Here’s the release from the Center for Immigration Studies (Bryan Griffith) via PRNewswire:

The looming water crisis in the American Southwest – and the role of immigration-driven population growth – is the topic of a paper published this month by the Center for Immigration Studies and authored by New Mexico journalist Kathleene Parker.

The paper, “Population, Immigration, and the Drying of the American Southwest,” online at http://cis.org/southwest-water-population-growth, explores the link between the possibility of the potentially catastrophic economic and environmental water crisis and the fact that the Southwest is the fastest-growing region of the world’s fourth-fastest-growing nation – a growth rate earlier cautioned against by various presidential commissions. It also looks at how that growth rate is driven by historically unprecedented immigration – legal and illegal – into the United States, the world’s third-most-populous nation after China and India. Immigration is responsible for more than half of the population growth in the Southwest this past decade, and nearly all of the growth in the largest southwest state, California.

Such high immigration has happened absent discussion or acknowledgement of its impacts on population or limited resources, such as water. Parker presents evidence that indicates there is insufficient water for the region’s current population, much less the larger future populations that will result if immigration continues at its present high rate.

The paper focuses on the drought- and growth-depleted Colorado River, including the high probability that the first-ever drought emergency could be declared on the river by early 2011 and the possibility that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir and a depression-era wonder of engineering, could run dry in the not too distant future, with hydroelectric production threatened even sooner.

This would imperil all of the Southwest, Nevada and Las Vegas – which depends on Lake Mead for 90 percent of its water – in particular, but also cities like Albuquerque, which uses Colorado River water via the San Juan-Chama diversion project. Such relatively junior water rights could be at risk in the midst of a profound or long-term water shortage on the Colorado River.

The legal allocation of the Colorado in the 1920s was based on a combination of flawed river-flow data and a failure to understand that the Southwest, historically, is a far more arid region – based on recent scientific research – than first believed. That concern is based on normal weather patterns, with the possibility of even further depletion of the river, the Southwest’s main source of water, should global warming happen.

Yet the water crisis unfolds in an atmosphere where, as pointed out by prestigious scientific groups like the National Academy of Sciences and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the extent of the crisis is not being sufficiently acknowledged or the advisability of the region’s high growth rate considered by leaders. That high growth rate, in turn, is driven by U.S. immigration policies that do not consider the implications of a growth rate that, if trends hold, could mean one billion Americans by late this century.

Six states are dependent upon Colorado River to provide water to roughly 60 million people, and that number could double over the next four decades if immigration is not returned to far lower levels in the near future.
Parker, now of Rio Rancho, N.M., earlier worked as a correspondent for the Santa Fe New Mexican in the 1990s, covering Los Alamos, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Jemez Mountain region. She also freelanced for the Albuquerque Journal, covering the aftermath of the Cerro Grande fire and other topics, and she recently authored an article, for a major forestry magazine, on the Cerro Grande fire. She often teaches adult-education courses on population and environmental topics, has worked widely on water issues in Colorado and New Mexico, and frequently writes commentaries.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

Contact: Bryan Griffith
(202) 466-8185, press@cis.org

More Colorado River basin coverage here.

The new reservoir — built as part of the drought management plan for the Colorado River basin — passed its recent month-long testing period and is ready to store water on a temporary basis in order to control releases to Mexico. Here’s a report from the Associated Press via the San Francisco Chronicle. From the article:

The new reservoir, known during construction as Drop 2, grew out of a 2007 drought-management plan adopted by the seven states along the Colorado River. The plan identified opportunities to add water to the river by eliminating inefficient practices that led to system losses. One of those opportunities was in the system near Yuma, where billions of gallons of water allocated to U.S. farmers but never used by them flowed into Mexico, where it could be used without counting against that country’s annual allocation.

Nevada, at the time the state most at risk of running out of water, offered to pay much of the construction tab in exchange for a share of what was conserved. As the idea developed, Arizona and California agreed to contribute money for their own shares of water. In the end, Nevada paid $115 million for 400,000 acre-feet and Arizona and California added $28.6 million each for shares of 100,000 acre-feet. The states can use the water in increments over about 20 years or leave it stored in Lake Mead to delay drought restrictions…

The reservoir itself is not that big. Full, its two basins can hold up to 8,000 acre-feet. By comparison, Canyon Lake, the smallest reservoir on the Salt River, can hold more than 57,000 acre-feet. But Brock Reservoir, named for a farmer and agricultural researcher in California’s Imperial Valley, was not built to store water long-term. On any given day, it could be the largest body of water for miles in any direction, or it could be two empty holes in the ground. It will operate most often after a rainstorm, when farmers on the lower river decide they don’t need water they had ordered several days earlier. That water, which had previously flowed south into Mexico, will now be diverted into Brock and stay there until it can be returned to the system.

More Colorado River basin coverage here.