Day: December 24, 2022

The next coordination meeting for the operation of the Navajo Unit is scheduled for Tuesday, January 17th 2023 — Reclamation #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Navajo Dam. Photo credit: Reclamation

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

The next coordination meeting for the operation of the Navajo Unit is scheduled for Tuesday, January 17th 2023, at 1:00 pm. This meeting is open to the public and will be held as a hybrid meeting with the following attendance options: 

  • In-person: Farmington Civic Center, 200 West Arrington, in Farmington, New Mexico.  
  • Virtual attendance: For those who wish to remain remote, there is a Teams video option at this link. This link should open in any smartphone, tablet, or computer browser, and does not require a Microsoft account You will be able to view and hear the presentation as it is presented.  
  • Phone line: You can call-in from any phone using the following information: (202) 640-1187, Phone Conference ID 775 074 607#. You will not be able to see the presentation with this option.  A copy of the presentation will be distributed to this email list and posted to our website prior to the meeting for those who wish to listen by phone. 

We hope the options provided make it possible for all interested parties to participate as they are able and comfortable.  If you are using a virtual/phone option, please try to log on at least 10 minutes before the meeting start time. For technical issues, feel free to call the number below.   

A copy of the presentation and meeting summary will be distributed to this email list and posted to our website following the meeting. If you are unable to connect to the video meeting, feel free to contact me (information below) following the meeting for any comments or questions.  

The meeting agenda will include a review of operations and hydrology since August, current soil and snowpack conditions, a discussion of hydrologic forecasts and planned operations for remainder of this water year, updates on maintenance activities, drought operations, and the Recovery Program on the San Juan River.   

If you have any suggestions for the agenda or have questions about the meeting, please call Susan Behery at 970-385-6560, or email sbehery@usbr.gov.  Visit the Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html for operational updates.

#Water managers across #drought-stricken West agree on one thing: ‘This is going to be painful’ — The #Nevada Current #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification #CRWUA2022

Hoover Dam’s intake towers protrude from the surface of Lake Mead near Las Vegas, where water levels have dropped to record lows amid a 22-year drought. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)

Click the link to read the article on The Nevada Current website (Jennifer Solis):

Water authorities in the Western U.S. don’t have a crystal ball, but rapidly receding reservoirs uncovering sunken boats and other debris lost in their depths decades ago give a clear view of the hard choices ahead.

If western states do not agree on a plan to safeguard the Colorado River — the source of the region’s vitality — there won’t be enough water for anyone.

Water managers, researchers, agricultural producers and others from across the drought-stricken river basin met in Las Vegas last week for the Colorado River Water Users Association annual convention to face hard truths about the state of the river and historically-low levels of its biggest reservoirs.

Two decades of drought and poor planning have caused the river’s biggest reservoirs — Lakes Mead and Powell — to drop to their lowest collective volume since they were filled.  [ed. emphasis mine]

“Time is not on our side. Hydrology is not on our side. That’s the frightening reality,” said Rebecca Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The hydrology “is going to force us to do something because we will have no other choices. Every day that passes this problem gets harder and harder to solve.”

Water storage in Lakes Mead and Powell is at a fraction of what it was two decades ago, and could drop below what’s needed to generate power as soon as next year, said water experts.

To put it in perspective, this winter both reservoirs were about a quarter full. In December 1999, Lake Powell was at 88% capacity, and Lake Mead was at 96% capacity, according to analysts.  

Lower basin states faced their first-ever federally declared water shortage, which directs how much states can draw from the Colorado River in 2021. Deeper cuts were subsequently declared this year.

Water experts say more water cuts for lower basin states – including Nevada – are likely in 2024 due to even lower water levels.

Even further restricting water allocation “doesn’t mean the lakes won’t go lower than that,” said Ted Cooke, the general manager for the Central Arizona Project.

If nothing is done, there is a real possibility water levels in both reservoirs will drop so low in the next two years that water will no longer flow downstream to the 40 million people in the West who rely on the Colorado River.

Colorado Water Conservation Board Executive Director and commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission Becky Mitchell, center, speaks on a panel with representatives of each of the seven basin states at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas Thursday. The UCRC released additional details of a water conservation program this week. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Faulty numbers and an over-allocated river

At the center of discussions last week was one of the most important legal documents governing how the river’s waters are shared: the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated 7.5 million acre-feet for each basin, based on a faulty model that assumed the river system could supply 15 million acre-feet annually.

Today, officials acknowledge only 12.4 million acre-feet flows from the river each year, meaning western states will have to agree on massive cuts to their water supply for the sake of the river — a politically perilous decision.

Despite clear evidence of diminishing water supplies over the past century, not much has changed in terms of how states allocate and use water.

But those in charge are starting to understand that western states are getting to a tipping point that will force them to adjust their attitudes and change their consumption habits.

In June, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton issued an ultimatum to states: Develop a plan to save 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water by next year — roughly one-fifth of the water currently allocated to states—or the federal government will step in.

During a panel discussion at last week’s convention in Las Vegas, representatives for the seven western states who rely on the Colorado River said reaching a compromise will be their collective priority for the next six months.

They agree that the longer it takes to stabilize the river and conserve the water needed to keep the river functional, the more likely reservoir levels will continue to plummet, leaving states with fewer and fewer options.

Water managers also agree that about 75% of future water cuts will need to come from lower basin states — including Nevada — to reach reductions large enough to protect critical elevations in the reservoirs.

Lower basin states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — use nearly all their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation compared to the 4.5 million acres-feet used by the upper basin states, said water managers.

“Yes, the lower basin will have to take the lion’s share of the reductions,” said John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “I’m a big believer in the law, I’m a big believer in food security, but I’m an even bigger believer in math.”

Nevada uses only a small share of the river’s water and has made great strides in conservation, but Arizona and California are still far from a deal. Both states will need to make painful reductions and incur massive expenses to stabilize their water use, say water experts.

Just last week, all of Southern California was declared to be in a drought emergency by the Metropolitan Water District, the main water supplier for Los Angeles county.

Lower basin states argue that upper basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico — also need to make a firm commitment to lower their water use.

Officials for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation warned that aridification, the long-term shift to a drier climate, means even less snow runoff is making it to the river each year.

“It’s really hard to come up with solutions” based on who has priority water rights, said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. If cities in lower-basin states “wipe out every drop of their water, it’s still not going to stabilize the system,” said Buschatzke.

The upper basin has committed to looking into the feasibility of cutting back their water use — a move critics say amounts to “planning to make a plan.”

Upper basin states have not released an estimate of how much water they are able or willing to cut. However, the Upper Colorado River Commission says they are slowly taking steps to create a management plan with potential water cuts.

“We live within the means of the river every day,” said Becky Mitchell, the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. “What we like to do is under-promise and over-deliver, and make sure if there is a number out there it is a number that can actually be achieved.”

Reservoirs in upper basin states are currently providing what amounts to 19% of their annual water usage to Lake Powell, based on a 2019 drought response agreement.

“Those releases have had significant impacts, huge impacts on the local communities,” Mitchell said. “What you’re asking for is a big ask. We are willing to look at this, but we also need to look at the impacts at the same time.”

Water managers representing the four upper basin states released details of a temporary conservation plan last week.

One critical component of the plan is the reauthorization of the System Conservation Pilot Program, a program that paid water users to reduce their use, with the goal of implementing it by the summer.

It’s unclear how much water the pilot program will successfully conserve as a voluntary and temporary solution. The original program saved about 47,000 acre-feet of water at a cost of about $8.6 million over the four years.

“The System Conservation Pilot Program is called a pilot program for a reason,” said Gene Shawcroft, general manager of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District. “We believe we will learn a lot from that. We believe that it can easily be transitioned into a management plan.”

‘This is going to be painful’

Brandon Gebhart, the top water official in Wyoming, said previous conservation programs that depend on voluntary cuts were not as effective as water managers had hoped, but a recent shift in mentality among water users could make the difference.

Another change that could make the difference is the nearly $4 billion set aside for the Colorado River that would allow the Bureau of Reclamation to pay users to voluntarily forgo water use.

“There are positives. The funding that is coming in provides opportunity. It provides the ability to change,” said Mitchell, the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. 

Still, water managers say the federal government will need to invest even more money into the river.

“If you look at the federal investment in Florida, after one hurricane they got an order of magnitude more federal assistance than the entire Colorado basin is getting in the face of this crisis,” said Entsminger, the Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager.

Western states will need all the assistance they can get to find ways to run their economies with less water, and time is running out.

A recent survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that more than 650 farmers in 15 Western states saw a 74% reduction in harvests, and 42% switched crops due to the drought.

It took Western states five years to agree on a short-term five year plan to address the region-wide drought that is set to expire in 2026, said Entsminger.

“We don’t have five months to come up with an operation plan for 2023,” Entsminger said. “It’s time to set aside the talking points and get real.”

Climate change has shrunk the river’s flows roughly 20% in the past two decades, and scientists predict they will shrink nearly 10%  more with each additional degree of temperature rise.

“We have to move quickly and we’re committed to that,” said Mitchell. “We need to accept the situation we’re in and we need to reduce demands. All of us, every sector, every state, every water user. There isn’t any other way.”

“We have to accept that we can not cling to our entitlements or allocations. If they are not there none of it matters,” Mitchell continued. “Folks in the room have to be willing to let us make hard decisions, because this is going to be painful.”

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and Twitter.

Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160

Why Scientists Are Rallying to Save Ponds: Humble ponds have a key role to play in fighting #climatechange and aiding conservation — but only if we protect them — The Revelator

“Swamp Cedars” (Juniperus scopulorum) and associated pond, wetland and meadow in Spring Valley, White Pine County, Nevada. Photograph by Dennis Ghiglieri from http://images.water.nv.gov/images/Hearing%20Exhibit%20Archives/spring%20valley/WELC/Exhibit%203030.pdf

Click the link to read the article on The Revelator website (Jack McGovan):

Thomas Mehner’s research team has spent the past few years wading through ponds in Brandenburg — the state surrounding Germany’s capital city, Berlin. It wasn’t the increasingly hot summers that forced them into the cool water. They were collecting samples for analysis — something not many other people are doing.

“Northeast Germany is blessed with lakes, so if you talk with people about ponds, they say, ‘Are they so important?’” says Mehner, a researcher at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Friedrichshagen, Berlin.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

Ponds take so many forms across the world that the word “pond” can be quite difficult to define. Typically, however, they’re smaller and shallower than lakes. As to their importance, research suggests that ponds are better for biodiversity than many larger bodies of water. They’ve been found to support more plants and animals overall, including many endangered species.

That’s part of what guides Mehner’s research on ponds. His team gathers information on insect larvae and environmental DNA to detect the presence of fish and amphibians. They also collect traces of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide to examine the link between the biodiversity of water bodies and its impact on emissions in the environment.

Their work is part of a larger effort.

Mehner is the German partner for POND Ecosystems for Resilient Future Landscapes in a changing climate — PONDERFUL, for short. The international project examines hundreds of ponds across Europe — and beyond — to see how they can help provide climate change solutions and boost conservation.

But for these often-ignored water bodies to help us and support wildlife, researchers say ponds also need protections.

Establishing Safeguards

Ponds can be just as diverse as the ecosystems they support. In Germany, for example, ponds were typically carved out by glaciers during the last ice age, says Mehner. In the United Kingdom, they were largely excavated by farmers for rearing cattle. Some ponds are a permanent fixture of the landscape, while others only exist during certain periods of the year.

Regardless of their origins, ponds have helped provide refuge for wild animals and plants. Unfortunately, despite decades of research showing ponds’ importance to biodiversity, they’re often overlooked by policymakers and the public.

The current policy that covers standing waters in the U.K. and European Union — the EU Water Framework Directive — largely excludes bodies of less than 50 hectares.

As a result, ponds are essentially ignored, which means they’re not monitored by authorities and are allowed to languish, blocking potential climate and biodiversity benefits.

PONDERFUL hopes to change this. One of its major goals is to gather data that can be shared with policymakers to highlight the importance of ponds so they’re given more attention.

A PONDERFUL project in Switzerland. Photo: Julie Fahy (CC-BY-NC-ND)

Disappearing Ponds

Time is of the essence.

Some of the ponds that Mehner studies are located in the small municipality of Schöneiche, on the border of Berlin and Brandenburg, where ponds are disappearing.

“This is really a reflection of climate change,” he says. The lack of rain in recent years has depleted the ponds, which also suffer from urban pressures. Berlin consumes a lot of groundwater from surrounding areas, further pushing the groundwater-fed ponds to the breaking point.

This isn’t an isolated problem.

Research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology found that 90% of ponds in Switzerland have been lost over the last two centuries. The U.K. had an estimated 800,000 ponds at the start of the 20th century; today less than a quarter of those remain. In Austria, researchers found that 70% of temporary saline ponds were lost over a 60-year period.

Unlike in Brandenburg, in these countries the loss of ponds has been linked to agricultural intensification, with farms either filling in the ponds, ploughing over them or draining them.

Global Action

Whatever the reason for their perilous states, researchers hope that better data can help guide government policy.

There’s evidence elsewhere that it can.

Elias Bizuru, director of research and innovation at the University of Rwanda, helped to build the Rwanda Biodiversity Information System. Starting in 2018, researchers collected data from wetlands and other freshwater habitats and made it all available on one system.

“The information related to biodiversity in Rwanda was scattered across institutions, and getting that information was a very, very big challenge,” says Bizuru. Without the information at hand, researchers like himself found it difficult to make suggestions on the kind of actions decisionmakers should take to protect wetlands.

When they do have easily accessible data, Bizuru says, the Rwandan government can be quite successful in its interventions. The Nyandungu Eco-Tourism Park, for example, was a degraded wetland six years ago. Now, after a restoration project, it’s host to a wide range of native species, including dragonflies, snakes, amphibians, birds and a range of plants.

Another restoration project in Switzerland created hundreds of new ponds and managed to increase the regional populations of eight endangered frogs, toads and newts, especially helping the European tree frog. The effort helped boost those regional populations by 52%.

In the U.K., the Norfolk Pond Project has conducted similar work. Carl Sayer and Helen Greaves, colleagues in the geography department at University College London, have together helped to restore more than 200 ponds originally dug for agricultural purposes.

To restore them, Sayer and Greaves would simply clear up mud and remove trees from the area, letting nature do the rest. A study published by the pair in 2020 highlighted significant increases in aquatic plants, invertebrates and amphibians after their interventions.

A European tree frog. Photo: Nicholas Turland (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“You’re almost reinstating natural processes, really, because in a natural state ponds are disturbed,” Sayer says.

Cascading Effects

Ponds don’t only exist in rural areas.

Zsófia Horváth, a community ecologist at the Institute of Aquatic Ecology in Budapest, runs a citizen science campaign for ponds in urban areas across Hungary. Her research team has collected biodiversity data from 386 ponds and surveyed more than 800 pond owners to find out which interventions people can take to make their ponds more biodiverse.

During a previous research project in Austria, she found that if one pond disappears, others suffer.

She tells me that ponds function for the species they host the same way islands might for humans at sea. The more islands are lost, the more precarious it becomes for a seafarer to access the resources they need to survive.

“You’re taking out these important members of the network,” she says. Their research looked into zooplankton populations — crustaceans and rotifers — since the 1950s and found that species loss correlated with a reduction in the number of ponds in the area.

The idea that it’s important to create networks of ponds is also shared by Sayer, and it’s a long-term goal of the Norfolk Pond Project.

“I’d love to see whole areas joined, where we restore ponds in one landscape and another, and then we link it all up,” he says.

Ensuring such networks become a reality, however, requires more data, Horváth says.

“It’s so easy to ignore a habitat if you don’t know what kind of service it can offer humanity,” she says. “It’s kind of a very profane, human-oriented point of view — but this is how policymakers and the general public work.”

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San Diego’s Zombie Water Pipeline Project Is Dead Again. For Now — The Voice of San Diego #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Click the link to read the article on The Voice of San Diego website (MacKenzie Elmer):

San Diego’s proposal to build its own $5 billion pipeline to the Colorado River and bypass paying Los Angeles for water is now in a state of the undead –technically lifeless unless local water officials choose to revive it again.

The San Diego County Water Authority last resurrected the idea to build its own pipeline from the major water source in September 2020. It was an effort to free its dependence on the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District, which owns the only aqueduct – and San Diego’s only connection – to the Colorado River.

Dan Denham, the Water Authority’s deputy general manager, confirmed Thursday that it’s “pencils down” on the water wholesaler’s sixth attempt to study the pipeline project since the 1990s. The reason this time is that Water Authority is in court with Metropolitan over what LA charges to transport almost 60 percent of San Diego’s water, but there’s hope for common ground.

“I think both parties are willing and ready to sit down and talk about a settlement,” Denham said.

A San Francisco court is expected to rule early next year on whether San Diego should be credited for water it used to buy from Metropolitan but now purchases from the Imperial Valley – though it all flows through the same straw from the Colorado River owned by Los Angeles. Denham said they’re stepping back from pursuing a parallel pipeline over hopes for either a settlement or a court win.

“I know five billion sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but when you talk about what (we’re) paying to get the water here in today’s dollars, over time there’s an economic argument that can be made (for it),” Denham said.

Consultants hired by the Water Authority to study the zombie pipeline predicted Los Angeles’ water and transportation rates would be so high in the future, San Diego could get river water through its own straw by 2048 at $1,000 less than Metropolitan would charge. Currently, though, water from Metropolitan is San Diego’s cheapest supply.

San Diego took LA to court in 2010 alleging Metropolitan tacked costs on top of that Imperial Valley deal that the Water Authority customers shouldn’t have to pay. Bad blood over the cuts San Diego experienced during the drought and subsequent fights over the Imperial Valley water deal fueled the resurfacing of the parallel pipeline – an effort to break from Metropolitan completely.

Metropolitan officials didn’t publicly view San Diego’s project as a threat. Former General Manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said he was “agnostic” to it when it was reintroduced two years ago. San Diego is one of Metropolitan’s biggest customers and, losing those sales would leave the rest of Los Angeles’ customers to pay for maintenance of it sprawling system, but Kightlinger said there was plenty of time to plan for the departure in the years it would take San Diego to execute the project. General Manager Adel Hagekhalil declined to comment for this story.

JB Hamby, a director on Imperial Valley Irrigation District’s board, said a member of the Water Authority board recently assured him the pipeline was dead. Hamby called for San Diego to stop its pursuits of the parallel pipeline in YouTube videos during his 2020 campaign. He sees its renewed demise as a positive sign San Diego and Los Angeles are playing nice.

“You’ve had turnover on the board, the general manager and chairpersons … There’s a reset that’s happened between the two agencies that’s very healthy and promising for the future,” Hamby said.

San Diego has long blamed Los Angeles for water rate increases. The region used to buy all its water from Los Angeles until a drought and mandatory water cuts in the 1990s encouraged the Water Authority to diversify its sources. San Diego still gets most of its water from the Colorado River through the same set of pipes connecting the region to Los Angeles, but who they buy it from has changed.

A huge 2003 deal with Imperial Valley means San Diego now buys much of its river water from their eastern neighbor, and the money is used to pay farmers and support Imperial’s utility. Farmers don’t physically send the water westward through canals or pipes to make that exchange. San Diegans are instead consuming “paper water,” as it’s known in the water world, or a legal instrument used to track who is paying for and consuming water molecules circulating throughout the West.

The Water Authority’s governing board approved $1.8 million to re-study the parallel pipeline by a slim margin in November 2020.

That duplicate pipe San Diego wanted to build would sit parallel to the one Met uses now and wouldn’t produce any savings for ratepayers until at least 2063 – costing two generations of ratepayers at least $5 billion to build. The Water Authority estimates the pipe could save ratepayers other billions – eventually.

The Water Authority studied the pipe dream at least five other times in the past. The route it was most excited about was the same one it ditched in 1996 because it was more expensive than the others at that time.

The route stretches 132 miles from the southern tip of the Salton Sea, along state Route 78 through Anza Borrego State Park. It would tunnel underneath the Volcan Mountains, Mesa Grande Reservation and Cleveland National Forest, along the northern border of San Pasqual Reservation, eventually terminating at the Twin Oaks Valley Water Treatment Plant.

Proponents argued it would give San Diego control over its water infrastructure costs, the primary driver of ever-rising water rates. Critics didn’t understand why San Diegans should spend billions on a project that wouldn’t bring any new water to the region.

Tom Kennedy, general manager for Rainbow Municipal Water District in northern San Diego County, which is currently undergoing its own separate fight to divorce from the Water Authority due to high water costs, argued the pipeline would make San Diego too dependent on the Colorado River.

If San Diego built its own pipeline to the Colorado River, Kennedy said, then it couldn’t benefit from other water that Metropolitan provides Southern California from rivers in Northern California.

“I think putting all your eggs in a basket on the Colorado River is a bad idea,” Kennedy said. “Why would you spend billions of dollars on one supply?”

Denham said if the Water Authority board chose to pick up the project again, it would have to re-do all the cost estimates of the project since inflation has driven up construction and labor prices since the board paid a consulting firm just under $2 million to study the idea.

This story was first published by Voice of San Diego. Sign up for VOSD’s newsletters here.

The Year in Water, 2022: #ColoradoRiver Basin’s Moment of Reckoning — Circle of Blue #COriver #aridification

Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160

Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website. Here’s an excerpt:

It was perhaps the shock that Colorado River users needed.

A basin that is spending down its water savings was jolted in June when the U.S. government ordered the seven states to correct a longstanding misalignment of water supply and demand.

Camille Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, told the states to cut their take from the river next year by between two million and four million acre-feet of water. At the high end, that equals one-third of the Colorado’s recent annual flow. Unless the states acted, she said, the federal government would “protect the system” and apply its own remedy.

John Entsminger, the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies the Las Vegas area, affirmed the groundbreaking nature of the pronouncement. The requested conservation volumes, he said, were of a magnitude “previously considered unattainable.”

They still haven’t been attained. The states missed an August deadline and remain in fractious negotiations about how to divide the cuts.

Lake Mead, absent unprecedented action or a miraculous winter, remains in peril. It is projected to shrink more than 20 feet by the end of 2023, when the reservoir would be just 22 percent of capacity.

Reclamation awards $80,000 for improved precipitation measurement devices

SNOTEL automated data collection site. Credit: NRCS

Click the link to read the release on the Reclamation website (Chelsea Kennedy):

The Bureau of Reclamation selected eight solutions to each receive $10,000 and continue in the Counting Every Drop Challenge. This challenge is seeking precipitation measurement devices that are reliable, accurate, low maintenance, and able to operate in remote areas in extreme weather conditions.  

The Counting Every Drop Challenge is a two-phase prize competition totaling up to $300,000 in prizes. The ideal solution will not require fluids, such as antifreeze, to operate.  

“Better precipitation monitoring stands to enhance water management. We are excited by the innovative concepts of the phase one winners and look forward to how they progress and perform in phase two,” said Senior Advisor for Research and Development Levi Brekke. “The goal of this prize competition is to develop new devices that increase accuracy and reliability while reducing maintenance so they can operate cost-effectively in extremely remote areas.” 

The winning solutions selected to move onto phase two include: 

  • Rixel – Their solution is a fluid-free and active precipitation station that measures any form of precipitation. It can operate in harsh environments from extreme cold to hot. The eco-friendly design discharges only water into the environment. 
  • The Planet Earth – Their solution is a fluid-free precipitation metering device that includes a pot that is mounted on a load cell. After completing the precipitation weighing process, the precipitation will be discharged into the environment using a wiper that cleans the pot continuously.  
  • Orion Labs -Their system provides a fluid-free solution for accurate precipitation detection and measurement and builds upon existing rain gauge collection methods, adds enhancements with software capabilities, and a custom-designed collection unit for a unique, low-power, low-cost redundant solution.    
  • PGRAWS – Their Precipitation Gauge with Redundant Array of Weight Scales known as PGRAWS is a novel catching-style precipitation gauge based on weight measurement of all forms of precipitation. Redundant collection buckets with independent mechanical operation contribute to high instrument reliability. 
  • PMASS – The Precipitation Measurement with Advanced Solid-state Sensors solution, known as PMASS combines a downward-facing pulsed coherent radar, a camera-based sensor, and a temperature sensor. The machine learning solution estimates rates and accumulated depth of precipitation from features extracted from the radar and camera subsystems. 
  • Rahavi Brothers – Their device benefits from the massive energy stored in propane. We use this energy to melt solid precipitation during extremely cold weather. An AI-powered control board is responsible for controlling the process to increase accuracy and performance. 
  • Top Solvers – Their device uses an array of precipitation sensors together with a custom control unit. Which meets and exceeds all the challenge requirements, providing the required accuracy and fail-safe redundancy. 

The selected teams will build their prototype and a preliminary review will be conducted during this phase. Up to five of the eight teams will receive $15,000 to continue prototype development during this phase. Teams that ship their prototype for testing will receive a $3,000 milestone award. The top solution that meets all the requirements and is fluid free will receive $100,000. Other solutions will share $30,000 in innovation awards. 

Reclamation is partnering with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, NASA Tournament Lab, Geonor, Inc., and Freelancer for this prize competition. 

To learn more, please visit www.usbr.gov/research/challenges/counteverydrop.html. 

Reclamation conducts prize competitions to spur innovation by engaging a non-traditional, problem-solver community. Please visit Reclamation’s Water Prize Competition Center to learn more. 

Should we worry about 8 billion people? Breaking down population’s role in the environmental impact equation — @HighCountryNews

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jonathan Thompson):

This is an installment of the Landline, a fortnightly newsletter from High Country News about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Is overpopulation the environmental elephant in the room?

Last month, the United Nations announced that the Earth’s population had reached 8 billion. The organization’s leaders don’t see all those humans as something to fear, but rather as, in the words of Secretary General António Guterres, “an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet.”

But judging from the letters I get after almost every environment-related piece I write, I suspect that some readers would disagree. 

“I am an avid ‘environmentalist,’” a reader recently wrote. “Simple, plain truth fact: Whether it is climate change, wildlife habitat, immigration, and yes, even gun violence. We will NEVER make much progress … until we make significant gains in stabilizing and ultimately reducing the cancer of human population growth.”

This note echoes hundreds of other responses I’ve received over the last couple decades. The basic idea is that all aspects of environmental degradation — along with traffic congestion and the housing crisis — are rooted in overpopulation. And, the argument goes, not mentioning this in environmental stories is irresponsible, verging on dishonest. “Population growth is the environmentalists’ ‘elephant in the room,’” another reader wrote. “We ignore the issue at our peril.”

We at Landline would like to use the 8-billion benchmark as an opportunity to stop ignoring population. But, fair warning: You might not like what we have to say.

No, I’m not going to tell you to stop worrying about population growth. Even as the U.N. celebrates the advances in medicine and nutrition that make it possible for billions of people to exist on Earth, it acknowledges the challenges presented by rapidly growing numbers in places like Nigeria. And no, I’m not going to deride every overpopulationist as a racist or eco-fascist or eugenicist. While it’s true that fear of overpopulation is often used to justify racism or eco-fascist views or xenophobia, there are plenty of folks who are genuinely concerned about the planet’s ability to sustain 8 billion people, no matter where or who or what color those people may be.

But I will suggest that you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Most folks would agree that the real worry here is not the sheer numbers, but their collective impact on the environment. We — the planet’s human inhabitants — are clearing land, leveling forests and mountains, mining and drilling minerals and burning fossil fuels in order to sustain ourselves and our lifestyles. That, in turn, is diminishing biodiversity, driving species to extinction and stretching the planet’s carrying capacity to a snapping point, thereby imperiling our own species’ survival. The problems are exacerbated as planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions soar, further diminishing freshwater stores and hurting food production. 

And the environmental impacts, put simply, are the product of population multiplied by per capita consumption. It would stand to reason that with every added unit of humanity comes a corresponding and proportional increase in environmental impact. The thing is, per capita consumption varies widely across the globe and the demographic spectrum, vastly outweighing simple population numbers in our impact equation. 

14
Percent by which total global energy consumption has increased over the last decade. 

11
Percent by which total global population increased during that same period. 

6
Percent by which total global carbon emissions from energy use increased over the decade.

That is to say, the affluent consume far more than everyone else and therefore have a much greater environmental impact, throwing the aforementioned equation into disarray. The richest 10% of the globe’s population are responsible for nearly half of all “lifestyle consumption emissions,” according to Oxfam, while the poorest half is responsible for just 10% of those emissions. Another way to look at this is that each person at the top of the global wealth ladder emits about 31.25 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent each year, while each of the globe’s poorest 50% emits about 1.25 tons of CO2. That’s because folks in the so-called “developed” world burn through a heck of a lot more fossil fuels, food, water, minerals, Big Macs — you name it — than those in less-affluent, rapidly growing regions.

Increases in population still result in increases in overall environmental impact. But per capita consumption plays a far bigger role. It’s runaway consumption, not unhindered population growth, that is most responsible for the habitat loss, land-use changes and resource exploitation that most threaten biodiversity and cause the runaway greenhouse gas emissions that are altering the climate. 

4.7 billion
Metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted from energy use in the United States in 2021.

3.8 billion
Metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by Europe energy use in 2021.

1.3 billion
Metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by Africa from energy use in 2021.

This equation — combined with the disproportional influence of consumption over sheer population numbers — holds true even at a regional level. 

Perhaps the most prominent example of a system in the West that has exceeded the carrying capacity is the Colorado River. The population has dramatically increased in the seven Colorado River Basin states over the last few decades. And, during that same time, demand for the river’s water has come to vastly exceed the supply.

At first glance, it would appear that a larger population has resulted in greater consumption, thereby draining the reservoirs. But the data doesn’t back this up. While Colorado River consumption climbed along with population for decades after the Colorado River Compact was signed a century ago, that demand leveled over the last couple of decades, even as the population exploded. Yes, consumptive use of the Colorado River’s waters held steady or even dropped as the population climbed, as counterintuitive as that may seem.

The Bellagio fountains in Vegas. The fountain is fed by a private well from a now-defunct golf course, not by the Colorado River. Credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

750,000
Amount by which the Las Vegas metro area population increased between 2002 and 2021. 

26 billion gallons
Amount by which the Las Vegas metro area overall water use decreased during that same period. 

500,000 acre-feet
Estimated amount of Colorado River water used to irrigate alfalfa fields in a single California irrigation district per year, or nearly twice the Las Vegas area’s total annual consumption.

Meanwhile, the West’s wealthiest guzzle more and more water and energy and resources with every new pile of cash (or cryptocurrency or stocks or yachts) they amass, from the Kardashians using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per month to keep their Los Angeles-area estate verdant during the most severe drought in 1,200 years, to Drake burning through jet fuel to take a 14-minute trip in his custom 767, to an LA mansion with a $50,000 monthly electricity bill. Yes, $50k for electricity to keep the monstrosity’s 105,000 square feet, or 217 average-sized Hong Kong homes, cool during the increasingly hot California summers.

It’s not just the billionaires. Americans in general tend to favor relatively giant automobiles and lawns and houses — the average home size in Colorado Springs is almost 2,800 square feet. These, in turn, require more energy, wider roads, more water and lead to residential sprawl, which gobbles up farmland and open space and wildlife habitat. Bigger physical footprints almost always have bigger environmental footprints.

This isn’t the result of 8 billion people on the planet or cross-border immigration. It’s the natural outcome of the dominant culture, which values affluence, economic growth and corporate profit above all else. It’s societal greed and an emptiness that always yearns for more, in part because corporate marketing schemes have convinced us that the more we accumulate, the happier we are. But Americans don’t have the highest quality of life, they just lead the most profligate lives, throwing away enough food each year, for example, to feed an entire nation.

161 to 335 billion tons
Estimated amount of food wasted in the U.S. supply chain each year, which amounts to as much as 1,032 pounds per person.

140 million
Acres of land required to grow food that is wasted each year in the U.S.

5.9 trillion
Gallons of water used to grow food that is wasted each year in the U.S.

Trying to control the population — whatever that might look like — isn’t going to solve those problems. Only a rejiggering of the system, a suppression of the collective capitalist appetite, a debunking of the belief that all growth is good and that more is more, will right the sinking ship we’re on. [ed. emphasis mine]

As for the 8 billion, most experts say the best way to stabilize the global population is to empower and educate women, increase access to birth control, ensure that women have reproductive freedom and tackle wealth inequality.

Meanwhile, policymakers and thinkers and environmentalists should focus more on reducing consumption and changing what is consumed, especially by the affluent. Because when it comes to the environment, that’s the real elephant weighing down the planet.

#ColoradoRiver Basin Tribes Address a Historic #Drought—and Their #Water Rights—Head-On: Their growing inclusion in the region’s water management will likely prove priceless — Natural Resources Defense Council

On a day in late May [2022] wildfire smoke obscures the throat of an ancient volcano called Shiprock,. Ute Mountain Ute farming and ranching operation in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Natural Resources Defense Council website (Tim Vanderpool):

A warm breeze slips down from Sleeping Ute Mountain, stirring fields of alfalfa and corn across the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise in the arid flats of southwestern Colorado. The state-of-the-art farm, with its ultra-efficient drip irrigation, satellite-guided tractors, and sought-after Bow & Arrow brand of non-GMO cornmeal, is an intense source of pride for the 2,000-member Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. It’s also an important income source for its 553,000-acre reservation in the Four Corners Region, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet.

In normal times, the enterprise employs several dozen tribal members and distributes more than $1 million in paychecks annually. But these are not normal times. The epic Southwest drought, whose severity has been fueled by climate change, has hit the farm hard. Today, it scrapes by on just 10 percent of the water normally flowing along a clay canal from the McPhee Reservoir. As a result, corn harvests have been cut by 75 percent, and half of the 50-person workforce, mostly tribal members, were laid off. Overall, the tribe lost an estimated $4 million to $6 million in the last year alone. Now, longtime general manager Simon Martinez squeezes everything he can from a drop of water. “We can’t do any more than that,” he says.

To the Ute Mountain Ute, grappling with its water supply is an ongoing challenge. Despite having senior water rights dating back to 1868, when the Kit Carson Treaty created the reservation, the tribe received none of its rightful water for decades as non-Native settlers dammed rivers and diverted flows. And like many tribes across the Southwest, it still struggles to properly quantify and settle some of the water claims already validated by a long stream of court decisions. Even when tribes have been able to secure their water rights, they have often lacked the expensive infrastructure for getting it to their reservations, which means their water gets used, without payment, by non-native groups. And whenever states have wrangled over distribution of Colorado River Basin water, as they have during this drought, Native Americans were generally left out of the conversation.

But more recently, that’s begun to change.

View of Native American (Ute) scout party on horseback; they cross the Los Pinos River, La Plata County, Colorado; three men have rifles, one a pistol; all wear moccasins, fringed leggings, blankets, shirts, and braided hair; four have feathers in hair; all horses have bridles and saddles. Photo credit: Poley, H. S. (Horace Swartley) via Denver Public Library

The Southwest drought has actually led to a push by tribes to address long-standing water supply issues and with good reason: Of the 30 Colorado River Basin tribes, 22 already have federally recognized rights to about a quarter of the river’s water. Some, such as the Ute Mountain Ute, still have claims awaiting settlement, which means that the percentage of water going to tribes is likely to climb. Most of the claims date back to the creation of their reservations in the 19th century, making tribes among the river’s most senior claim holders as well as some of the most historically judicious users. Given those facts, their inclusion in shaping ongoing water policy is essential to both advancing environmental justice and to facing the ongoing effects of climate change on the region.

It’s time for Native Americans to be part of that discussion, says Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart. “But we need to prioritize our own needs first, our water use and future endeavors, and then we can work in partnership. We are willing to help out areas where we can and create a better management plan.”

The water crisis and the Colorado Basin

Certainly, the stakes could not be higher for the troubled Colorado River Basin. The 246,000-square-mile watershed typically provides water for more than 40 million people across seven western states and supports a $15 billion agriculture industry. But its storage reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are currently at 27 and 25 percent of capacity, respectively. That’s a historic low. If the drought continues and they get much lower, water simply won’t flow out, creating a situation known as “dead pool.” That would also shut down hydroelectric generators currently providing enough power for 2.5 million homes.

Members of the Colorado River Commission, in Santa Fe in 1922, after signing the Colorado River Compact. From left, W. S. Norviel (Arizona), Delph E. Carpenter (Colorado), Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of Commission), R. E. Caldwell (Utah), Clarence C. Stetson (Executive Secretary of Commission), Stephen B. Davis, Jr. (New Mexico), Frank C. Emerson (Wyoming), W. F. McClure (California), and James G. Scrugham (Nevada) CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism

In a way, many of the basin’s fundamental water problems can be traced straight back to the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which first defined how river water would be shared between the states and shaped much of the federal infrastructure funding that followed. Tribes were not included in this negotiation nor was it clear how much water they were guaranteed. (That came later via a U.S. Supreme Court decision.) The apportioning of the river was also based on the overly optimistic premise that nearly 20 million acre-feet of water would flow through it each year. (An acre-foot is enough to cover an acre of land in one foot of water.) In reality, average river flows hovered around 15.2 million acre-feet, dropping down to 12.5 million feet as the drought took hold two decades ago.

Colorado River Allocations: Credit: The Congressional Research Service

Since then, the region’s water needs have continued to increase along with its population. Arizona, California, Nevada, and New Mexico—all primarily dependent upon an already over-allocated Colorado River—are home to some of the nation’s fastest-growing counties.

Then, there are the impacts of climate change. The drought has generated the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years, and experts estimate that 42 percent of its severity can be attributed to human-related causes. This has led to increased wildfires and changing weather patterns, which have, in turn, impacted culturally vital plants. It’s an unsustainable situation that now has states wrangling over agonizing water cuts.

“Everybody’s realizing that we’re all at risk,” says Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. “If Lake Mead goes down to dead pool, and water can’t flow, it doesn’t matter what the priority of the Yuma farmers is. It doesn’t matter what the priority of the Imperial Irrigation District farmers is. We’re all in this together. And that includes the tribal communities.”

A call for change

Tribal leaders have had to fight for their inclusion. For the first time, in 2019, they played a central role in crafting the Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plans, which prescribed a series of water cuts among most of the states the river serves. But then the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), which oversees the river, ordered states and tribes to reach another agreement by August 15 of this year, with a goal of conserving up to four million more acre-feet. In response, 14 of the Basin Tribes stated they were largely not consulted in the ongoing process—yet again. The deadline passed without an agreement. And, on October 28, the U.S. Department of the Interior (parent agency to the BOR) announced that it could soon impose its own cuts on the states.

That failure to reach a consensus illustrates how broken the old system is, says Jay Weiner, a water attorney for southeastern Arizona’s Quechan Tribe and a leadership team member of the Water & Tribes Initiative, which works to expand tribal policymaking influence. “Everyone has realized that the historical arrangements are not working. It has compromised the river and fundamentally needs to be rethought.” [ed. emphasis mine]

Manual Heart. Photo credit: Ute Mountain Ute Tribe

Devising new approaches has been the work of groups like the Ten Tribes Partnership, a coalition led by Chairman Heart that recently participated in an annual conference of the high-powered Colorado River Water Users Association. Tribes also created the Colorado River Basin Tribal Coalition as a strategy forum. And last year, the consortium known as the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (ITCA) signed a memorandum with the BOR to ensure participation in river management negotiations. In a statement, ITCA President Bernadine Burnette called the agreement a “historic step toward protecting the significant water rights and entitlements of ITCA member tribes.” More recently, the Colorado Basin Tribes sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland—the first Indigenous person to serve as a cabinet secretary—seeking to further clarify tribal involvement. “Our perspective, which is undoubtedly shared by others in the basin, is that we should all be working together as soon as possible,” the letter stated.

Aside from proper involvement, there is the traditional Indigenous reverence for water that holds lessons for an increasingly thirsty Southwest. Some, such as the Ute Mountain Ute, use extremely efficient farming methods, from computerized irrigation systems to water-stingy pivot sprinklers. Others, such as the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, demonstrate how wise use of water can result in habitat restoration, highly effective groundwater recharge programs, and a revival of water-related cultural practices. Today, that wisdom is needed more than ever.

Gila River watershed. Graphic credit: Wikimedia

Still, it’s too soon to know whether the tribes’ guidance will be honored, according to Heather Tanana, a member of the Navajo Nation, and an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. In an e-mail, she writes that the tribes are “being very vocal about the need and expectation for tribal inclusion going forward. But what does actual tribal involvement mean and look like? I don’t think we quite know yet.”

There are already examples of how that process has yielded mixed results. For instance, in recent years, several tribes have agreed to help the region by leasing a portion of their water allocations to non-Indigenous users. In 2021, the Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes also agreed to help bolster Lake Mead by leaving a combined 179,000 acre-feet of their allocations in the reservoir. But the Gila River Indian Community reversed course in August after states failed to meet the BOR deadline for agreeing to more cuts. Gila Governor Stephen Roe Lewis told reporters that his tribe “has been shocked and disappointed to see the complete lack of progress” in reaching a larger agreement. Then last month, incentivized by potential funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the tribe announced that it would conserve its supplies, thereby freeing up some of its water to help maintain Lake Mead.

Of course, there are still tribes fighting just to resolve and protect their water rights. In November, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving the Navajo Nation and its claims of the right to divert water from the Colorado River. The ruling will have huge ramifications for community members and their ability to access safe drinking water.

Acknowledging a history of betrayal, and building a better future

The work of these tribes to assert their influence is, at its most basic level, an attempt to correct a legacy of injustice.

Almost every issue they face is rooted in racist government policies that forcibly drove them off their ancestral lands and onto reservations, which are now proven to be more climate vulnerable. Then they were given water rights that were largely ignored for decades. They got no support to develop infrastructure to access that water, even as the federal government lavished funds on non-Indigenous water projects throughout the basin, heavily subsidizing those interests while delaying water rights negotiations.

The effects still linger. Many, such as the Ute Mountain Ute, have no way of getting their water to their reservations due to the very high costs of building delivery canals and installing pumps. On the nearby Southern Ute Indian Reservation, 15 percent of residents pay to have tanks of water hauled to their houses, while 40 percent of tribal members on the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation still lack running water in their homes.

North American Indian regional losses 1850 thru 1890.

Some restitution is finally coming, thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It will inject $13 billion into tribal communities to begin addressing these deficits. The measure also includes $2.5 billion for water delivery infrastructure and $1.7 billion to fulfill Indian water rights settlements. Hopefully, the money will help at least 12 of those tribes—including the Ute Mountain Ute—finalize their water claims. And thanks to revenue from tribal casinos and gas and oil royalties, most of the tribes are able to hire top-notch water attorneys to ensure a proper resolution.

Still, the fact that they even have to fight for their water rankles Tanana. “It’s not like the tribes all of a sudden had those rights,” she says. “We’re still catching up from historic racism underlying systems of bureaucracy.”

It’s a lot to overcome. Nonetheless, Chairman Heart hopes the newfound appreciation for tribal rights will bring his people the water they need, for sustenance and for their souls. “Water is from our creator,” he says. “For human beings, for the animals that roam the lands, whether they are four-legged, two-legged, fish or plants, water is life.”

3M Ending #PFAS Manufacturing Paves Way for Chemical Market Shift — Natural Resources Defense Council

The Meeker Island Lock and Dam was the first lock and dam on the Mississippi River in 1902. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=179965

Click the link to read the release on the Natural Resources Defense Council website (Melodie Mendez):

Leading chemical manufacturer 3M announced it will exit per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) manufacturing and work to discontinue the use of the “forever chemical” across its product portfolio by the end of 2025. 3M’s decision signals a significant market shift away from the chemical industries’ reliance on PFAS for nonessential products, and an opportunity to end PFAS contamination at its source.  

PFAS are toxic chemicals used in an array of products, from cookware and clothing to paint and firefighting foam. They have been linked to numerous health risks in people, including cancers, liver disease, and much more. PFAS have contaminated the drinking water of an estimated 200 million Americans.

The following is a statement from Sujatha Bergen, Director of Health Campaigns at NRDC:

“This announcement signals significant market and regulatory push-back on the production of these harmful chemicals, and an opportunity for other manufacturers to follow suit.

“Polluters must be held accountable for cleaning up their messes. 3M has been accused of contaminating local communities and water supplies for decades and today’s announcement should not excuse them from addressing these injustices.

“We can and must create a future without PFAS. Market shifts like this are crucial and must be accompanied by federal and state-level policy changes to protect the public from further harm.” 

Additional Resources:

Groundwater movement via the USGS

A journey through December 21, 2022’s temperatures as observed by @ColoradoMesonet 5-min weather stations — @russ_schumacher #COwx

You can envision the front moving south and west through the pm. The holdout on the right is Westcliffe, where the front didn’t pass until after 1am.