While Politicians Focus on Taxes and Spending, Nature is Threatening Economic Growth Dependent Upon the Colorado River

Sorry Conservatives, Only Concerted Governmental Action Will Prevent Economic Disaster

The mantra of conservatives is that government is the problem, not the solution.  This attitude will lead to inaction by government to prevent major problems from turning into economic disasters.  Case in point, the Colorado River.  Draught and increased demand for Colorado River water is causing a severe drop in the river flow and the Lake Mead reservoir.  The results are not going to be pretty.

These new realities are forcing a profound reassessment of how the 1,450-mile Colorado, the Southwest’s only major river, can continue to slake the thirst of one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions. Agriculture, from California’s Imperial Valley to Wyoming’s cattle herds, soaks up about three-quarters of its water, and produces 15 percent of the nation’s food. But 40 million people also depend on the river and its tributaries, and their numbers are rising rapidly.

The labyrinthine rules by which the seven Colorado states share the river’s water are rife with potential points of conflict. And while some states have made huge strides in conserving water — and even reducing the amount they consume — they have yet to chart a united path through shortages that could last years or even decades.

So what happens when there is a lack of water?  Bad things.  Costly things.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

To help the Colorado, federal authorities this year will for the first time reduce the water flow into Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, created by Hoover Dam.

Yes, that is ring around the collar of Lake Mead from lowering water levels.  And what if it goes dry?

“If Lake Mead goes below elevation 1,000” — 1,000 feet above sea level — “we lose any capacity to pump water to serve the municipal needs of seven in 10 people in the state of Nevada,” said John Entsminger, the senior deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Since 2008, Mr. Entsminger’s agency has been drilling an $817 million tunnel under Lake Mead — a third attempt to capture more water as two higher tunnels have become threatened by the lake’s falling level. In September, faced with the prospect that one of the tunnels could run dry before the third one was completed, the authority took emergency measures: still another tunnel, this one to stretch the life of the most threatened intake until construction of the third one is finished.

These new realities are forcing a profound reassessment of how the 1,450-mile Colorado, the Southwest’s only major river, can continue to slake the thirst of one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions. Agriculture, from California’s Imperial Valley to Wyoming’s cattle herds, soaks up about three-quarters of its water, and produces 15 percent of the nation’s food. But 40 million people also depend on the river and its tributaries, and their numbers are rising rapidly.

It’s not that government has not been successful at managing the use of water, consumption of water per person is not the problem, it’s the large number of persons.  The solution, well conservatives would say let nature take care of the problem.  Realists would say a public private partnership is needed to manage the problem.  But that takes will and money.  And much of the west is very conservative.  So nature, do your thing, it may be all the region can hope for.