Roerink, who heads the Great Basin Water Network, claims that the Upper Colorado River Basin states are shirking their responsibilities while the Lower Basin states valiantly work to grapple with the ongoing basin-wide drought. “With (reservoir) water savings gone,” he says, “the Lower Basin has been trying to cope, though the Upper Basin carries on business as usual.”

“Business as usual” in the Upper Basin has always been dealing with the realities of an erratic river, the annual flows of which can go from 5.8 million acre-feet in 1977 to 24.8 million acre-feet in 1984. The Upper Basin lives with that reality, dry years and wet.

But the Bureau of Reclamation has regularly and faithfully released to the Lower Basin, from Powell Reservoir, the Colorado River Compact and Mexican Treaty allotments –- 8.23 million acre-feet only dropping a little below those allotments half a dozen times since Powell began to fill in the 1960s. Dry year or wet, the Lower Basin always gets its full allotment.

Usually, more than that designated quantity is sent to the Lower Basin (as much as 12 million acre-feet above in 1984). The Compact and Mexican Treaty require that the Upper Basin send downriver 82.5 million acre-feet over a 10-year period; as of 2020, the 10-year running total was 92.5 million acre-feet.

So the Lower Basin never bears the brunt of low flows, as Roerink claims; it has always received its Compact and Treaty allocations since Powell Reservoir filled, usually with some extra, regardless of what was happening in the “real river” the Upper Basin states live with.

It is true that the Lower Basin states are currently “’trying to cope” with river shortages by making some difficult cutbacks in their uses. But what they are trying to cope with is their own excessive use of the water stored in Mead Reservoir.

For decades the three downstream states –- primarily California –- have been using considerably more than their Compact allotment of 7.5 million acre-feet; they have also not been subtracting from their allotment the significant losses to evaporation in desert storage and transit (automatically figured into Upper Basin use through the Powell releases).

This has resulted in what is euphemistically called a “structural deficit,” but is just the Lower Basin using more water than its entitlement. That was more or less okay before the Upper Basin use was fully developed, and before the Central Arizona Project came online; the Bureau’s extra releases, above Compact requirements, covered the overuse. No more.

So now the Lower Basin states, which have been drawing an annual average of 1.2 million acre-feet more out of Mead Reservoir than has flowed into it, are trying to bring their usage down to the actual Compact allotment. Drought might exacerbate that challenge, but it doesn’t cause it, nor does Upper Basin lollygagging.

The Upper Basin has not even used its full Compact allocation because it became obvious that the river could not supply that on a dependable basis. The Upper Colorado River Compact divides the Upper Basin states’ permissible consumptive uses by percentages rather than a set amount like the Lower Basin gets, but exactly what that allows each state is obviously ambiguous, depending on what “average flow” is used.

Are the Upper Basin states doing their part to ensure prudent uses of the river? They are developing “demand management” programs to pay farmers and ranchers to fallow some of their land to increase flows to Powell Reservoir. Last summer, Blue Mesa Reservoir’s recreation season was cut short to send most of the Reservoir’s water down to bolster Powell.

Denver Water is also working hard to re-plumb its city for reuse, as well as running an ongoing conservation program that has reduced their deliveries to a 1970 level with half a million more people.

Could the Upper Basin states be doing more? Probably, and they probably will be. But they are less to blame for the Lower Basin state’s dilemmas than are the Lower Basin states themselves.

George Sibley is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively discussion about Western issues. He has written extensively about the Colorado River.

The post Don’t blame the Upper Basin states appeared first on Writers On The Range.

One outcome they pinpointed was the impact of heat and drought on water flows in the Colorado River. For the last 20 years this new climate, combined with booming human population growth, has parched landscapes, drained reservoirs and incited talk of water wars across the region. Lake Powell on the Colorado River, and Glen Canyon Dam which creates the reservoir, have become casualties of this strained environment.

Lake Powell is the second largest reservoir in the United States, but in the last year alone its water level  has dropped 52 feet and the reservoir now sits at 31.4% full.

If you’re a pessimist, that’s over 68% empty. Water managers are already imposing cuts in water deliveries in some states; all their choices are filled with political pitfalls.

A further complication is that the federal government operates a hydroelectric plant at Glen Canyon Dam that provides cheap electricity to parts of the Southwest. The day is coming when the hydroelectric turbines will stop for want of water to spin them.

To save the lake and generate electricity, the government needs water. But where will that water come from?

Upstream of Lake Powell, in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico are millions of acres of irrigated farms and ranches that suck massive amounts of water out of the Colorado River before it reaches Lake Powell. If those farms and ranches quit taking water and instead ran that water downstream, the lake and its electricity could be saved. To ensure that outcome, the federal government has hatched a plan it calls “demand management,” which proposes to buy or lease massive amounts of farm and ranch water to prop up Lake Powell.

On the one hand, the farmers and ranchers would get paid for the water, and likely paid very well. If I were a rancher who owned water, I’d sit comfortably until the offering price for my water made me even more comfortable.

On the other hand, lots of people and businesses believe that irrigated farming, ranching and outdoor recreation are not only central to the region’s economy, but also to its culture. Should that economy — and the soul of the Southwest — be sacrificed to save a manmade reservoir and its hydroelectricity?

I’m torn by this dilemma. If farms and ranches are dried up, more water flows down the river. More water in the river benefits fish and the environment. But there’s another solution: We can save farms and ranches and instead drain Lake Powell, freeing the Colorado River to flow free through 169 miles of a drowned and beautiful place called Glen Canyon.

There’s always the “save hydroelectricity” argument, but it’s a red herring. There are other ways to generate electricity, including wind and solar. In fact, if you’ve ever stood near Glen Canyon Dam and its hydropower plant, you can’t help noticing that it’s surrounded by millions of acres of dry, sun-drenched landscape that would make a great place for a solar electricity farm.

Electricity can be replaced; farms and ranches cannot.

As we grapple with these tradeoffs, it’s important to remember that even lower water flows are projected for the future, plus more severe heat and drought that will become the “new normal” for the Colorado River and the entire region. Lake Oroville, California’s second largest reservoir, now has inactive hydro turbines because there’s not enough water to turn them, its dusty lakebed a harbinger of what’s to come for Lake Powell.

Let’s also remember that Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 and it and Lake Powell are only 58 years old. The region lived without them before, and it can live without them again. Now, nature is forcing our hand, telling us that it’s time to breach the dam and let the Colorado River run free.

Gary Wockner is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a river-protection activist based in Colorado and runs the nonprofit Save the Colorado.

The post The Colorado River is sending a message appeared first on Writers On The Range.

I eyed the 100 feet of sheer sandstone rising out of the water. For much of the past half-century, boats that entered upper Fiftymile Canyon in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area could blithely float over Gregory Natural Bridge with about 40 feet of clearance.

Not anymore. Two decades of drought had diminished the lake, and motorized river traffic could no longer float overtop.

Now, however, a new passageway to Fiftymile’s inner sanctum was possible. That gave me a chance to become (possibly) the first person to pass under Gregory Natural Bridge since the archway was drowned 52 years ago.

Doing so would require swimming underwater while holding my breath, something I’d practiced over a decade and a half of visiting coral reefs. I’m far from a professional free diver, but I have been known to spend a minute or two communing with croaking toadfish 50 feet beneath the waves.

I filled my lungs one last time and plunged down, scissor-kicking my way into the bracing, turbid water.

I’d spent the previous week with 11 other Alaskans in southeastern Utah, negotiating the rapids of the Escalante River, an underappreciated gem that used to join the Colorado River but now feeds into Lake Powell. The Escalante has traditionally been considered navigable only during its spring flood. But word had trickled out that pack-rafts and patience could get you down the last 40 miles of it before it reached Lake Powell, even during low flows.

Upriver in the town of Escalante, a water gauge gave a reading of just half a cubic foot per second for much of our journey, which began at Fence Canyon, 40 miles down the river. Only the cumulative output of spring-fed side canyons kept us moving.

When we arrived at Lake Powell’s “full pool line,” where the reservoir used to start when Glen Canyon Dam was at capacity, we were in for a shock. It would have been impossible to guess that water once covered the banks; now, cottonwoods three stories tall bordered the river.

It would take us another day and a half of increasingly arduous travel to finally enter Lake Powell.

As the shoreline vegetation shrank, then disappeared, we gave up trying to float and began walking our boats. The braided river channel was choked with sediment that broke off from the banks in basketball-sized chunks. A rock pinnacle called Explorer Island was ringed with cracked mud studded with dry buoys.

I’ve worked as a field ecologist for almost as long as the Western Rockies have been in a state of drought, but I’ve never seen a place so clearly in the throes of change. In 36 hours, we’d rewound the tape on 20 years of ecological succession — from riparian forest back to mud.

We were ready to quit sloshing through the Escalante River when we finally reached the depleted reservoir and our rented houseboat. Then it took us less than an hour to reach our goal, the place where Gregory Natural Bridge lurked beneath us. There, time compressed as I dropped underwater and passed through a shimmering boundary between the sun-warmed surface layer and the colder depths. Only then did the top of the archway come into view.

As I passed under it at about 15 feet, there was more overhanging sandstone. Low visibility obscured what was ahead, but I decided to trust my lungs and finned forward, following the gradual rise of the rock above me.

A diffuse glow became refracted light and then sunshine as I splashed back into the day. I was just 50 feet upstream, but once under the bridge and out the other side, I was in a world removed from where I had taken my last breath.

It was quiet, with no sound of boats or people. Around me rose a red-rock panorama that had been hidden away for years. It was glorious.

True, it might be a tragedy for flat-water recreationists and businesses if climate change and over-allocation of water rights in the West doom Glen Canyon Dam, letting loose the Colorado River.

But I can attest there would be marvels for visitors, and what a boon for nature that would be.

Tim Treuer is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Alaska and is a writer and ecologist.

The post As Lake Powell dwindles, wonders open up appeared first on Writers On The Range.