According to experts, water policy makers and water users in the Colorado River Basin need to get their acts together to substantially cut amounts they take from the river.
At Lees Ferry where river trips, both recreational and scientific, launch. | Credit: public domain
In a new analysis, six experts—Jack Schmidt, Anne Castle, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara—released a report saying that immediate action is needed, especially if this dry year is repeated next year. They estimate that consumptive use will exceed the flow of the river by no less than 3.6 million-acre feet, and the two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, would absorb the bulk of that shortfall, causing them to be depleted and reduced to dangerous levels. Last winter’s snowpack was miserable, and the forecast for the coming season is for less precipitation and warmer temperatures.
However, leaders in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming, have been unable to agree with their lower basin neighbors of California, Arizona, and Nevada on how to cut water usage along the river. The two basins have been discussing how to allocate the shortages when the current rules expire next year. The experts who wrote the report are urging the federal government to impose cutbacks along the river, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The animosity between the Upper and Lower Basins appears to have torpedoed the Trump administration’s nomination of Ted Cooke to be the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation charged with managing the river. Cooke had been a water manager in Arizona for more than 20 years, which was viewed as disturbing in the Upper Basin states, and would make him biased in favor of the Lower Basin, according to KUNC.
The White House asked him to withdraw his nomination, which he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was based on vitriol the likes of which he had never seen. He said that officials from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico had urged members of Congress to oppose his nomination.
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GET WET! 