Again, let us be clear and repeat ourselves in this example: by Southwestern I mean: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and portions of Nevada, Utah, Colorado and a slice of Wyoming. I include Wyoming because it is at the extreme northern end of the Colorado River watershed.
The biggest problem with the water supply in the Southwest is excessive consumption of the limited amount of water available. This is especially true of the major and minor urban areas. Look at Google Earth and see how brilliantly green much of those areas are – compared with what is outside them. This bizarre New England-Atlantic Seaboard fetish with green lawns and trees, fountains, enormous urban parks with more green, and other wasteful and excessive consumption in a land where 15–20 inches of precip is a wet year? Crazy. At least for Westerners, and in times of drought, even back East.
So look at all the big complexes: San-San (San Francisco to San Diego including ALL the Bay Area, the Los Angeles Basin, and more, Reno and Vegas, the Wasatch Front, Phoenix – Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso, Midland – Odessa, the Dalworthingon Complex, and probably San Antonio and even Houston. And do NOT forget the Front Range of Colorado: Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, Metro Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. They ALL take water from the Colorado’s tributaries, as well as the Arkansas and Platte drainages.
But it is not just the urban residents and governments (and businesses) that are causing the problems. Farmers – especially but not only truck farmers are also part of this excessive consumption. Whether you are pumping vast amounts of water from wells in the Texas Panhandle and Trans-Pecos (or father east), or using huge dams to capture and send water by pipelines and tunnels to croplands and more and more, cities. Whether you are growing cotton, wheat, corn, and such. Or if you are growing veggies and fruits in the Rio Grande valley or the Big Valley in California, the Wasatch Front and Dixie in Utah, the Grand and San Luis Valleys in Colorado, or all those places in Southern Arizona, you are using vast quantities of water to irrigate corps that were originally intended to grow in far wetter climates. To say nothing of bluegrass and other yard plants. And way too much is allow to evaporate to the air by using sprinkler and flood irrigation.
Reason or problem number two: human stupidity on the large and small scale. From failing to recognize that drought-wet cycles have existed in this region for thousands of years, to refusal to conserve water in your house, your business, even your car and your church building. From government officials who just throw more money at a problem (or pass a hundred laws) to people who JUST HAVE TO HAVE a two-acre pond and 20 acres of alfalfa on their little 35-acre parcels in Colorado. And to people who refuse to think outside the box. A couple of thorium molten salt reactors and a few acres of land on the edge of San Diego, Los Angeles, and perhaps San Jose could produce virtually unlimited pure water from seawater, instead of stealing the water from the Rockies, the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada. You probably wouldn’t even have to use the land: floating off-shore might work!
The water supply in the West is severely damaged by the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons is a situation when individuals with unfettered access to a public resource (called a common) act in their own interest, overuse it, and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even though western States’ water law are intended to establish ownership of water (called “water rights”), this principle still holds. (This economic theory was conceptualized in 1833 by British writer William Forster Lloyd. In 1968, the term “tragedy of the commons” was used for the first time by Garret Hardin.)
Why? Because a combination of eminent domain (governments and others with power gaining control of resources, including land and water), massive government subsidies (in the form of dam and water system construction and operations) and a failure to have free markets establishing prices for water. This means that water is wasted because its true costs are ignored: literally evaporated into the air or infiltrating into locations where it can be contaminated (by nature or man). The entire system is skewed by more government regulations and subsidies, including those to farmers and government-owned utilities.
The bottom line? We are now paying for poor choices by government and businesses and people over a century and more. And because of the power of government and the desire for more control and to placate the masses, more poor choices will be implemented in the future. Choices that will make it more and more difficult to really address the water shortages and impacts.
Poor choices include substituting far distant water supplies for local supplies. The incredibly expensive Mni Wiconi project in the West River of South Dakota, a decade ago, demonstrates this: Water flowing by reservation towns goes downstream hundreds of miles to a large reservoir and is then pumped uphill hundreds of miles to supply those same towns. A new proposal would pump more of that reservoir water that hundreds of miles uphill to the urban Rapid City area, replacing water supplies from lakes and underground aquifers only a dozen or so miles away (if that). Why? Buying votes and paying off campaign contributors (business). Or in other words, business as usual.
The consequences can be such things as the deadly crash of 30+ vehicles on I-25 near Pueblo, Colorado, killing 4 and sending a dozen to hospital. The cause? A massive dust storm due to high winds, dry conditions, and failure to account for those in road design and operations.
More on this in a future commentary.
The Price of Liberty 
Real world problems: floods and droughts, hurricanes and blizzards, tornadoes and hail #1 Water
This was originally published in October of 2024: TPOL part 1 of “real world problems”. Now, with concerns over drought, warmer than normal weather conditions in some of the States and exceptionally cold weather in others, and with recent examples of hurricane force winds and resulting dust storms, accidents, injuries, and deaths, we thought it might be good to reprint that series.
In this fallen world of ours, the planet itself is not as hospitable a place as we’d like. Though parts of it come close, Terra is not a paradise. The third rock from the sun, Old Sol himself, is just that: mostly rock. Lots of metal, too, even those metals that cause cancer. And wars.
All that metal and rock has a very thin layer of dirt, water, and air. A little bit of water. And other liquids, and gases (both confined and floating held only by gravity). That is mostly where we humans live. That air and dirt and water also support more than just humans: there are animals, from single-cell critters up to blue whales and great condors and even elephants. But sometimes there isn’t enough dirt: it isn’t there and so it is exposed rock. Or it’s covered by water. Usually salt water, but sometimes fresh water – water with a low enough salt content to make it drinkable by humans, birds, and land animals.
Continue reading →