My Solution- Colorado River Levels

[smoke]

According to Colorado River District - 500,000 acre feet of water diverted annually: “Most of the Colorado’s water is on the western side of the Continental Divide, while Colorado’s population lives predominantly along the Front Range on the state’s eastern slope. As a result, Colorado has dozens of water projects that divert water from the Colorado River basin across the Divide. These projects range from small projects diverting a few hundred acre feet of water per year to the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Project, which diverts an average of more than 220,000 acre feet annually. On average, a total of roughly 500,000 acre feet of Colorado River Basin water is transmountain diverted annually in Colorado.”

That seems a like a very significant amount of water to me.

yes 50% comes from the other side of the continetal divide. But this is for denver water who supply only half of the metro. The other big supply is Aurora that takes water from the Arkansas and the plate.

 

[whiskeynpancakes]

I can't speak for the Yellowstone but the Platte is fully booked up as it flows through Nebraska. It goes dry or nearly dry almost every summer. Nebraska is currently in a battle to get a laughably small amount of additional water from Colorado. Here is a wild idea, maybe we need to limit growth in areas where there are not enough resources to provide for all the people who want to live there.

 

[Paladin]

I can't speak for the Yellowstone but the Platte is fully booked up as it flows through Nebraska. It goes dry or nearly dry almost every summer. Nebraska is currently in a battle to get a laughably small amount of additional water from Colorado. Here is a wild idea, maybe we need to limit growth in areas where there are not enough resources to provide for all the people who want to live there.

Ya think!!!

 

[Dorado]

I can't speak for the Yellowstone but the Platte is fully booked up as it flows through Nebraska. It goes dry or nearly dry almost every summer. Nebraska is currently in a battle to get a laughably small amount of additional water from Colorado. Here is a wild idea, maybe we need to limit growth in areas where there are not enough resources to provide for all the people who want to live there.

Not necessarily limit growth, but limit consumption of resources. It has been stated here many times, but agriculture uses most of the water from the Colorado. We are acting as if there is a massive shortage of water, while we flood irrigate in the desert to grow alfalfa and other cattle feed. Which circles back to the idea that it is cheaper to conserve and reuse water than build extravagant pipelines to perpetuate wasteful practices.

 

[Outside]

The project you are citing from Turkey was done for political reasons. It can at a maximum deliver 61k acre feet a year, and is 50 miles long. 50% for drinking water, 50% for irrigation. Irrigates12,000 acres. Cost 500 million $US. Any pipelines to So Cal or the Colorado river would be 1,000 miles plus, not 50. The PNW would never let someone take the water, but even if they did the cost would be astronomical.

We could just take it from the Canadians….

 

[Eagle Rock]

Same issue denver is at 5200 ft while the Missouri (as the Mississippi is even further) is at 1000’ in omaha quite an elevation change, not to mention the 600 miles.
also even denver pump some water after dillon reservoir through a tunnel under the continental divide, the amount is negligeable for lake powell elevation as the shortage in in MAF
The only solution is to adapt the outflow to the average of the past 20 years less 10%. This until the reservoir is back to 80% of its capacity. The reservoir was built for helping going through drought year which was the primary function of lake powell. Generating power was the second.

And even going to Omaha wouldn't be far enough. The Missouri River downstream of Omaha has low enough flows in the summer that powerplants have had to curtail operations because the Missouri River water they use for cooling ends up at over 90 degrees after going through them.

 

[AzTacoma]

except for the price involved you can probably get that same amount of water by conservation and building more recycling plants in places that are already using Colorado River water.

Any way you slice it, conservation and recycling will have to play a significant roll in any comprehensive plan on Colorado River water usage. I believe it will take a combination of factors on the Demand and Supply side to bring a workable balance.

 

[airford1]

We need to get past the "What About ME", syndrome and change the way we use water