We’re running out of Water

What’s happening out west is a warning for the United States.

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This is a prequel to “The Water Wars.”

Hopefully, not in the physical violent sense, but certainly in the fact that “he who controls the water, controls the future.”

Where the West Went Wrong

If you haven’t read the headlines yet, the Colorado River is close to collapsing.

The river is the life line for tens of millions in the Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico) and the Lower Basin states (California, Nevada, Arizona.)

A drought decades in the making, made worse by climate change, has led to the worst snow pack on record for the Rockies, which is where the Colorado River gets most of its water from.

As a result, the largest reservoirs in the country, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, have fallen to disastrous levels. If things get worse, the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona may not be able to generate power. The Hoover Dam in Arizona/Nevada will also have its power generating abilities tested.

The One Hundred Year Old Agreement

The Upper Basin and Lower Basin States have to  share water based on a series of agreements that started more than 100 years ago.

The Colorado River Compact of 1922 was written when the climate was wetter, and the population was a small fraction of what it is today.

CSU writes, “In 1922, Hoover imagined that the basin’s population, which totaled about 457,000 in 1915, might quadruple in the future. Today, the Colorado River supplies some 40 million people– more than 20 times Hoover’s projection.”

Simply put, those 20th century Water Founding Fathers underestimated the capacity of humankind to grow and then over-consume everything in its path.

Time has Run Out

Today, those states are fighting the first battle of the Water Wars. The battlefield is in boardrooms and potentially court rooms, as they won’t come to an agreement on who deserves the most water and who has to cut back.

The agreements of old do not and will not work ever again.

These states have fought for so long on this, that now with a crucial deadline approaching, the federal government has stepped in and is making the decisions for them.

Arizona, California, and Nevada are expected to take the hit here and would lose access to water 25 million people. It’s a roughly 40% total cut in water.

So why should you care?

Even if you don’t live out west, your food comes from there. A substantial amount  vegetables for the winter months come from this region.

EESI writes, “Every year, half the river is diverted to irrigate five million acres of farmland, which contribute to 15% of U.S. agricultural production.”

So get ready to change your diet, or pay more at the grocery store.

Undoubtedly, this will be really bad news for farmers, especially those that farm water intensive crops like alfalfa, that feeds cattle.

The agriculture industry, over time, will be forced to move somewhere that still has rain in the forecast.

To make matters worse, historically, land owners  have been incentivized to use as much water as possible. “Senior water rights holders are disincentivized to curtail their water use due to the “use it or lose it” clause, which means that water rights can be reduced if they are not being used to their full extent”

Out west, agriculture is by far the main user of Colorado River Water. Other main users include cities, industry, green lawns in the desert, and eventually those AI Data Centers that are invading every corner of America.

Add up all these issues over a century and you’ve got the poster child for “what not to do.”

And it’s not like we didn’t know about all these problems. We have been warned for so many years that something like this was going to happen, but money and special interests just kept getting in the way of meaningful action.

The Colorado River and the states that use it

weren’t meant to grow this much, this area was not meant to have this many people, or have this much industry, or have this many farms.

This is the lesson of over consumption, you can’t take and take and expect nothing bad to happen.

This is a lesson that other cities in the United States might soon have to deal with if they don’t take steps now it to protect the natural resources that we need to survive.

For those of us in the wetter parts of the United States, this is not a future we have to accept, but we must start now.

Every unnecessary water hungry project you push back on, every waterway you convince your elected officials to protect, every habitat you help restore through a volunteer organization, leads us closer to a future where we avoid the worst of The Water Wars.