Southwest Megadrought

Yep, I believe that they will use emergency powers to divert enough water to Lake Powell so that the turbines can keep turning at a minimal level. This allows the agency to avoid declaring dead pool. In a way, it might be better to allow the system to collapse, because that might capture more public attention.

Even with the last minute snowfall we received, I’ve never personally seen anything like what Colorado is experiencing this Spring/Summer. It’s very troubling.

“In a way, it might be better to allow the system to collapse, because that might capture more public attention.”

yeah

it seems like the bigger question is how to split the amount of water available between the different users

until dead pool occurs, they stick to their mutually contradictory positions

when dead pool occurs, California can sue Arizona to quit using water which will force the supremes to get into it – dead pool is a legal problem – this should force the parties off their mutually contradictory positions

dead pool doesn’t mean that instantly anything bad happens like dams fail

If it does go to the Supreme Court, whoever has the most money will win. At least that’s how it seems they rule these days.

In 2024 we did a road trip through Arizona. When driving up to White Tank, we saw the housing developments that are partly finished and then abandoned, big typical clone homes, with no one ever to own them, because they cannot hook up water from Phoenix. What a colossal waste.  The area would look nicer as undeveloped desert.

. When driving up to White Tank, we saw the housing developments that are partly finished and then abandoned, big typical clone homes, with no one ever to own them, because they cannot hook up water from Phoenix.

Barry Goldwater Peak in the background?

Goldwater Institute

Yet later in life Goldwater came to completely regret pushing for dams throughout the West. He said “all that dam building on the Colorado, across the west, was a big mistake. Barry also said the Senate vote he regretted most was his “Yes” to approve Glen Canyon Dam.

Arrogant “scientists” and engineers failed to foresee the side effects of dams, but as decades went by the huge problems with dams became all too obvious. Turns out humans aren’t near as smart as they think they are…imagine that. Glen Canyon Dam should be torn down.

https://coyotegulch.blog/2014/02/17/all-that-dam-building-on-the-colorado-across-the-west-was-a-big-mistake-barry-goldwater-coloradoriver/

In AZ,  22% of water is for the “megacities”.   78% is for agriculture.  45% of the total is for cattle.

Norton Farms

45% of the total is for cattle.

We are inadvertently doing our part. With the insanely high cost of beef right now up here – $25 a pound for a mediocre steak! – we’re not buying beef at all any more. I’d love to be vegetarian, but that won’t be acceptable to my partner, so chicken it is. I could live on dal and rice  or mexican beans and rice every day.

At least for the canyon country where I live, scientists now say it’s a mistake to call this a drought, for that implies the cycle will come back to “normal” in some reasonable period. Instead we need to think of it as aridification–the old “normal” isn’t coming back, and the land is switching to a new ecological regime, similar to the growth of the Sahara. Plant species (e.g., pine forests) and their accompanying animals are being replaced by others, e.g., grasslands or scrub. Desert species are being replaced by open ground. Riparian habitats are disappearing rapidly as groundwater increasingly fails to make it to the surface. We’ve had cottonwoods dying even though they are in a bog and I’m wondering if it’s heat stress.

This past week a neighbor’s Purple Air monitor briefly had the worst reading in the country, with so much smoke from the Babylon and Cottonwood fires.

Around 5 years ago scientists used aerial photos to conclude that around 40% of the plants in the desert portions of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, a place I’m intimately familiar with, had died due to the drought. I went there to see, and to me it looked more like 50%. I mean, when even the jumping cholla die you know it’s bad.

45% of the total is for cattle.

The ranching industry is one of the few issues where my wife and I have conflict.

To me, it’s second only to oil-and-gas as an exploitative industry that should go away, and I am perennially frustrated with arguments about how it needs to be preserved as an important part of western heritage. And at the same time, every email and website has a little sentence in tiny print recognizing that the land was originally occupied by native peoples.

My wife thinks that we need to support ranchers because the alternative is massive development. She’s not wrong, obviously.

I would like to see a third option, but that requires investing in conservation, which is an especially hard-sell when many people are struggling as they are now.

My wife thinks that we need to support ranchers because the alternative is massive development. She’s not wrong, obviously.

I wonder about that though. Aren’t most ranchers grazing cattle on public lands? I know small farmers are often forced to  sell to developers but public lands don’t have to be. Certainly our current federal government would like to see more public lands in private hands and big ranching interests might slow that down.

Around here, ranchers do often move their cattle to public lands seasonally, but that is limited by law (in principle). So they usually have large properties and pay property taxes at agricultural rates. It’s an easy (legacy) buffer against development.

Almost any other private use of the land would drastically increase valuation and taxes, virtually ensuring development.

Acquisition by local government or conservation easements are viable options.

Consuming beef goes hand in hand with a big carbon footprint. Meat eating in general contributes far more CO2 than a mostly non-meat diet, but beef is worse than pork or chicken.

A large percentage of cattle are raised in feeder lots where they don’t graze, yet it still takes a lot of fuel, fertilizer and water to produce the grasses and grains they need. And with grazing cattle hay is needed for winter forage, and west of the 100th meridian most is grown with irrigation.

I saw the wasteful water practices when I lived in Phoenix, especially in south Maricopa County. Alfalfa hay is a very lucrative endeavor which supplies the megabucks horse business around The Valley. The equine numbers are huge and all must be fed with grain and hay because there’s virtually no grazing. Being a fanatical hiker (urban, suburban or backcountry), I used to walk by the alfalfa fields when they got flooded via the irrigation canals. It’s an extremely inefficient and wasteful use of water. They used to grow a lot of thirsty cotton in south Maricopa as well, but prices got so low most of that is gone now. And with all the market garden foods cultivated there, few use efficient drip farming like you see in parts of California.

Yet the sharp population growth in Arizona plays a large role as well. Houses are usually too big and water usage is very wasteful. The Valley is supplied with water by a canal that comes off the Colorado River. It’s not all of what’s used by metro Phoenix, but it’s a big percentage. If the feds cut back more on what AZ gets off the Colorado River (very likely) a huge water crisis will ensue.

Please God let this be an extremely wet monsoon season thoughout the Southwest this year.

Drip irrigation can leave a salt buildup on the surface. Flooding the fields illuminates this. Farmers have little incentive to save water. In the 70’s, the conservation district around Palo Verde convinced the farmers to line their ditches to save water. In turn the irrigation district raised their prices . Water was cheap. The cost was for delivery  Farmers and ranchers generally have first rights to water. While they built the infrastructure, their sons and daughters became the developers. Our generation. Much of what we do. The nomad life. Look at Q. Do people belong in the desert? Sure. It keeps them from overpopulating the forests. Build those mcmansions. Fill them with people. More apartments. Stack them high. The best part of Phoenix is the highway that runs the perimeter. The best thing to come out of Phoenix was Wallace and Ladmo. Perhaps the Earwigs who played between the cartoons. The singer changed his name to Alice.