If you’re a fan of the old rock band, Blue Oyster Cult, you may remember the famous refrain in the song, “Godzilla”, which goes:
History shows again and again, how Nature points out the folly of man…
Last week, the water level in Lake Mead — which is the largest reservoir in the U.S. — hit a historic low. Along with it, the water level in Lake Powell upstream hit a historic low. Nature, indeed is pointing out the folly of man on the Colorado River.
It’s easy to blame drought and even climate change for this red alert, but that hides part of the truth of the whole story.
Yes, indeed the extreme drought is taking a toll on water supplies in the river. But at the same time, the water managers up and down the Southwest U.S. – and that includes federal, state, and local water agencies – are still pumping and diverting almost the same massive amounts of water out of the river as they have for decades. The level in the reservoirs are dropping to historic lows because of people and nature.
Further and unfortunately, the people and agencies in charge of trying to fix this problem are the very same people and agencies that caused the problem. And, they don’t seem to be moving in a new direction at all.
Here’s two examples:
First, two years ago, my organization, Save The Colorado, filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Prescott, AZ, arguing that the U.S. Dept. of Interior had completely failed to account for climate change in its 2016 management plan of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam.
The facts are irrefutable and were so even before this year’s historic drought. The Dept. of Interior willfully and purposely did not take into account the likelihood of much lower flows in the river due to climate change, and they even said so in their comments to us in the Environmental Impact Statement process. Now, five years past 2016, the flow in the river is literally twice as low as what we argued in our lawsuit that the Dept. of Interior ignored.
How did all of the water management agencies in the Southwest U.S. respond to our lawsuit? They intervened against us, arguing in court that the Dept. of Interior was correct to ignore climate change. Nearly every water agency, every state government, and every electric agency (that uses Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower) is actually defending the Dept. of Interior’s willful and purposely denial of climate science.
These people and agencies literally have their heads in the sand at the bottom of these dry reservoirs with no sense of reason or science supporting them. That lawsuit is still working its way through the courts.
Second, although the reservoir system is collapsing due to over-diverting and over-pumping, nearly twenty new dams and diversions are being planned up and down the Colorado River system. In Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, water managers are hell-bent to accelerate the collapse, proposing to divert dramatically more water out of the river system.
It’s a race to the bottom of every existing reservoir, an insane response to the drought and climate change. It would be like if your bank notified you that your account was overdrawn, and so you went to the bank and furiously tried to draw out more money as fast as possible before the ATM machine cut you off.
Save The Colorado does everything we can to fight all of these proposed new dam and diversion projects. We’re in court at the federal, state, and local level against several projects, and we are teed up against others as soon as the opportunity arises. But the odds are against us – the powerful water-management agencies have a lock both the policy and the law of how the river is operated.
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla” starts out with these lyrics:
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, He pulls the spitting high tension wires down…
At this point, the high tension wires running out of the hydropower plants at Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam are likely to face the same folly of man. As the reservoir levels drop, the electric turbines spin slower and slower and are potentially predicted to stop spinning at all.
Godzilla isn’t climate change, it’s the water management agencies up and down the river basin.
Blue Oyster Cult’s response: Oh no, they say, he’s got to go, go go Godzilla!
Gary Wockner, PhD, is a scientist and conservationist based in Colorado. Follow him on Twitter, @GaryWockner. Learn more at savethecolorado.org