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The Colorado River is shrinking

sciencemag.org

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Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#71

Post by woolcap »

fooey wrote: post #18
ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

In Southern Utah, which is part of the Mojave Desert, the farmers still doing plain old flood irrigation. It's so staggeringly wasteful it's hard to understand

nit-pick, but only a tiny portion of Utah is in the Mojave desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Desert

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#72

Post by eldaisfish »

krferriter wrote: post #41
ngngngng wrote: post #10

Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country. In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country…

We grow crops in the desert because there is so much sun there that the crops grow faster and to a higher consistent quality, and because there is much fewer pests that damage the plants.

If this is an argument, it is a very poor one and if this is a justification, it is entirely irrelevant.

Deserts have ecosystems that are adapted to life with limited water. Trying to transplant a crop that evolved with plentiful water into an ecosystem with very little is a bad idea. Even worse is the capitalistic incentive to divert natural watercourse to farm in an arid region.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#73

Post by jasode »

Came across a recent 10-minute VICE video about the desert area of Washington County, Utah trying to build a new pipeline to pump water from the Colorado River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWpui1P9cAY

Although the Utah officials are aware that the Colorado River is drying up, they basically justify it saying (paraphrase), "Utah hasn't gotten its fair share yet".

Also as trivia... if you're familiar with the popular Youtube channel "What's Inside", the family lives in St George UT which is the growing city the VICE video is about. The family often mentions the advantages of St. George after recently moving from SLC. (https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatsInside/videos)

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#74

Post by wombatpm »

dogman144 wrote: post #42
avgDev wrote: post #6

I know this may be silly but one reason why I stay in the "Great lakes states" and own property here is because of global warming and my lack of hope that tech/governments/capitalism will solve it before we reach a point of no return during which we will experience massive property and life loss in the US. Only then significant change will occur IMO. There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered b…

It's not silly. I'm sitting in a coastal tech city but with a remote job for cultural reasons, and looking at what's next after this lease and long term. I'm not sure how I want to balance the pragmatism I can execute on with this mobility to move to somewhere tolerable in the midwest (MN comes to mind), vs. a common nihilistic trend that warming will affect everyone*, might as well live where I want to live (not MN…

Having lived in MN I would point out that 90% of Canadians live south of the Twin Cities.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#75

Post by cmrdporcupine »

8note wrote: post #64
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are international treaties with Canada that are supposed to forbid that. But yeah, that remains a worry.

The US imposes treaties, it doesn't follow them, and Canada is a national security threat, so any treaty requirements can be ignored for national security purposes

Yes, hence why I said "remains a worry". Though the treaty is signed between various states on the US side, too, and some US states have interests that compete with others on these matters that might be the one thing that saves us here in Ontario & Quebec.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#77

Post by dv_dt »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58
JohnWhigham wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting all the modern amenities of life while living in the desert is just pure arrogance. I seriously don't know why governments subsidize it.

According to the stats above, modern amenities of life aren't the main consumer of the water: > 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. In 2021, we don't need to grow Alfalfa in the desert. Especially not when it's being exported out of state anyway.

From your perspective and mine yes, but politically one needs a policy that also addresses all the people already involved making their living from that activity.

This is a micro sized problem of the larger scale fractal problem of climate crisis and industrial shifts needed to address it.

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#78

Post by 01100011 »

autokad wrote: post #59
01100011 wrote: post #43

The choice is pretty clear to me. We need a national water grid. Desalinization is great and a piece of the puzzle, but we need a way to distribute water across the country. It could also be leveraged as an energy storage device if we continue to add more reservoirs at various elevations. It's not going to be cheap or easy, but we'd be stupid not to start on it now. The climate changes, and we need to plan for it. Pl…

seems like desalination parried with nuclear and solar power (because desalination is expensive electricity wise) is the solution. most of our problems comes down to energy, to which fusion power will one day solve. we just need some stop gaps.

Why would we desalinate water when there is water already desalinated by nature available for us? Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not against desalination, it just seems crazy to leverage it to supply all of our water shortfall.

Wouldn't a network of canals and pipelines allow the country to be more secure and handle disasters more effectively?

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#79

Post by briga »

Koshkin wrote: post #54
briga wrote: post #29

Just like we fight deforestation by planting trees maybe we should fight drought by re-watering our land. It's a massive logistical problem, to be sure, but it seems like humans already have a pretty good handle on draining water from the land. They could start by banning lawns and golf courses in the desert. No reason someone living in Phoenix needs a verdant green lawn. Maybe place some limits on unsustainable agri…

But "Muh house!" https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/files/2017/08/Sc...

Yeaaaaaah, if cities could stop doing that endless unsustainable sprawl thing that would be great

Re: The Colorado River is shrinking

#80

Post by maxerickson »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
giantg2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, let's ignore the simple solution - stop consuming so much water" I agree that it's a demand-side issue, but the solutions are not "simple".

There are no solutions. Those who can will use what they can, those who can't will be left high and dry. This is expected when supply rapidly declines when demand remains constant or increases over time. The watershed will change faster than human behavior and policy will adapt. There was already not enough water for the rights distributed in the 1922 Colorado River Compact [1]: > The delegates figured allocations on…

Desalination is already cheap enough to farm with (for some crops anyway) and energy will continue to get cheaper.
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