Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
The general manager of the Colorado River District says that despite blown deadlines, a deal between states is still possible and needed to deal with the crisis regarding the river’s management. But Andy Mueller says time is running short to do so with an existing agreement due to expire later this year and drought and Lower Basin overuse of the river putting water levels in Lake Powell at perilously low levels.
“The best alternative from our perspective is still to have the seven states find an agreement that provides certainty. It’s really hard to do that in the middle of a really terrible drought. It’s a multi-decadal drought,” Mueller said…
Mueller said everyone has been good at pushing off the crises in the Colorado River. But the buffer at Powell and Mead in terms of stored water has disappeared due to the Lower Basin’s overuse and failure to account for system loss, and a changing river hydrology coming amidst warming temperatures, and as a result “we don’t have that buffer anymore, so it truly is hitting a crisis,” he said. The river has been beset by long-term drought for much of this century, reflecting what some refer to as aridification resulting from a warming climate…While Mueller remains hopeful that the states will continue to talk and keep the federal government from having to act on its own, the government needs to be prepared to move forward, he said. He said the next-worst alternative it is analyzing, which is called the basic coordination alternative but he considers to be the federal authorities’ alternative, imposes cuts first on Arizona, and specifically its Central Arizona Project as a junior water right in the Lower Basin. Mueller said that alternative also says the goal will be to deliver at least 7.5 million acre feet a year from Powell. He said that under most reasonably foreseeable hydrologies, that will put Powell’s infrastructure at risk. The water level would be in danger of falling below the intake tubes used to make power, which would leave the dam’s bypass tubes as the only way of getting water out of Powell and down into Grand Canyon. Those tubes have proven structurally problematic, subject to what is known as cavitation when a lot of water is moving through them, which has resulted in damage to them. Mueller said Reclamation has done a lot of work to try to repair them but no one he has talked to wants to rely on those tubes to get water below the dam..,Mueller said the federal alternative says that, to keep levels in Powell high enough to keep producing power and delivering water to the Lower Basin, it might have to take unspecified actions in the Upper Basin.
“Everybody in the Upper Basin, everybody in western Colorado should be very concerned about that statement because the question is, what do they mean by that?” he said.
He said that if the environmental impact statement is going to refer to contemplated actions, by law it needs to identify them and analyze their environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Because it doesn’t, the entire EIS process is legally flawed when it comes to the alternative most likely to be adopted by the federal government, and if it goes that route it could get sued not just by Arizona, which is facing the biggest cuts, but by the Upper Basin, Mueller said. He said the unspecified actions probably would start with massive releases of water from primarily Flaming Gorge Reservoir but also Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs.
