We are Unbelievably Screwed

After years of drought, and chronic over-allocation of water resources, a water shortage has formally been declared for the Colorado River.

Hopefully Congress will look into changing the current legal structure of water allocation in the west, as the first use appropriation of water rights, which has driven over-use, shortages, and financial speculation is clearly unsustainable:

With climate change and long-term drought continuing to take a toll on the Colorado River, the federal government on Monday for the first time declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the river’s main reservoirs.

The declaration triggers cuts in water supply that, for now, mostly will affect Arizona farmers. Beginning next year they will be cut off from much of the water they have relied on for decades. Much smaller reductions are mandated for Nevada and for Mexico across the southern border.

But larger cuts, affecting far more of the 40 million people in the West who rely on the river for at least part of their water supply, are likely in coming years as a warming climate continues to reduce how much water flows into the Colorado from rain and melting snow.

………

The mandatory cuts, referred to as Tier 1 reductions, are part of a contingency plan approved in 2019 after lengthy negotiations among the seven states that use Colorado River water: California, Nevada and Arizona in the lower basin, and New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming in the upper basin. American Indian tribes and Mexican officials have also been involved in the planning.

The shortage announced Monday affects only the lower basin states, but the Bureau of Reclamation may declare a similar shortage for the upper basin, perhaps as early as next year.

The shortage declaration will reduce Arizona’s supply of Colorado River water, delivered by a system of canals and pumping stations called the Central Arizona Project, by about 20 percent, or 512,000 acre-feet. (An acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons, enough water for two or three households for a year.)

This has been a reckoning that is long overdue.  The Colorado River is so over-subscribed that the trickle that flows into Mexico has been more saline than the ocean that it eventually flows into.

Unfortunately, there are naturally winners and losers in this scenario, water rights are inherently a zero-sum game, so I expect that this will descend into an orgy of lobbying and delay.