Water Shortage Disputes Brewing in the Colorado Basin States
Related subjects: J.E. Robertson, Sustainable Development, U.S. Environment, Vote 2008, Water: a Global Crisis
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently joked at an event in Colorado that he was there “to take your water”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his pronouncements on the need to “renegotiate” the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which determines how much water each of the 7 states in the Colorado Basin can draw from the river. The joke has become fodder for McCain’s opponents, at the national and local level. Colorado’s governor told the press, in a call reportedly organized by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), that the reference raised serious concerns about the favorability of McCain’s water policies to his state.
Gov. Ritter has said he believes renegotiation would reduce Colorado’s share of the river water, and the mood in Colorado is with him, opposing any attempt to divert more water away from Colorado to the other Basin states. McCain’s campaign has said the joke was just that, a joke, and that he did not mean to alarm neighboring states about his motivations for viewing renegotiation favorably.
Interestingly, there has been a recent agreement between the Basin states on how to deal with extreme drought fairly, given the likely need to rearrange the distribution of water from the river temporarily in such circumstances, and McCain has reportedly not commented on this negotiation. It may be that it would impede his further renegotiation of the underlying laws, or it may be that mentioning it would raise questions about whether it would be considered part of a renegotiation, something that drought-prone states might find even more alarming.
Las Vegas may be the biggest challenge facing the 7 Basin states in negotiating any new draft of the water distribution agreement. The city’s 1.7 million inhabitants represent 70% of the population of Nevada, and its booming service-sector and tourist economy mean the population is expected to keep expanding. But Las Vegas has almost no local water resources and is dependent upon borrowing and distribution schemes to provide for its basic needs and cement its growth potential.
Reports suggest its vast $60 billion economy can easily produce the financial resources required to keep buying into potentially costly water management schemes throughout the region, but the real sticking point will be: how much is money worth if other parts of the region have to choose between money and water? It’s not the same thing at all to sell part of a surplus water resource to the highest bidder as to sacrifice what water is needed to survive, and some worry the region is now far overtaxing its available water supply.
McCain’s hints at rethinking water management in the Colorado River Basin are not a sign of wrong thinking. In fact, it is likely that much of the midwest and west of the United States is currently facing the risk of a real long-term water shortage, due to heavy dependence on unsustainable pumping of “fossil” aquifers, deep ground water that is not replaced at usage rates by normal rainfall and runoff.
If such aquifers are in fact fossil reservoirs —replaceable only over the course of millions of years of indirect seepage and geological transformations—, plans currently in place to tap underground water to make up for the shortage of river water resources across the entire population of the Basin states may be ill-fated from the start, a band-aid fix on an issue intimately tied to the very sustenance of life and ecosystems.
McCain may have opened a debate that should have stayed away from presidential politics for now, if the candidate were to have his way, but the issue is a serious one that will likely play some role in the long-term economic health and wellbeing of western states and the US as a whole. If water policy is not bound to sustainable use and extraction policies, the US will face a major shortage of irrigation water and river-sourced water in coming decades.
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[...] India and Bangladesh are constantly disputing river water resources that both countries depend on for basic sustenance for tens of millions of people. Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are gripped by a struggle over control of the Nile’s water, with the river running dry at the Nile delta on the Mediterranean during some seasons. The Colorado River in the US has failed to reach the sea and is seeing its flow through the Grand Canyon significantly reduced, as states in the Colorado River Basin dispute claims on the river’s water. [...]
[...] India and Bangladesh are constantly disputing river water resources that both countries depend on for basic sustenance for tens of millions of people. Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are gripped by a struggle over control of the Nile’s water, with the river running dry at the Nile delta on the Mediterranean during some seasons. The Colorado River in the US has failed to reach the sea and is seeing its flow through the Grand Canyon significantly reduced, as states in the Colorado River Basin dispute claims on the river’s water. [...]
[...] India and Bangladesh are constantly disputing river water resources that both countries depend on for basic sustenance for tens of millions of people. Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are gripped by a struggle over control of the Nile’s water, with the river running dry at the Nile delta on the Mediterranean during some seasons. The Colorado River in the US has failed to reach the sea and is seeing its flow through the Grand Canyon significantly reduced, as states in the Colorado River Basin dispute claims on the river’s water. [...]