In their October 22 issue, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (founded in 1893) gave the following description to the photo shown above, in an October 22 article by Dennis Webb:
This photo from December 2021 shows the famous “bathtub ring” at Lake Mead due to declining water levels. Voluntary plans proposed by the upper basin states and municipal water providers won’t do much to get more water into lakes Mead or Powell in the near future.
The article deals generally with the fact that, for decades now, California has been pulling the lion’s share of water out of the mighty Colorado River. Or maybe it’s the ‘once-mighty’ Colorado River.
Colorado has been doing a fine job of sending water downstream into Lake Mead, in my humble opinion, but Californians keeps sucking it out… mainly to grow almonds in the once-arid Imperial Valley, by extracting 3.1 million acre-feet of water, annually, from the Colorado River.
From our river.
That’s about 1 trillion gallons of water, each year. Give or take. (Mostly, take.) I hope everyone will think about that, the next time they buy a half gallon of almond milk.
Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District and a guy who knows a little bit about rivers and reservoirs and such, wrote a memo to his district board earlier this month, in reaction to an October 5 letter from California water districts using our Colorado River water — including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Imperial Irrigation District. The districts were proposing to leave up to an additional 400,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead annually over the next 10 years. (‘Up to’ is always a tricky phrase to understand.) “This water, which would otherwise be used by California’s communities and farms, will meaningfully contribute to stabilizing the Colorado River reservoir system,” the districts wrote in a letter to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton.
General manager Mueller wrote in his memo, “California continues to take the position that it will [reduce water consumption] only on a voluntary, temporary, compensated basis and that their participation is contingent upon the federal government paying their water users an acceptable level of compensation and the implementation of additional conservation measures from the other Basin States (including Colorado). It is important to recognize that California’s offer is less than a 9% cut in its water use and a far cry from what is needed from the system’s biggest consumptive users…”
Where we would find the money to ‘compensate’ the almond growers is not immediately clear. Does the federal government actually have any money left for this kind of thing? Seems like they’ve been spending like crazy, lately.
But what has me most concerned is the bathtub ring. Back in the late 1990s, when Lake Mead was still full, no one even knew about the bathtub ring. Then people — especially scientists — started spreading rumors about global warming and climate change, and voila, a bathtub ring appears.
Now, everyone can see the ring. It’s pretty obvious.
When I was a child, a bathtub ring was considered a sign of sloppy housekeeping. My mother didn’t assign me many chores, but wiping the bathtub ring after my bath was one of the more important ones. If I left any sign of a ring, it was back into the bathroom with the rag and a can of abrasive cleanser. And strict instructions.
As far as I can tell, no one is doing anything about the bathtub ring around Lake Mead. The solution — if you listen to the scientists and politicians — is to try and fill the lake back up, so we can no longer see the ring. That’s not a solution. That’s avoidance of the problem.
I’ve been giving considerable thought to this tricky situation. (It keeps my mind off other things, like the economy, and the lack of romance in my life.)
The way I figure it, people in Colorado have been largely responsible for the bathtub ring. When the scientists got us worried about an impending lack of water, back in the early 2000s, we stopped taking baths and started taking short showers instead.
Instead of leaving the bathtub rings in our own bathtubs, like we used to, we were sending the exfoliated skin and dirt downstream to Lake Mead.
I’m pretty sure the Californians are not happy about this. Maybe that’s why they’re not being cooperative.
But the simple fact is, if California would simply stop sucking all the water out of Lake Mead, it might fill back up, and hide the evidence — now, so plain to see — of all the dirty people in Colorado.
The alternative would be to find a really, really big can of abrasive cleanser.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.