Without significant, permanent cuts to water use in the Colorado River basin, both Lake Powell and Lake Mead may be headed for collapse.
“We haven’t acted fast enough,” said lead author Kevin Wheeler, a water policy consultant and fellow with Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. “We’re in a position that all of the reaction has to be conservation by necessity.”
One of many possible solutions the team identified looked at what would happen to the reservoirs if the Upper Basin states of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico agreed to give up water development ambitions, while the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada, along with northwest Mexico, agreed to reductions.
Wheeler acknowledged, however, that the paper used a model that assumed a continuation of average river flows since 2000, not a potentially catastrophic scenario such as a series of back-to-back, low-runoff years like the basin saw in 2002, 2020 and 2021.More water cuts ahead . Touton added that the federal government is prepared to make the reductions if the states cannot agree to a plan.to Reclamation outlining a five-point plan that could limit water use through considering programs to increase water monitoring and efficiency, to pay farmers who voluntarily agree not to irrigate in certain years, and to develop an updated drought response plan.
Frankel added that if the Upper Basin is unwilling to make immediate reductions, it should at least offer to take future projects likeThe paper in Science noted that any additional consumptive uses in the Upper Basin will decrease inflows into Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
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