Shredhook
Well-Known Member
They are gonna drain every reservoir in the southwest for nothing this year....
Drawing from the bank
- Thread starter Skip
- Start date
svivian
Escalante-Class Member
I was just addressing your first statement about upper basins having less control than the lower basins.
There’s two parts to paying for social security. Paying in so current benefits can be paid and having kids so future benefits can be paid by them. Just like there’s two types of cuts needed from California. Cuts to compensate for the current dry year and even more cuts to make up for excessive past use. 80% would be a good start.
Yes they are because until reservoirs start hitting dead pool no one will give up their water rights.
Eat less salad and vegetables too!!
So only Cali should cut 80%?? No one else up river?
Joe Wilson
Well-Known Member
I don't agree that Cali should be the only one, but considering the long over use by the lower basin, I do think the lower basin should take the lion's share of the cuts. Though, that's not to say that the upper basin should be exempt. From the articles I've read, that seems to be the biggest hang-up and I understand both sides of the argument. Nobody wants to voluntarily give up their liquid gold, and I honestly believe its going to take either Powell or Mead hitting dead pool before an agreement is reached.
Colorado Expat
Well-Known Member
Although it has been pointed out multiple times on threads here on WW, and correctly, that municipal water use is a relatively small portion of the water use budget in the Colorado River basin (less than 10 percent), it is also the use that has grown most significantly in recent decades, so that it is now a higher percentage of the total than in the past. There is likely less agricultural land being irrigated now than there was 40 years ago, because in areas like suburban Phoenix former ag fields have become suburbs. And ranching has not expanded to any degree either, in fact somewhat the opposite. So the real growth in new water use tapping the Colorado River has come from the burgeoning metros of Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. And it is these entities that are really behind the fight between the upper and lower basins, because none of the development interests in those places want to curtail options for future growth and profit. But at this point, they are simply up against the limits of what the system can provide, so it is a zero sum game – if Phoenix wins, then Denver loses. Because the feds will do all they can to retain hydropower production at Glen Canyon Dam, and protect its structural integrity by avoiding use of the river outlet works, the Upper Basin is going to be told to give up some water this year. But the lower basin metros are going to face cuts as well, particularly junior rights holders like Arizona. So municipal development across the board in the West will likely have to put on the brakes, for the near term at least. Welcome to the Era of Limits, where everyone will need to figure out how to do less with less. It is not a happy place.
RobertGosselin
Well-Known Member
Oh, OK. I said the BOR has less control over the Upper Basin than the Lower Basin. I don't know who has the actual power to shut off or turn on a water right in the Upper Basin but I think they operate under less BOR control.
Terry G
Active Member
Part of the solution is desalination. San Diego is now "selling" its excess desalinated water to some Colorado River basin states to the East. The water is not transported, it is traded. The states to the East pay San Diego's water district for a portion of the district's Colorado River water, which the buying states then take out of the Colorado River within those states. San Diego makes up this amount locally with desalinated water from the ocean. Trading river water in Western states by changing the point of diversion is a common practice. Other coastal water providers are also planning on doing this.
ndscott50
Well-Known Member
I am skeptical that water will be anything more then a secondary limit on municipal growth in the Southwest for a number of reasons.
- It's relatively easy to reduce residential water use - Vegas has shown this where it added 1 million people and kept its overall water use flat. Aggressive turf removal programs save a lot of water - even more when you consider outdoor irrigation is 100% consumptive while indoor use is only 10% consumptive. When you pair turf removal with treating and reusing waste water its possible to free up a lot of water for new development
- The economics of water favor the cities. Consider that CBT units currently sell for $50,000 to $60,000 per unit. A 1,000 acre farm in northern Colorado may have between 500 and 1,500 units that they have held for generations. The option to cash out for $25 to $90 million is going to continue to drive farmers to sell. As the price goes up that incentive will increase.
- Higher density both in single family homes (smaller lots) and the increase in multi-family along with development restrictions driving less turf and more water saving landscaping allow for much more residential development per acre foot of water needed. Note that as recently as 2000 around 75% of new residential units in the Denver metro were single family with most requiring water rights equivalent to 1 acre foot per year. Today multi-family units account for more than half of new residential units often requiring only 1/3rd of an acre foot per year. The new single family homes are on smaller lots with more limited landscaping requiring only 1/2 acre foot per year.
- From a political and economic perspective the benefits of growth still outweigh the cost of growth. All you have to do is look at numerous towns in the Midwest and plains states that saw their growth stall and populations decline. It's not great - limited opportunity, higher crime rates, low wages, underfunded schools - this list goes on. The kids that grew up in those towns make up a big percentage of the people moving to the southwest. We think its the weather and the mountains that brought them here but the true driver is the economics of where they were vs. where they went. The point here is the motivation and money to facilitate additional growth through water saving measures and acquisition of agricultural water rights is very strong.
- There is a limit of course to how much we can grow in the Southwest - I just think its further away then people think,
RichieW13
Well-Known Member
Sighthound
Member
Rep. Joe Neguse
@neguse.house.gov
· 8m
The Colorado River is the lifeline of the West.As the record-hot winter impacts water supply, I’m leading a bipartisan effort with Rep. Celeste Maloy urging the Bureau of Reclamation to ensure any proposed drawdowns of Flaming Gorge & other upper basin reservoirs comply with existing agreements.
***************************************************************
Fussing to get the letter and sigs reproduced in portable format. Not my strong suit.
Attachments
Did you read the link I attached to your post saying Cali is doing nothing to conserve water? It was about IID's conservation efforts. Which I assume to which you were referring about no water conservation efforts were being made, since for the most part we seem to focus on IID.
Colorado Expat
Well-Known Member
Although history has shown that big metros have deeper pockets than agricultural interests, and tend to win out in bidding wars for water, that dynamic is gradually changing.
In January 2026, Pitkin County, Colorado (read Aspen) spent $6.5 million to purchase the water rights from the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company, and the Fountain Mutual Ditch Company, and put the water thus acquired back into the Roaring Fork River to maintain minimum instream flows. This was water previously diverted to the Colorado Front Range.
That same country is also part of a large consortium of Western Slope interests that are seeking to purchase the pre-Compact water rights for the Shoshone hydro plant on the Colorado River, which will prevent further diversion of that water out of the Colorado River basin. This purchase is, predictably, being contested by Front Range real estate development interests.
On the eastern side of the Colorado Rockies, there is mounting resistance to any further buy-and-dry schemes in the Arkansas River basin, as the melon farmers around Rocky Ford notice what happened to agriculture in Crowley county immediately to the north, where water rights purchases by Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Aurora led to the collapse of the agricultural economy (the main economic driver in the Crowley County is now a prison). In the Republican River basin, downstream delivery obligations to Kansas have forced the fallowing of thousands of acres of formerly irrigated farmland, and the abandonment of Bonny Reservoir, precluding any water grab by Front Range cities. As for water in the Rio Grande basin, the situation is now so dire there that what was once the river now runs dry through Albuquerque for several months each summer. No extra water to be had there, either.
The bottom line is that future trans-basin diversions are going to be increasingly difficult to accomplish both hydrologically, economically and politically, and there is a progressively shrinking amount water to be had for cities which have relied on these. Future growth will instead be contingent on gradually putting all the farmers in eastern Colorado, along the Wasatch Front, and in the Casa Grande Valley out of business, which will be a progressively harder sell, as those folks still have some political connections within our current government. So we really do seem to be getting to a point where water will constrain growth, just as John Wesley Powell pointed out over 100 years ago. There are certainly gains to be had from more logical building codes, and water conservation initiatives such as xeriscape landscaping, but many current homeowners in greener western cities like Denver are not necessarily bought into the idea of giving up their nice yard simply for the sake of enabling developers to have additional water to fuel more suburban sprawl.
A recent NOAA analysis presented in an online seminar this past Monday came to the conclusion that the current Southwest mega-drought is likely to be with us for several more decades, driven largely by long-term cycles involving the Pacific ocean. If that turns out to be correct, then the era of rapid urban expansion in the West will truly be over. Stay tuned.
Dorado
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
I’m a broken record on this subject…but growing the low value forage crops for livestock is by far the largest consumer of Colorado River water. Every list, pie chart, whatever you wanna look at will show the vast majority of water is used in an inefficient manner to grow hay/alfalfa. This is the low hanging fruit. Cheap, subsidized water promotes inefficient usage.
Of course we need to be more efficient in how we use municipal water and growing food crops for direct consumption by humans. But this is not where most the water is being used.
Of course we need to be more efficient in how we use municipal water and growing food crops for direct consumption by humans. But this is not where most the water is being used.
I have brought up these ideas before, not one single cut is going to fix this problem, here are my suggestions:
1. more wastewater recycling needs to be done, no reason each house can't have a small wastewater recycling (maybe just grey water). I know some water districts don't want this, they want that water to resell.
2. Reduce the turn of the fields in the Southwest, from 6 turns a year to 4, that is a 1/3 savings. Also find better ways to irrigate, hard to believe flooding the fields is the most efficient way?
3. Urban expansion/growth is slowing down in the west, especially in California. I saw a study recently, that in Southern California, they plan no growth in population from 2030 to 2050.
4. And find a way to share more water throughout North American, absolutely no reason we can't have water pipes transferring water from one part of the country to the next, at the headwaters??? Why not bring some Canada water down to headwaters of the Colorado and use it as needed?
5. Desalination
At the end of the day, all of this cost money and this is pretty much the one thing stopping this from happening. If we can pump gasoline across the west, we certainly can do this with water.
1. more wastewater recycling needs to be done, no reason each house can't have a small wastewater recycling (maybe just grey water). I know some water districts don't want this, they want that water to resell.
2. Reduce the turn of the fields in the Southwest, from 6 turns a year to 4, that is a 1/3 savings. Also find better ways to irrigate, hard to believe flooding the fields is the most efficient way?
3. Urban expansion/growth is slowing down in the west, especially in California. I saw a study recently, that in Southern California, they plan no growth in population from 2030 to 2050.
4. And find a way to share more water throughout North American, absolutely no reason we can't have water pipes transferring water from one part of the country to the next, at the headwaters??? Why not bring some Canada water down to headwaters of the Colorado and use it as needed?
5. Desalination
At the end of the day, all of this cost money and this is pretty much the one thing stopping this from happening. If we can pump gasoline across the west, we certainly can do this with water.