The January forecast is out. It is too early to panic, but not to early to have this concern duly noted:
With a bad snowpack so far, even a wet spring may not be enough to forestall the fifth consecutive year of below-average runoff on the Rio Grande, according to forecaster Angus Goodbody with the National Water and Climate Center in Portland, Ore.
Interesting tidbit out of California’s San Joaquin Valley:
Pasture owners around Oakdale willing to go without water will be paid for fallowing their land this year, Oakdale Irrigation District directors decided Tuesday.
The water saved by idling fields will be sold to thirsty out-of-county water agencies. OID landowners volunteering for the deal could collect millions in “cash incentives” and funds to pay for conservation practices on their private properties.
The publicly owned irrigation district expects to sell the saved water for a whopping $400 per acre-foot. OID customers have been paying an average of only $4.30 per acre-foot to irrigate, but water-starved farmers elsewhere – like those in Fresno County’s Westlands Water District – apparently are willing to pay 93 times more than that.
This looks like a story about forest health, fire risk, and restoration. And in a way, I guess, it is. But beyond the specifics of the challenges they’re trying to address, the underlying governance issues that the folks at the Rio Grande Water Fund are tackling are the fascinating part:
What McCarthy did next sets her effort apart. Eschewing the traditional politics of forest problems – pointing a finger of blame at state or federal agencies for not doing enough, or pushing for the establishment of yet another government effort – McCarthy began patiently building an entirely new institution to tackle the problem.
Reed Benson has read the CRomnibus, the ginormous federal spending bill approved late last year as Congress was heading out the door, and helpfully digested some of the key water policy bits so the rest of us don’t have to. For the Colorado River, the bill…
allows the Bureau to “fund or participate in pilot projects to increase Colorado River System water in Lake Mead” and Upper Basin federal reservoirs “to address the effects of historic drought conditions.” This authority allows Reclamation to provide grants for certain non-federal projects, or for renewing or implementing existing “water conservation agreements.”
When Congress did Big Things – Boulder Canyon Project Act, circa 1928
A couple of things of note. One is the practical – this seems to provide the necessary legal mumbo jumbo to allow system conservation efforts to proceed, or at least a part of them, at some scale (I reserve the right to revise and extend this – I need to do more reporting on the details and implications here).
Second is governance. One of the interesting questions right now is where the governance comes from as Colorado River Basin folks grapple with the institutional arrangements necessary to take the next steps in providing resilience in water management for the umpty million people and acres of ag trying to figure out how to share the river’s water in an age of scarcity.
There was a time, in the golden age of Reclamation, when the governance derived from acts of Congress. The Boulder Canyon Project Act (1928), the Colorado River Storage Project Act (1956) were examples of Congress doing Big Governance. Stuffing tiny enabling language into a massive must-pass appropriations bill is a stark reminder that governance on this stuff will not be coming from Congress. If we need new institutional arrangements, we’re going to have to build them ourselves.
Elephant Butte Reservoir, the main storage reservoir on the Rio Grande that provides irrigation and municipal water for southern New Mexico, the El Paso, and Juarez areas, starts the new year at just 13 percent capacity, down a hair from last year at this time.
Elephant Butte
Some data points as we ponder a new water year in New Mexico:
Rio Grande, Central Avenue Bridge, Albuquerque, January 2014
Lest our city shrivel and die, we must have more water, we must built a great new aqueduct to the Colorado.
William Mulholland, Los Angeles, 1925, as quoted in Vincent Ostrom’s Water and Politics
Arizona’s superwaterwonk Sharon Megdal on the Colorado River’s “structural deficit”:
We have a problem. Arizona, California and Nevada together use more water than normally flows to us. This is called structural deficit. It’s like living on a budget that regularly exceeds your income.
The piece has lots more in it, a good lay primer on Arizona’s water problems, on which I recommend you click.
Santa Fe’s oft-proclaimed “oldest inhabited home in the U.S.” may not even by the oldest house in Santa Fe, because tree rings!
The building at 215 E. De Vargas St., famously named “the oldest inhabited home in the U.S.” byHarper’s Weekly in 1879, may not even be the oldest in Santa Fe. Tree-ring testing appears to confirm the greater antiquity of the Arthur Boyle House, 650 feet east of the “Oldest House.”
Is there any problem tree rings cannot solve? To learn more, you should definitely buy my (old) book
California, its hand forced in 2014 by a nasty drought, brought its groundwater laws out of the Gold Rush era and into line with nearly every other state in the Union. New York’s Democratic governor banned fracking for natural gas, in large part because of concerns about water pollution.
Kansas debated how to cope with a shrinking Ogallala Aquifer, its main source of irrigation water. Voters in California, Florida, and Maine endorsed new state spending on water conservation, water treatment plants, pollution cleanup, and river restoration. And more than one dozen states, spooked by drought and needing guidance, discussed or submitted new water plans.
Taken together, these actions represent an awakening in the United States that water supplies are not as abundant as once thought. A series of severe droughts in recent years — from Texas in 2011 to the Midwest in 2012 to California today — is the frontline reality of a hotter, drier era that is forcing state leaders to take stock of their water assets and reevaluate laws, regulations, and investment strategies.
More is coming in 2015.
As outlined by Walton, much of the action involves spending on water infrastructure, but there are new planning efforts underway as well:
[S]everal states — Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, and Montana among them — will be finalizing water plans that were introduced in 2014. Both Arkansas and Colorado are proposing multibillion dollar infrastructure projects. In Arkansas’s case, new canals will wean farmers from unsustainable groundwater use. In Colorado, the growing cities of the Front Range are looking to move more water across the continental divide, from the Colorado River Basin.
But even there, as you can see, spending on infrastructure is a big part of the answer.
As usual, Brett’s article is worth a click and full read read.
It was only a quarter of an inch, but boy’s gotta shovel the snow when he has a chance, eh? Happy new year.
cactus snow, New Years’ day, 2015
