By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House
Reading the recently-released Bureau of
Reclamation (BOR) report—on the impacts of climate change on Western water
resources— is like watching Waterworld,
that futuristic flop in which Kevin Costner sails around a post-apocalyptic
globe that’s been completely inundated by melted polar ice caps, in search of
dry land.
Waterworld gushed
with doomsday imagery and environmentalist innuendo (the villain’s boat was,
after all, named the Valdez) but
critics’ eyes glazed over as the characters sail on for hours, talking about
their plight but getting nowhere fast.
In its own way, the BOR report is a vision of the world gone
to hell. In the West, of course, too little water will be our fate. The
report’s colorful maps, charts and graphs illustrate how our eight river basins
including the Colorado, Rio Grande and Missouri, will respond to climate
change. It predicts that the average annual flow in some basins could drop as
much 20 percent in this century.
This is of particular concern to BOR, which supplies water to over 31 million people, and to one
out of five Western farmers (to irrigate 10 million acres of farmland that
produce 60 percent of the nation’s vegetables and 25 percent of its fruits and
nuts). It also relies on river flows to fuel 58 powerplants which, per year,
generate nearly a billion dollars in power revenues and produce enough
electricity for 3.5 million homes.
While disturbing, these predicted shortfalls come as no
surprise. If we stacked up all the reports on Western water released over the
past couple of decades, we could dam the Colorado. Western rivers have been
studied ad nauseam, summits have been held and task forces have been formed. As
the Reclamation report says, “It is widely
accepted that water demand changes will occur due to increased air
temperatures, increased greenhouse gas concentrations, and changes in
precipitation, winds, humidity, and atmospheric aerosol and ozone levels.”
Reclamation’s repetitive predictions are “ringing
alarm bells,” says Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Yet, as if we’re
stuck in the plot of Waterworld, we just
keep sailing along, talking about our plight while making little progress.
The report’s main suggestion of merit is the WaterSMART Program,
which aims to “secure and stretch fresh water supplies for use by existing and
future generations to benefit people, the economy, and the environment.” The
program’s target is to increase available water for agriculture, industry,
cities and natural uses, through conservation, by 490,000 acre-feet by the end
of next year. (One acre-foot is 325,861 gallons, or enough water to supply two
families of four for roughly one year.)
This gels with some of the thinking of Colorado River Basin
leaders. Yet another
report, “Thinking Like a
River Basin,” released recently by the Center for Natural Resources and
Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and the nonprofit Carpe Diem
West, reflects some practical recommendations expressed by major decision makers in the Colorado River basin system. Conversations with these leaders confirmed that: “Conservation
and efficiency are viewed as important tools for stretching limited Colorado
River water supplies.” Some interviewees said that more aggressive conservation
and efficiency measures were needed.
They also suggested some common-sense projects that could be
implemented now in the Colorado River Basin—like the Title XVI Water Reclamation
and Reuse Program, a federal project which offers incentives to water
providers to adapt infrastructure to encourage water conservation and, thus, to
mitigate the consequences of climate change. Another recommendation to charge
water users’ a small fee, which would go into a basin-wide fund dedicated to
conservation improvements, would force all of us to share some of the costs of
living in a changing landscape.
Spoiler alert: At the end of Waterworld, Costner finally locates the one wedge of remaining
dry land on earth (the summit of Everest, as it turns out). As we in the West
grope around to adapt to our shifting conditions, the sooner we stop sailing
along and take control of our destiny, the better.
Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.
Heather Hansen is an environmental journalist working with the Red Lodge Clearinghouse /Natural Resources Law Center at CU Boulder, to help raise awareness of natural resource issues.
Waterworld poster photo courtesy Flickr user jdxyw
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