The Colorado River Crisis Is Reaching a Breaking Point
Russia’s Oil Windfall Vanishes as Urals Crashes to $42 a Barrel Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment.
His work has also appeared in The Christian Science… Depending on whom you talk to, the Colorado River serves either35 millionor40 millionpeople, all of whom are having to reconsider how much water they use and how they use it in the wake of an ongoing megadrought that arrived at the beginning of this century.
The changes are no longer in the "let's-discuss-this" phase asthe federal government threatens to impose up to a 40 percent cut in river water allocations over the next 10 yearsif the seven western states—Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California—and the 30 recognized tribal jurisdictions with water rights don't agree among themselves about how to divvy up the dwindling Colorado River.
There isn't as much water as there used to be, and that means that not everything people are using water for now will get its previous allotment.
No doubt, the volume of water representing 52 percent of the total river withdrawals currently taken for agriculture could be reduced through conservation and efficiency measures.
But it turns out that "conservation" in some instances might meansimply leaving fields unplanted for lack of water.
And, it's not as if efficiency measures haven't already been implemented, as irrigated agriculture in the Colorado basin has been transitioning to the much more efficientdrip irrigationaway from traditionalsurface irrigation.
I could not find any statistics for this, however.
So, it's not clear how much more water savings could be achieved through the installation of additional drip irrigation in place of surface irrigation.
Then, there is the 18 percent of the water withdrawals currently going to municipal water systems.
The people in those cities have taken seriously the need to reduce water use.Even though those systems now serve 24 percent more residents than in the year 2000, those systems use 18 percent LESS water.
How much further could these cities reduce water consumption? It's almost certain that the easiest forms of reduction have already taken place.
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