Since Christmas, an almost
continuous stream of Pacific moisture has raced over Colorado and
much of the West, dumping rain in the valleys and heavy snows in
the mountains. The sun and crystalline blue skies I brag about to
my non-Western friends and relatives have only made rare
appearances in the narrow seams between storms.
Frankly,
it’s been a little depressing. But water-watchers in the West
are almost giddy with joy: Every week, our local papers run stories
with cheerful quotes from forecasters proclaiming that the drought
gripping the region for the past five years may be broken.
“Every string of fantastic years has to start with one,”
Tom Pagano, a water supply forecaster for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture recently told The Associated Press, “and we can only
hope this is it.”
Early January surveys of snowpack show
that the Colorado River Basin, which gathers runoff from Wyoming to
Southern California, will receive 98 percent of “normal”
precipitation this year. If the rest of the winter meets historic
averages, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the West’s most massive
reservoirs which have shrunk over the past five years to 56 percent
and 36 percent of capacity, respectively, will rise.
That’s good news not only for the recreationists who love to
boat in the desert, but also for the tens of millions of people who
rely on the river for agricultural and drinking waters, including
farmers in Arizona and urbanites in Las Vegas. But I wouldn’t
bet on the reservoirs filling up just yet.
As reported in
igh Country News this month, scientists at the
University of Arizona have discovered through analysis of the
growth rings of trees that drought is a persistent visitor to the
West. Over the past 500 years, a half-dozen major droughts, some
lasting many decades, have struck the Colorado River Basin,
according to research from the university’s Laboratory of
Tree-Ring Research. So the current drought could last a long while,
whether it is interrupted by an occasional wet year or not.
Wet-weather optimists would be wise to listen to the
scientists, or at least remember the wisdom of explorer John Wesley
Powell, whose name graces the massive reservoir on the Utah-Arizona
border. Powell’s 1878 report to Congress on the arid lands of
the West — reprinted last year by the University of Nebraska
Press — is “a sober and foresighted warning about the
consequences of trying to impose on a dry country the habits that
have been formed in a wet one,” wrote Wallace Stegner in his
introduction to the book.
Powell and Stegner knew that
droughts would define the development of the West. What they
couldn’t know was that our rapid combustion of the
planet’s fossil fuels could make the dry periods more lengthy
and intense. Over the past several years, scientists studying tree
rings, glaciers, corals and lake- and sea-bed sediments have
discovered that atmospheric temperatures have risen sharply since
the early 1900s, when the use of fossil fuels took a dramatic turn
upward. Warmer temperatures means earlier melting of the snowpack,
where the West’s water is stored, more evaporation from
reservoirs, and dryer soil conditions, all of which spell drought.
So what should Western farmers, urban planners,
developers, conservationists and public officals do? They should
plan now for drought and rethink water-allocation systems that no
longer make sense.
Fortunately that’s what some are
doing. Last fall, Arizona drafted its first-ever drought plan,
which calls for some modest first steps, including mandatory water
conservation for state agencies and universities. The federal
government is also weighing in: The Interior Department, which
includes the agency that built much of the West’s water
storage and delivery systems, the Bureau of Reclamation, has
ordered the seven states that share Colorado River water to write a
plan for managing a shortage of water.
States with more
water than they can currently use, such as Arizona, will have to
share with those that are running short, such as Nevada. Water
hoarding and wasting will not be tolerated in a world of prolonged
drought.
The plan is due in April, and is a sign that the
message of the scientists — reinforced by five years of warm
temperatures, drought and wildfire — has begun to be heard.
Another dry year or two, and we might actually change our
behavior. This is why I hope it stops raining and snowing soon.
Paul Larmer is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News. He is the
publisher of the paper in Paonia, Colorado
(plarmer@hcn.org).
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