Click the link to read the post on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
The Park Service has cut a raggedy new dirt road (“4×4 recommended”) north of Hemenway Harbor along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline so you can still get in to go fishing and do the beach thing.
Mead was at elevation 1,043 and change as I rode it on my bike yesterday afternoon, with lunch and time on my hands to ponder the stakes. You could see the uppermost Las Vegas water pipe, exposed to the winter air, and the stranded intake from the World War II-era Basic Magnesium factory.
I passed three Lake Mead shipwrecks, the media icons of the great collapse, ruin porn of the Colorado River. I was happy, I guess, to finally bag the pictures for myself. I guess?
It was my annual pre-Colorado River Water Users Association Lake Mead visit – a bike ride along the reservoir, a trip to Hoover Dam, some quiet time in Boulder City before heading into the madhouse of Las Vegas and CRWUA and a Colorado River in crisis.
MANAGING IN CRISIS MODE
The challenge right now is a very practical one. We’ve no longer time the sort of vague generalizations I got when I turned to ChatGPT for help – “Implementing stricter water usage regulations and reducing water waste can help bring the supply and demand of the Colorado River into balance.” Great. Thanks. How we gonna do that?
The Colorado River brain trust has to write new rules, and it has to write them now, in a very specific way, with little time or room for error.
I have long had a dodge when reporters or my students or whoever asked me what I think we should do: It doesn’t matter what I think we should do, I would tell them. What matters, I would say, is what emerges from the seven states and the federal government, and increasingly the Tribes and others who who now, rightly, find themselves at the negotiating table(s).
Unfortunately, what has emerged from that process is shipwrecks emerging from Lake Mead.
So I’ve dropped the shield and begun thinking about how I would rewrite the rules, if anyone asked me. Come to think of it, the Federal Government has asked me, along with all the rest of you, via this Federal Register notice. You’ve got a week left before your assignment is due.
Basically, we need to do two things.
First, we need to rewrite the rules governing releases from Glen Canyon Dam to protect Lake Powell from reaching critically low levels that, by forcing the use of the dam’s lower outlet works, might threaten the structural integrity of the dam. We do this by setting a maximum release from Powell based on the current year inflow.
Second, we need rules to cut far more deeply into Lower Basin water use, like right now – far deeper than the rules we’ve got now. They’re just not sufficient. We have to include evaporation and system losses as part of each Lower Basin state’s allocation.
SAVING GLEN CANYON DAM
Section 6C and 6D of the 2007 Interim Guidelines is the critical first step.
This is where the current rules lay out how much water is to be released each year from Glen Canyon Dam. Note the quaintly anachronistic “Lake Powell Active Storage” column on the right, with “dead pool” – zero active storage – at elevation 3,370.
If Reclamation decides it doesn’t trust the dam’s outlet works, which sit down there, then suddenly “active storage” doesn’t start until elevation 3,490, the level of the power plant intakes.
For now at least, 3,490 is the new dead pool.
That would mean that at elevation 3,525, rather than having 5.93 million acre feet of “active storage” – the amount of water above “dead pool” – we’ve really got less than 2 million acre feet of really actually usable, releasable water in Powell. The whole notion of “balancing” active storage in Mead and Powell, so central to the ’07 Guidelines, now has to look completely different.
When you get close to dead pool, you’ve got a “run of the river” system, which means that the only water that leaves a reservoir is the amount that comes in. Given that we’re apparently redefining that for Powell on the fly, the new versions of 6C and 6D somehow have to restrict releases from Powell to not much more than comes in. Basically starting now, and for the foreseeable future, until we can begin to refill Powell or drill some new tubes at the bottom that we trust.
A simple approach to the new rule here might be rewrite the release rules when you’re in the “Mid-Elevation Release Tier” (below 3,575) and the “Lower Elevation Release Tier” (below 3,525) to cap releases to inflow minus evaporation. That would set a sort ratchet that would prevent a further decline in Lake Powell below its current dangerously low levels.
You could start the year by capping Powell releases at the 24-month study’s “minimum probable” unregulated Powell inflow level, with the option of raising the release an April review based on the “most probable” unregulated inflow. Minus evaporation. You’d have to subtract evaporation from that.
Other than that, the 6C and 6D rules could stay the same.
SAVING LAKE MEAD
As the modeling presented by Reclamation in its webinars two weeks ago shows, if you operate Powell the way I describe under low flow scenarios, you can crash Mead in a hurry. We need rules that are ready for that.
Taking evaporation and system losses off the top before we begin handing out water is a start. The “structural deficit” is real, it’s a result of not taking evaporation and system losses into account, and it’s written in shipwrecks emerging from the depths of Lake Mead.
Right now evaporation and system losses are in the ballpark of 1 million acre feet per year, but to be on the safe side, let’s set them at the 1.2 million acre foot per year level in the classic Reclamation “structural deficit” Powerpoint slide.
So the cuts in section 2D of the Interim Guidelines would have to be rewritten, with Arizona, Nevada, and California taking a proportional share of system losses right off the top.
You can do this some really complicated ways, based on the distance downstream of each user’s intake – so Imperial and Yuma would take a bigger system losses hit, and Las Vegas (pulling straight out of Lake Mead) would only suffer evaporative loss.
That seems like a recipe for scientized litigation, so my proposal is simple: Everyone shares this equally (sorry, Nevada friends).
That would leave us with a base allocation that looks something like this:
The cuts in the big ’07 Guidelines/DCP allocation tables would then be deducted from these numbers. So under this scenario, if we drop into the Mead elevation 1,040-1,045 tier, the total allocations would be:
Notably, this gets us to the 2 million acre of cuts Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said we need in her testimony to Congress last summer.
UPPER BASIN
This obviously doesn’t touch the Upper Basin. The process Interior is using for this round of crisis management – a straight up revision to the ’07 Guidelines – doesn’t seem to offer a clear path to force the Upper Basin to come up with contributions of their own. For now, I’m OK with that. Since the ’07 Guidelines were signed, the Upper Basin has delivered more than 10 million acre feet of water above the required 8.25 million acre foot annual requirement. Despite that, the Lake Mead shipwrecks are emerging from the shallows. The key here is clearly to get Lower Basin overuse under control.
But I don’t think in the longer term the Upper Basin is off the hook. Reclamation’s modeling clearly shows a risk of the Upper Basin slipping below its 82.5×10 obligation if we have a few more bad years. We need a plan to deal with that. And it’s also a matter of fairness, in my view. We all have to contribute.
My scheme for Upper Basin contributions involves the next wet year – figuring out how to forego some of the Upper Basin storage we’ve got and get that water into Lake Powell instead. Suggestions for how to write that rule are welcomed – bonus if anyone can figure out how to fit that into the rewrite of the ’07 Guidelines currently underway.
COLLABORATION
I still believe in the power of the collaborative governance framework we’ve developed in the Colorado River Basin. As Assistant Secretary of Interior Tanya Trujillo told me when I was moderating her appearance at last summer’s Getches-Wilkinson Center conference, we’d be in a lot worse shape without it.
For what it’s worth, ChatGPT agrees: “Collaboration and cooperation among states and water users is crucial in finding solutions to the supply-demand imbalance on the Colorado River.”
I live in las vegas. I have for 11 years. While the place has been in drought some 20 something years, it seems extra bad now with boats and bodies turning up and especially since much of the electricity is also brought by the two lakes hydro electric power systems (yes nv energy is investing in geothermal but I’m not well read on timelines and numbers). I question when relocation is pragmatic before dire. I also question why we aren’t looking more closely at the resources we do have…lots of space, a hot hot desert and an ocean as a potential source of continuous water. People say desalinization is expensive. Relocating millions of families during colony colapse is much more expensive. Capping new building without water and electric plans will likely get the legislation moving. Doing nothing will lead to failure. Surely there are sustainable options that utilize available resources. Could salty water be pumped through a discrete pipeline up the colorado using the lay of the river or along major highways or rail lines and then distilled via water pyramids in the hot and wide open deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah or even divied across participating households or small municipality that have micro desalinazation units that offsets water use and rechannels fresh into municipal water or the lakes for fresh storage not unlike the solar programs we have now with rooftop solar? Could this somehow be used with existing solar power farms utalizing heating towers? Could the acherfeet in the deadpool be somehow offset and adjusted using large bladders that take up space thus raising the available freshwater and reducing the dead water? Could farming styles be investigated (for example from what I understand, closed loop hydroponic greenhouses that run almost entirely on water actually use much less water because very little is lost. They also have a higher yields even if again there is an initial investment in infrastructure). I’m ready to be part of the solution instead of a thirsty cog.
Sarah,
Wow, lots of ideas about solving the problems in the basin. Agriculture uses the lion’s share of the water in the basin and desalination is probably too expensive for Ag water but in a lot of areas it is economic (e.g. Aruba). Building pipelines and other infrastucture is a solution for some challenges but at scale it is very difficult since states control the water within their boundaries. I think it is great that you want to be part of the solution and you can by working with SNWA on conservation and it is even more important to talk about the effects of Climate Change with your family and acquaintances. Many folks just don’t know about the need to take the water shortages seriously. I’m confident that there is a solution.
Thanks for commenting.
John Orr
http://coyotegulch.blog/
Pipe lines to Vegas are not necessary we could set up desalination plants in California for California in return for their Colorado River water.
Interestingly San Diego has worked on this concept. I think Las Vegas was willing to help pay for desalination in exchange for coastal cities to leave their water in Mead.
Thanks for commenting.
John Orr
http://coyotegulch.blog/
They will build caisson dams around thd intake if necessary, then use pumps to keep them full…Deadpool become usable
The easiest way to fill the dams is to end all the fracking upstream in Colorado River headwaters that are draining surface water in the river and groundwater all illegally
I don’t believe that O&G companies are all acting illegally. At any rate while there are O&G operations upstream of the big dams much less water is used than is used in agriculture.
Thanks for commenting.
John Orr
http://coyotegulch.blog/
You have to see for yourself, building on porous soils on the larger scale, pretending at well scale, they could keep the hydraulic fracturing fluids contained. They take their wasted 10,000,000 gallons for each well, then inject that deep underground. Again more pretending that the deep UIC injection fluids will be benign, not causing earthquake and cross-aquifer contamination.
So much pretending that they can keep taking water (they like to say they use water not fit to drink, but that’s a lie, they know that all aquifers are leaky, and that at great pressures, blowback on the pipes…the surface water gets sucked in and wasted, rarely recharging aquifers…
I don’t want to go too deep, they don’t consider the relationship between surface water and groundwater, as then that would outlaw all fracking but it is like the right to bear arms, they have the right to use up the Colorado River because of abject ignorance, and those that can make the same comments as mine, they can be bullied into silence…hence the more fascist the USA becomes, then it isn’t a star, that makes life impossible, it is no water…
Thank you for witnessing and writing and participating in trying to resolve this manmade disaster.
As someone who has traveled miles of the Colirado River in a kayak as a visitor, from West Virginia, it would appear to some that I have little if any stake in the proceedings. It would also appear that no one living outside the Colorado rivershed would be directly connected to the issues.
It is true that those of us outside the Colorado Watershed are not directly connected with the Colorado River.
We lost our direct connection with the Colorado River 100 years ago when those who signed the original contract lacked the foresight to assure that the Colorado River continue to flow into the Sea of Cortez.
On behalf of all those outsde the watershed, and in the interest of preserving the definition of the Colorado River as a River with many sources and one mouth. I would like to speak for the “mouth of the Colorado River and beg those involved to include The Sea of Cortez as perhaps the most important stakeholder that must continue to retain a connection and maintain flow.
John,
Thanks for commenting. Good point. I spent a lot of this week at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas and was encouraged by the amount of conversation around saving the Colorado River’s flow for environmental and spiritual reasons.
John Orr
http://coyotegulch.blog/
Thank you for being there! Someone has to be the mouth. Without a mouth, it’s not a River but a diconnected stagnant lake.