Under the Voluntary Drought Stage there are no mandatory water use restrictions, however PAWSD does encourage responsible water use. This spring we have seen higher than normal temperatures. These high temperatures along with a reduction in late spring precipitation resulted in a quicker than normal melting of the snowpack reducing our available water and could lead to water use restrictions…
— from a Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District public service announcement, June 14, 2021
Water wasn’t always a concern in Colorado. Or so the geologists tell us. For a brief spell during the Cretaceous Period — lasting about 60 million years — the states of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and almost all of Texas were covered by the Late Cretaceous Inland Sea.
But as they say, that’s all water under the bridge. Inland seas come and go, if you’re willing to wait around.
The current situation suggests that the humans who live in the western half of the US are running short of water, if they want to continue living the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. Some people thought, back in the mid-Twentieth-Century, that water infrastructure — dams, reservoirs, pipelines, aquaducts, wells, treatment plants — could provide for an ever-expanding population.
Maybe not?
The water infrastructure in the modern American West is, generally speaking, massive. Of the 20 tallest dams in the US, 19 of them are found west of the Great Divide — eight in California, four in Washington, two in Arizona, the rest scattered across the historically arid Western landscape.
We have plenty of dams in Colorado, but none of them make the “Top Twenty” list.
California and Arizona also get trophies for their massive aquaduct projects. The United States’ aqueducts are some of the world’s largest. The Catskill Aqueduct carries water to New York City over a distance of 120 miles, but is dwarfed by aqueducts in the West, notably the Central Arizona Project — the largest and most expensive aqueduct constructed in the United States, stretching 336 miles from its source near Parker, Arizona to the metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson. The 702-mile California Aqueduct runs from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Lake Perris, and the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct supplies the Los Angeles area with water from the Colorado River.
But with many of the large reservoirs in the American West now sitting half-full, or less than half-full, the water managers are now scrambling to keep the whole house of cards from tumbling down. Even a small town like Pagosa Springs, surrounded by snow-fed, fresh water streams, is feeling uncertain about the future.
Yesterday, we considered a quote from Kathryn Sorensen, a member of the board of advisors at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University:
“This means the only viable long-term solution is that we must collectively use significantly less water from the Colorado River. Cities cannot solve this problem alone because something like 75-80 percent of Colorado River water is used for agriculture. Everyone must contribute,” she told The Hill. “That’s easier said than done because of course everyone thinks their own water use is justified and that no one else’s is.”
If we must “collectively” use less water, and if “everyone must contribute”… how, exactly does that work? Because the American tradition is that some people contribute more than others, whether they want to or not.
Here in Pagosa, the reductions in water consumption among non-agricultural users will likely be enforced by increasing the price of water. Those who use the greatest amounts of municipal water will likely pay the highest penalties to the PAWSD organization.
Stricter rules will also be put in place, limiting the right to irrigate non-agricultural landscapes. Grass lawns will dry up and die, to be replaced by xeriscaping. To a certain degree, water useage will come to reflect the early days of Pagosa Springs, before we had water infrastructure to deliver drinking water to everyone’s tap.
But municipal water use is merely a drop in the bucket, so to speak. 90 percent of the water used in the American West goes into agriculture. And the massive dams built throughout the West during the mid-Twentieth Century are not merely storing water; they’ve also been producing hydroelectric power.
Between the artificially stored irrigation water and the generation of cheap electricity, the West was transformed from, basically, an arid wasteland into a thriving, overpopulated, economic powerhouse. But even inland seas eventually dry up.
Actually, there are several viable solutions to falling reservoir levels, but the water industry and agriculture industry and electric power industry and government industry may not want us to consider them too closely. Those solutions would address “wasted water” and “wasted electricity”.
1. Stop growing water-wasting crops. We have massive cotton fields in Arizona, for example, pulling water from the Colorado River into an arid desert. Cotton requires 10 times the water per acre of, for example, potatoes.
Almonds require four times the water of cotton.
Alfalfa — feed for cattle — requires 50% more water than almonds.
Eat more potatoes!
2. Make air conditioners illegal. The US (4% of the world’s population) uses more electricity for air conditioning that the rest of the world combined. And the American West is the biggest culprit. My preliminary research suggests that 20% of the electricity used in the American West runs through air conditioners.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s not science at all. It’s “How do we preserve a luxurious status quo for the wealthier citizens in the American West?” (I include myself in that group.)
Simply outlawing air-conditioners, by itself, would probably solve the Lake Mead problems. Turn off the air conditioning, and people would leave Phoenix and Las Vegas en masse, to find somewhere less miserable.
Of course, the problem with water-wasting crops is they are sometimes profitable. But profit, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. Alfalfa, grown and fed to cows, generates an income of about $175 per acre-foot of water used.
Grapes, grown and turned into wine, generate an income of about $2,500 per acre-foot of water.
Is God trying to tell us something?