years of daily journalism, it’s a hard habit to break.
I also have active collaborations with a group of friends and colleagues, and the blog is a great place to throw our stuff out into the information sphere when we think it might be of some use.
I had every intention of putting my Colorado River work on simmer in 2022 – still available for snacking, but not the main meal. With my friend and colleague Bob Berrens, I’m hard at work on a new book about Albuquerque and the Rio Grande, a sort of environmental/institutional/literary work on how our community’s relationship with the river shaped both.
We’ve actually signed a contract. We have an actual deadline for the book.
Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 8, 1882
Bob and I teach graduate students in the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program and share tidbits like the old newspaper clip to the right, an 1882 real estate advertisement in which a chap named D.B. Emmert (“notary public, real estate and insurance broker”) is selling what seem to be the first explicitly advertised parcels of irrigated suburban land: “Splendid opportunities … for those who want vegetable or fruit gardens or suburban houses”).
The railroad had just arrived in Albuquerque, a moment of profound change that has delightfully weird water policy implications.
We’re fascinated by the cultural evolution of the valley in which we live, as we alternately battled with, and embraced, the Rio Grande, the river that flows through the midst of our town. As a matter of rhetoric and cultural identity, our community celebrates its “agricultural heritage”, but we’ve created more than a century’s distance between those hazy, romantic notions of that heritage and its reality – then and now.
That distance, and those notions, have critical implications for water policy today, which is what dragged Bob and I into this arena. “There’s less water. What do we do?” is the framing question for our students’ journey through the eclectic fall class about to get underway. For the tenth time! This is the tenth fall we’ve taught this class together!
Turns out Casablanca isn’t actually a desert! (I was misinformed.)
Unfortunately for my best-laid plans for 2022 (also, more importantly, for the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River – my problems don’t amount to a hill of beans here), they’re finding dead bodies in Lake Mead. Because there’s not very much water in it. Which means less water for the people downstream who depend on it, or the people upstream who may or may not bear some responsibility for helping refill it.
This has captured a bit more of my attention this year than I had hoped, which is likely why, dear new readers, many of you have joined our little community. I’m a writer. I can’t help but write about what I’m thinking about. And I’m thinking about the Colorado River.
This blog has always been my sketchbook – a habit I acquired from my late father, who was an active, productive artist his entire life. His sketchbooks were everpresent in our lives. The twist for me is that, as a lifelong newspaperman, I only know how to write in public. Journaling, diaries, have never worked for me. So when blogging emerged in Internet 1.0 days, I took to it.
I have no editor. There will be typos.
It is my fervent hope, dear new readers, that you’ll read a lot here in coming months about the gardens of early Albuquerque – the crazy early 20th century lawn irrigation patents and swamps-turned-tobacco farms-turned-boutique alfalfa stands.
It is my clear-eyed expectation that you’ll see a lot of my agonized musings about the dark, dead-bodies-in-Lake Mead trajectory of my beloved Colorado River.
It is my promise that, broken-down knee notwithstanding, you’ll still get a healthy dose of bike riding essays. (I just invested in an e-bike! My bad knee celebrates!)
Welcome!
Strongly worded letter today from John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority about the failure to reach a deal on Colorado River cutbacks:
More later, I’m supposed to be paying attention to a zoom meeting, but making this as broadly publicly available as possible seemed important. Click the “view document” link to see the whole thing.
On the eve of the release of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s August Colorado River reservoir forecasts – freighted with meaning this month because of Reclamation’s ultimatum to the states about the need to cut water use – we look back at the last four decades of water-supply management to pose the central question:
How did we get into this mess? Our answer in brief:
When the Colorado’s flow was up, we used it all.
When it was down, we drained the reservoirs.
The river’s natural flows have been down for a long time.
And during the few stretches of somewhat higher flows, we did not significantly refill the reservoirs.
Colorado River water use outpacing supply. Graph by Jack Schmidt, Utah State University
Operating year to year, it is easy to get lost in the river’s annual ups and downs, and the immediate desire to get water to farm fields and cities – THIS YEAR! NOW!
But the longer view, based on the best available data, makes clear our mistakes during the past 20 years. Since the year 2000, the blue line in the graph above has spent little or no time above the red line. That is water use outpacing supply.
The result – the most recent three consecutive dry years have left us with headline-clear problems:
The graph’s nuances are worth noting.
Blue dots represent each year’s total natural water supply – the sum of the natural water yield of the entire Upper Basin and of the many springs and tributaries that flow into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. This natural supply, not considering the Gila, Bill Williams, or Virgin Rivers, averaged 12.8 maf/yr (million acre feet per year) in the 21st century, 23% less than the average between 1981 and 1999.
To help visualize longer-term trends and cycles, we statistically smoothed the data to create the blue line, which more clearly shows the longer-term ups and downs of the Colorado River’s flow. The smooth line makes clear the wet periods of the 1980s and 1990s, and the deep droughts of the early 2000s and of today. Importantly for our current mess – the “wets” of the 21st century were not as wet, and the “drys” were drier, than those of the late 20th century.
The red line – total basin water use and reservoir evaporation loss (not including uses and losses in the Gila, Bill Williams, Virgin, or Little Colorado watersheds) – crept up through 2000 as the Central Arizona Project finally grew into the paper water allocations of the 20th century Law of the River.
Total consumptive uses and losses, including treaty deliveries to Mexico, peaked in 2000 at ~15.8 maf and were reduced during the next 2 years. Thereafter, average basin-wide consumptive uses and losses remained ~14.2 maf/yr between 2003 and 2020, and individual years were consistently within 4% of the average of that period. Throughout the 21st century, total Upper Basin uses and losses were ~30% of the basin-wide total.
Sustained consumptive uses and losses that exceed the natural supply can only be sustained by draining the reservoirs – but only so long as there is available water in the reservoirs. Thus, it is no surprise that the 21-year average (2000-2020) rate of water consumption and losses that exceeded the natural supply by ~1.2 maf/yr led to today’s crisis.
There were a few opportunities to rebuild reservoir storage, especially in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2017, and 2019, but a decades’ long water consumption rate that exceeds natural supply is unsustainable. The reservoirs are now mostly drained.
The reservoirs’ decline. Graph by Jack Schmidt, Utah State University
The history of water storage, described in the two graphs, has gone like this:
Thus, today’s crisis – two decades of low natural supply, including some short, very dry periods, cannot sustain consumption and losses that exceed the natural supply and that have not significantly changed since 2003.
What are the policy implications of this analysis?
The present water-supply crisis is a simple mass balance problem and we sought to describe this mass balance in the simplest way – averaging for the entire watershed
How did we consider inflows?
How did we estimate consumptive uses and losses?
We assumed that the uncertainty of all values was 2 or 3 significant digits and rounded off our calculations accordingly.
Drought Monitor map showing change over the last two months. Green is good.
Rain lately every afternoon at or near my house – big noisy thunder-cracking stuff. (I’ve started tucking a raincoat into my bike bag.)
Rio Grande flowing again.
Green is good.
Janet Wilson had a helpful story yesterday in the Desert Sun about California’s negotiations over its piece of the looming Colorado River cutbacks. Its bottom line is that California – the state with the largest Colorado River allocation – is talking about kicking in 500,000 acre feet of water. Or maybe it’s really just 400,000 acre feet of water – as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Bill Hasencamp told her, paraphrased, the negotiations are fluid and numbers could change.
A reminder of what Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton told senators just seven weeks ago:
In the Colorado River Basin more conservation and demand management are needed in addition to the actions already underway. Between 2 and 4 million acre feet of additional conservation is needed just to protect critical elevations in 2023. (emphasis added)
4 million acre feet is obviously out of reach. It always was.
But if Wilson’s numbers about California’s contributions are right – and she’s a good reporter, we have every reason to believe they’re in the ballpark – 2 million acre feet of additional conservation is beyond the grasp of a voluntary deal as well.
The arithmetic is straightforward.
The Upper Basin has said “not our problem“.
Nevada’s share of the river is so tiny that its contribution is couch cushion change, a rounding error.
That leaves, in round numbers, 1.5 million acre feet of water to come out of Arizona just to get to Touton’s bottom line number for additional conservation. That would require completely drying up the Central Arizona Project canal. (CAP is taking 1.031maf this year, and averaged ~1.4maf over the previous fives years). I’m frequently surprised by Arizona, but it seems unlikely that they’ll agree to a voluntary deal that dries up the CAP canal. If that’s where we end up, Arizona’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement will be to just make the feds do it, make them take the heat. (Worth noting that FiveThirtyEight has Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly slightly favored to hold his seat. Water politics is high stakes politics.)
Combine that with the reality that Arizona’s Native American communities, major water rights holders, have complained that they’ve been cut out of this entire process, according to a July 22 letter just surfaced.
I can imagine creative accounting that might allow everyone to grin through their teeth and count water moved down to Lake Powell from Flaming Gorge and other Upper Basin reservoirs as part of the 2 million. That’s pretty clearly not what Touton called for in June. It’s not “additional conservation”. But it might create some space for a face-saving deal.
Whether that would be enough to protect us from dead pool is another question.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s most recent “minimum probable” model runs show Lake Powell dropping below power pool – unable to generate electricity, and forced to move water through bypass tubes that Reclamation has made clear it does not trust – by October 2023.
Under that same scenario, Lake Mead drops to elevation 992 feet above sea level over the next 24 months.
(Trust me, having to type a Lake Mead elevation level without having to use a comma made me clench.)
At that point, a lack of water will make massive cuts a self-executing reality. We’ve drained our buffer. You can’t use water that doesn’t exist.