My friend Steve told me a funny story from his childhood, growing up in the 1960s. He lived in a largely Catholic neighborhood, where the families tended to include an above-average number of children.
As I recall Steve’s story, a neighboring husband and wife had managed to crank out six or seven kids, who all attended the same Catholic school as Steve and his siblings. The neighborhood was somewhat amazed, and perhaps amused, when this particular husband arrived home one day with the new family car.
As some of our readers no doubt remember, the incredibly popular Ford Mustang featured two bucket seats up front, and two tiny back seats that barely qualified as seating.
Steve smiled as he related this story.
I can imagine the wife, looking out the kitchen window at the shiny new 1965 Mustang in the driveway, was probably not smiling.
We all have limited resources, to some degree — we, meaning our families… our towns… our states… our countries. We’re limited by our own individual personalities and talents, by our beliefs, by our culture and most importantly, by Mother Nature.
We’ve learned how to fool Mother Nature, with a few tricks. Genetically Modified Organisms — GMOs — come to mind. Off-shore drilling rigs. Nuclear power plants. But Mother Nature has an inexorable way of having the last laugh. Assuming she’s not looking out the kitchen window, and wiping away tears of sorrow.
We’re currently featuring a two-part essay by Boulder Weekly editor Joel Dyer, published last spring by still timely. You can read that essay here. Mr. Dyer briefly notes the big plans now unfolding along the Colorado River and its tributaries — plans that appear to be driven, to some degree, by the Walton family. Plans that may change the way our access to water is controlled by our governments and institutions. Plans that may change the price we each pay for this absolute necessity.
Mother Nature has traditionally provided water in a limited amount to the mostly arid American West, and much of the free-flowing water ends up in the Colorado River, at least temporarily. The amount she provides varies, depending on her mood, but according to the scientists who study this type of thing, the quantity of water that has flowed past Lee’s Ferry may have dropped as low as 5 million acre feet (around the year 1600) and been as high as 18 million acre feet (around the year 1625.)
But mainly, the amount has hovered around 13 million acre feet since 1500. Or so the scientists believe, based on various mathematical models.
I haven’t been able to discover what the population of the American West might have been in 1500, but we might guess that it was nowhere near the current population in 2019 — which is about 62 million people, in just the seven states that draw water from the Colorado River. Not all of those folks are pulling water from the river — I understand that about 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland water their crops or make their lemonade from Colorado River water. There are a few other rivers running through these states, and many folks pump groundwater from wells. But the experts are pretty much in agreement: the American West is gradually draining the Colorado River dry.
On July 11, 2014 — the day the above photo was taken — the Lake Mead reservoir reached its lowest water level since the lake was first filled during the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The lake’s elevation was 1,082 feet… 147 feet below capacity and 134 feet below its most recent peak in 1998.
From an article by Caitlyn Kennedy posted on Climate.gov in 2014:
According to the National Park Service website, about 96 percent of the water in Lake Mead is from melted snow that fell in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming…
Projections of precipitation changes in the Colorado watershed are less certain than those for temperature changes in the Southwest, but rising temperature along with declining snowpack and streamflows may threaten the reliability of surface water supply across the Southwest, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment…
The report also warns that the current drought could be just beginning. Southwest paleoclimate records show that severe mega-droughts at least 50 years long have occurred in the past several thousand years. Unlike those ancient droughts, however, similarly dry periods in the future are projected to be substantially hotter, and for major river basins such as the Colorado River Basin, drought is projected to become more frequent, intense, and longer lasting than in the historical record…
Mother Nature, getting the last laugh? Or maybe it’s not funny?
I plan to attend a couple of discussions today. The first is scheduled for 9am at Town Hall — a meeting of the “Growing Water Smart” committee. The group’s initial task is to calculate how fast the population of Archuleta County is going to grow over the next couple of decades, so we can plan for our water needs. The committee has not yet made a final report, and we don’t yet know if the above implied assumption — that we are going to see less water in the San Juan River and our surrounding creeks over the next 20 years or so — will form part of this local plan. These discussions are partly grant funded by the Sonoran Institute — but most of the participants are also government employees, funded by your tax dollars.
A second discussion will begin about 6pm this evening, at the office of the San Juan Water Conservancy District on Village Drive. SJWCD president John Porco will be sharing information he heard at the recent Colorado Water Congress. Other useful discussions will take place, I assume.
If you’ve read Joel Dyers essay about the Walton Family Foundation, you know that the Walmart billionaires are funding various government planning processes related to water… and providing funding for news coverage about the Colorado River… and also funding academic research related to water in the American West.
The Pagosa Daily Post does not receive funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
It does appear, however, that the Walton Family Foundation helps fund the Colorado Water Congress. Are they helping us make the right decisions, for little old Pagosa Springs?
