Yves here. This depletion of the Colorado River is a microcosm of the conflicts that will intensify in the coming years. We warned in the early days of this website that drinking water is the most important resource to be depleted first. As you can see in the Links, water is increasingly fueling kinetic wars, so in the absence of a major risk that postpones the release of many water sources and uses (think data centers), the prospects for relief from this front are bad.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant whose work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Le Monde Diplomatique, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel titled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. Originally published on Resource Insights
- Pressure on the state is mounting as seven states and tribal nations struggle to reach an agreement on how to divide the shrinking Colorado River.
- Agriculture, cities, and hydropower have become increasingly profitable, leaving difficult choices about future water reductions.
- New demands from minerals, particularly lithium, are emerging as water supplies become more scarce.
Depending on who you talk to, the Colorado River serves 35 or 40 million people, all of whom are having to rethink how much water they use and how they use it after the ongoing drought that hit earlier this century. The changes are no longer in the “let’s-discuss-this” stage as the federal government threatens to impose a 40 percent cut of the river’s water in the next 10 years if the seven western states—Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California—and the authorities of 30 known nations agree to the rights of the Colorado itself to agree to the rights of the Colorado. The river.
There isn’t as much water as there used to be, and that means that not everything people use water for now will get its previous share. Undoubtedly, the amount of water representing 52 percent of the total river withdrawals currently taken for agriculture can be reduced through conservation and efficiency measures. But it turns out that “conservation” in some cases may mean simply leaving fields unplanted due to lack of water. And, it’s not like more efficient methods haven’t been developed, as irrigated agriculture in the Colorado basin is transitioning to more efficient drip irrigation away from conventional land irrigation. However, I could not find the statistics for this. Therefore, it is not clear how much water savings can be achieved by adding more irrigation instead of more irrigation.
Then there is 18 percent of water discharges that currently go to municipal water systems. People in those cities have taken seriously the need to reduce water consumption. Although those systems now serve 24 percent more residents than in 2000, those systems use 18 percent LESS water. How much can these cities reduce water use? It is almost certain that simple mitigation measures have already taken place. The next leg down on water use will be difficult.
About 11 percent of the current withdrawal from the Colorado River is in the form of evaporation, mostly in lakes created by dams along the river. Total evaporation has been increasing due to higher temperatures and fewer rainy days. Absent some big sci-fi fantasy geoengineering project to somehow arrest or reduce evaporation, evaporation loss will continue to increase.
Which brings us to the power stations embedded in the large dams along the river. Water levels behind those dams have already dropped so much that current trends mean they will reach a so-called “low capacity reservoir” by early next year at Glen Canyon Dam, which forms Lake Powell. A drop below the minimum water level in the reservoir means that no water can reach the dam’s propellers, and therefore no electricity can be generated. Glen Canyon Dam produces the cheapest electricity in the country, and losing this source of electricity would mean much higher prices for the 5 million utility customers who currently rely on the dam’s output. Furthermore, such losses will stress the reliability of the entire electricity sector as grid operators try to cover such losses.
As if all this wasn’t enough to worry about, the pressure to find and mine the most precious metals in the United States—reducing the country’s dependence on China and others for these metals—means that another greedy user of water is coming to Colorado’s waters. The most promising lithium deposits in the United States are found in the arid southwest just as water availability drops to crisis levels. The irony, of course, is that climate change—which lithium, a key metal for green energy, is needed to help cope—is drying up the water resources needed to mine the metal.
In the coming months and years, something on the Colorado River has to give. Perhaps all groups will sacrifice something, urban dwellers, farmers, and electricity customers. That means something even more basic, namely, that rampant population growth and agricultural and mining activity in the Colorado region will slow and perhaps reverse for the first time in modern Western history.
