Deadpool Diaries: Defining the “Crisis”

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Seven years ago, as I was finishing my book Water is For Fighting Over, I wrote this kicker:

In the end, we need an honest reckoning with the basic problem: there is not enough water for everyone to do everything they want with it, or to use every drop to which they feel legally entitled.

It is frequently said that the Colorado River Basin is in “crisis,” but the detailed nature of that “crisis” is rarely spelled out. It is often framed in terms of the relationship between the river’s supply and growing demand, and illustrated with pictures of the white “bathtub ring” circling the increasingly empty Lake Mead. But when demand rises above supply, and reserves in the basin’s great reservoirs run out, the basin’s water users cannot consume negative water. Someone will have to use less, or stop using altogether. Who is that? In defining the problem, then, we sooner or later have to get specific. When shortages occur, who takes the hit?

This is the point at which the river’s operating rules, and most importantly, the ambiguity about how these rules will be implemented in times of scarcity, become critical. It is also the place at which we can dimly make out the shape of long-term solutions. Without those solutions, the current rules and the physical reality of the system suggest five big risks.

The most immediate risk is Las Vegas. As we have seen, Las Vegas has demonstrated the ability to live within its means, dropping its usage over the first years of the twenty-first century so that it now consumes substantially less than its 300,000 acre-feet per year allocation. But it continues to face a physical risk. As Lake Mead drops, it becomes harder and harder for Las Vegas to get water from its intake pipes, with a clear risk that the reservoir’s level might drop so low that Las Vegas could have a legal entitlement to water that it has no physical way to get to the city.

Las Vegas is taking steps to deal with the problem, building a new intake that is deeper in the reservoir, and a new pumping plant to handle the deeper water. The first phase, the deeper pipe to take the water, opened in 2015. The completion of the pumping plant, by 2020, will eliminate the largest risk in the entire basin, which is a city of 2 million people going dry because its intake pipes are above the water line, sucking air. With a new intake deep within Lake Mead, Las Vegas’s water supply will ironically be transformed from one of the most vulnerable to one of the most secure in the Lower Basin.

The second risk is to Arizona. As Lake Mead continues to drop, and supplies become increasingly constrained, the operating rules require that the major burden falls on Arizona. In return for the Central Arizona Project’s construction, California extracted a legal requirement (enshrined in federal law) that all of Central Arizona’s Colorado River allocation, all 1.5 million acre-feet per year that flow through the big canal to Phoenix and Tucson must be cut off completely before California loses a single drop. Arizona has long viewed subsidized agriculture as a buffer, and it has been banking surplus groundwater as a hedge against such an inevitability. This, too, will be tested.

The third risk is to the states of the Upper Colorado River Basin. Most legal scholars agree that if (when?) the total flow in the river drops because of climate change, the rules enshrined in the Colorado River Compact require the Upper Basin to continue sending 7.5 million acre-feet downstream past Lee’s Ferry each year. If climate change push
comes to shove and there is not enough water to meet that requirement and also supply all the current water use needs in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, those Upper Basin water uses must be cut to meet the Lee’s Ferry delivery requirement.

The fourth risk is the long-festering problem of Native American communities’ rights to water. Unresolved, this uncertainty leaves these communities without the water they need to prosper, and it also leaves a cloud of uncertainty over other water users.

The fifth risk always remains the delta and, more broadly, the environment. The operating rules have long left environmental flows entirely out of the picture, and it is only slowly and at great pain and expense that water has been carved out to bring the environment back.

I’d say that, with only a few minor tweaks, it holds up pretty well!

Deadpool Diaries: On California and our moral obligation to share the burden of climate change

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abandoned boat at Lake Mead

Deadpool lies behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance

Brad Udall gave a talk in 2013 that became foundational to my thinking about solving the challenge of life with a shrinking Colorado River. Here’s how I described it in my book Water is For Fighting Over:

Udall distinguished between the “reality of the public” and the “reality of the water community,” describing a world in which regular folks have no clue about things water professionals obsess over—things like Article III(d) and the Colorado River Basin Storage Project Act and the “doctrine of prior appropriation.” Udall’s “public” is a community of people who just want to turn on the tap and have the water come out. But they have some basic notions of fairness and good sense, imagining that the policies underlying our attempt to supply that water will consider questions of equity, sound economics, and the environment. Water-management actions that violate those notions will, to quote Udall, “violate the public’s sense of ‘rightness.’”

An adaptation of Brad’s thoughts were the original closer in my op-ed in today’s New York Times. We ended up cutting the paragraph because the piece was far too long, but the idea is at the heart of the thing.

I argue that California’s defense of what it understands to be its priority on the Colorado River is an attempt to push the burden of the impact of climate change onto its neighbors.

If the water in Lake Mead dips below 1,025 feet above sea level, California’s proposal would cut Arizona’s allocation in half, but California’s share, which is already larger, would be cut only 17 percent. That would mean central Arizona’s cities, farms and Native American communities would suffer, while California’s farmers in the large desert agricultural empire of the Imperial Valley — by far the region’s largest agricultural water user — would receive more water from Lake Mead than the entire state of Arizona….

Many Native American communities in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California that were left out when the water subsidies were handed out in the 20th century deserve a much bigger share of the river than they have received. California’s intransigence is making it harder to meet that legal and moral challenge.

The fish, birds and vegetation of the Colorado River also need water to survive. Collaboration among all seven basin states has, over the last decade, returned a modest supply to once-dry stretches of the river’s bed. California’s intransigence makes that harder, too….

If we approach the challenge with a sense of fairness and shared sacrifice it will be possible to save the West that we know and love. But this can only happen if California joins in, rather than trying to hoard the water for itself.

Seminar Today (Feb. 22, 2023): Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities

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Heather Tanana and Anne Castle will be talking about the Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities project at today (Feb. 22, 2023 – noon Arizona time) at the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center seminar series – over the Zoom!

Signup info here.

Access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right. As highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, basic water and sanitation services are critical to public health and economic development. The federal government has treaty and trust responsibilities to promote the general welfare of Tribes. Although federal programs exist to support water-related projects in Indian country, these programs historically have been underfunded. As a result, many Native American households remain without access to clean drinking water or adequate sanitation.

As we wring our hands about communities that currently have water but might have less (Google “Deadpool Diaries”) it is important to remember that many Native American communities never got water in the first place – left out of the federal spending bonanza that brought water to non-Indian communities.

The peculiar economics of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District

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Pinto beans, Lemitar red chile, and bait in Albuquerque’s South Valley

I was talking to a friend last week about the work Bob Berrens and I are doing for our new book on the origin stories of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

I’m deep into a chapter on the failed 1920s efforts at tobacco farming (I’ve told that story before here), and we were talking about the failure when my friend asserted that, despite the failure of tobacco, “agricultural production is a significant contributor to the local economy”.

When I pointed out that, according to the relevant government measures, net income from farming (revenue from the stuff farmers sell minus the cost to grow it) is generally negative, it gave my friend pause.

Getting defensive, my friend thrashed around a bit for reasons for the whole net negative income thing – high input costs, low crop prices, competition from other agricultural regions. But the more we talked, the more my friend came to realize that things like “net cash farm income” are maybe the wrong measure for the societal benefit we’re talking about.

I was scribbling as fast as I can, so don’t take this as a literal verbatim quote of my friend’s thoughts, but I think this roughly captures the trajectory of their thinking:

The non-market values of agriculture in the Middle Rio Grande are numerous and include environmental, social, cultural, and recreational benefits that are not captured by traditional market-based measures of economic activity. Some examples of non-market values of agriculture in the region include:

  1. Environmental benefits: Agriculture in the Middle Rio Grande can provide a range of environmental benefits, including the maintenance of soil health and fertility, the preservation of local biodiversity, and the sequestration of carbon. Additionally, the preservation of agricultural land can help to reduce the risk of soil erosion, improve water quality, and protect natural habitats.
  2. Social benefits: Agriculture is deeply ingrained in the social fabric of many communities in the Middle Rio Grande. It provides a sense of place and identity, and can foster social cohesion and community engagement. Additionally, agriculture can provide opportunities for education and skill-building, particularly for youth and marginalized populations.
  3. Cultural benefits: Agriculture is an important part of the cultural heritage of the Middle Rio Grande, particularly through the practice of acequia irrigation, which has been used in the region for centuries. The preservation of traditional agricultural practices can help to maintain cultural diversity and identity, as well as promote intergenerational knowledge transfer.
  4. Recreational benefits: The agricultural landscape of the Middle Rio Grande can also provide recreational opportunities for residents and visitors. This includes activities such as hiking, birdwatching, and wildlife viewing, as well as agro-tourism and farm-to-table experiences.

These non-market values are an important aspect of agriculture in the Middle Rio Grande, and they should be taken into consideration when assessing the broader social and ecological impacts of the agricultural sector. By recognizing and valuing these non-market benefits, policymakers and stakeholders can work to ensure that the region’s agricultural practices are sustainable and equitable, and that they support the long-term health and well-being of local communities and ecosystems.

I think my friend’s on to something.

Deadpool Diaries: The chance of deadpool declines

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A wrecked speedboat on the shore of Lake Mead.

Lake Mead’s structural deficit.

First the bad news from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s mid-February forecast – this year’s runoff into Flaming Gorge, which is at record low thanks to Drought Response Operations Agreement releases to prop up Lake Powell, is forecast to be below average this year, at 86 percent of average. At some point we’ve gotta refill this hole.

But the Lake Powell forecast continues to hover well above the “average” line, currently sitting at 117 percent.

Reclamation’s latest 24-month study “most probable” shows Powell bouncing back to above elevation 3,550. In the “olden days” (like, last year?) 3,550 would have been awful, but in the midst of our current crisis management fire drill it looks pretty good.

Mead stays awful in the current “most probable”, ending the water year at elevation1,034, another 10 feet below current levels, which should be enough for photojournalists to find some fresh wrecked pleasure boats, or possibly mob hits.

Under the “min probable”, Powell ends the water year at 3,544 and Mead ends at 1,021.

To help frame the current discussions, here’s the hypothetical Lower Basin cuts under the six-state and California SEIS proposals under elevations in the min probable forecast:

cuts, by state, at Mead elevation 1,020-1,025 6-state proposal California proposal
California 1,424,000 750,000
Arizona 1,252,000 1,568,000
Nevada 67,000 82,000
total 2,743,000 2,400,000

 

As always, a big thanks to Inkstain supporters who help make this possible.

 

Tax Breaks and Water Conservation Disincentives in New Mexico

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As we try to adapt to climate change, understanding how our changing hydrology funnels through legal filters will be crucial.

That’s why the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center funded this terrific piece of work by UNM Water Resources Program student Annalise Porter: New Mexico’s Greenbelt Law: Disincentivizing Water Conservation Through Agricultural Tax Breaks, just out in the Natural Resources Journal, a law journal.

Annalise studied the history of New Mexico’s greenbelt law, which provides substantial tax breaks for land deemed “agricultural”. The intent of the 1967 law, as the New Mexico Supreme Court noted in a 1980 decision, was the protection of subsistence farming against the impacts of rising property values and therefore rising taxes:

It is clear that the legislative intent behind this special method of property tax valuation is to aid the small subsistence farmers in our state.

In practice, today in the greater Albuquerque metro area the law enables vast swaths of lovely green space around affluent people’s homes across Albuquerque’s valley floor. Annalise estimated some 11,000 acre feet per year of consumptive use on parcels irrigated under the agricultural tax exemption.

To be clear, not all of the land and water is supporting green space for the affluent. There’s land in Annalise’s inventory that clearly looks like traditional farming. But a huge fraction of the land is located in Albuquerque’s most affluent – and greenest – valley communities, places that are home to very little commercial or subsistence farming.

To also be clear, green space is of significant non-market value! But as climate change reduces our available water supply, our continuing insistence on funneling climate-changed hydrology through antiquated laws, and our continued resistance to changing them, bears scrutiny.

Co-authors are Bob Berrens, UNM Economics and former Water Resources Program director, and myself. Annalise did all the actual hard work!

Deadpool Diaries: Ignore this post about the latest Colorado River runoff forecast

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CBRFC forecast: 1.4 million acre feet above median inflow to Lake Powell

The Feb.1 numbers from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center look good – Lake Powell inflow 1.4 million acre feet above the median.

We’ve got a lot of winter left, so definitely too early to make big plans to, for example, cut Colorado River water use deeply to avoid deadpool or, alternatively, decide that we don’t need to cut Colorado River water use deeply to avoid deadpool.

This morning’s @jfleck rabbit hole contained the numbers for the last decade and a bit from the CBRFC.

On average, the forecast is pretty much spot on. But the distribution is large. For the Polyannas in the audience, in 2019 actual flow into Lake Powell was 5 million acre feet above the Feb. 1 forecast. For the Cassandras, in 2012 it dropped by 3.1 million acre feet.

In eight of the last dozen years, actual flow was lower than the Feb. 1 forecast. In the other four, it was higher.

year Feb. 1 forecast final change
2011 9,000 11,500 2,500
2012 5,050 1,910 -3,140
2013 3,850 2,560 -1,290
2014 7,250 6,920 -330
2015 5,200 6,710 1,510
2016 6,400 6,630 230
2017 9,600 8,170 -1,430
2018 3,900 2,600 -1,300
2019 5,300 10,400 5,100
2020 5,700 3,760 -1,940
2021 3,300 1,850 -1,450
2022 5,000 3,750 -1,250
mean 5,796 5,563 -233
median 5,250 5,195 -1,270

 

The CBRFC folks will be explaining the current state of the basin at their monthly forecast webinar this morning (Feb. 7, 2023, 10 a.m. MT, registration stuff here.)

As always, a huge thanks to Inkstain’s supporters, if you find this stuff useful you can help support the blog here.

 

Large language models, Homer (Simpson) and my writer’s brain

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a Homeric odyssey

Like everyone else of a certain sort (on line and writerly), I’ve been playing with ChatGPT.

It’s a “large language model”, trained on a monstrous corpus of text, that basically projects (based on stuff people have said before) what might come next given a sequence of text. It doesn’t really “understand” it in a way that we understand “understanding”, but it’s pretty good at this point in saying stuff that sounds plausible and is sometimes useful.

As a writer, I’m fascinated by the mystery of “what comes next” out of my own writer’s brain.

Me:

What is the connection between Homer’s Odyssey and Homer Simpson?

ChatGPT:

Homer Simpson, the main character in the popular American animated sitcom “The Simpsons,” is named after the ancient Greek poet Homer, who wrote the epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” The name “Homer” is a reference to the epic poet, and the character’s traits and experiences often reflect elements from the stories in the “Odyssey.”

That’s pretty good stuff! I have no idea if it’s true or not – sounds like bullshit to me. One of the things we’ve learned in playing with ChatGPT is that large language models are superb bullshitters. I suppose I could Google it.

The fun thing for me as a writer is the “Holy moly, where did that come from?” feeling I sometimes get when I’m sitting at a keyboard and my fingers are flying.

When the work is flowing (which is often, I’m not one of those suffering “Woe writing is hard!” writers), my “writer’s brain” is like a playful, faithful golden retriever finding great sticks for me. I smile and pat it on the head and type up the stick, not much caring how the dog found it or where the next one is coming from.

Sometimes the sticks are weird and misshapen, but I don’t care because my dog brought them to me and they are therefore lovely by default!

Wikipedia and the large language model golden retriever that is my writer’s brain

The weird thing about this is that the my brain/golden retriever distinction is really sometimes how it feels. Like, “Where did that come from?” It’s not some muse or spiritual force. It’s like a pet dog! Which is why playing with large language models is so intriguing. I don’t usually have access to someone else’s golden retriever.

I have no idea if this is right, but as I’m in the business of trafficking in metaphor, I’ll cling to it for at least a moment. Let’s go through an example.

Consider Monday’s post on Homer Simpson, the Odyssey, and the difficulty of solving the Colorado River’s problems.

I’d planned to spend the morning working on my new Rio Grande book, but my golden retriever writer’s brain was feeling playful, and I agreed to take it for a walk.

I wanted to do a quick primer for readers about what’s up on the River. The premise was that there’s a bunch of stuff going on simultaneously, which makes solving the Colorado River’s problem a capacity challenge, and the first stick the dog brought me was the “walk and chew gum at the same time” cliche. That’s a nearby stick, I probably could have found it by myself. But I wanted another stick – I love to take a cliche and twist it in a way that makes you notice it. The golden retriever without evening stopping for a pat on the head and a “good dog” zoomed out and returned with Homer’s Odyssey – a long story, recited in an oral tradition, which is hard to do while you’re chewing gum.

Good dog!

This is the fun part. I have no idea where stuff like that comes from! I just smile and type. But the large language model probability thing gives me a nice mental model for what my writer’s brain is up to, sorting through its neural network for “the sort of thing that might come next.”

When my dog brings me a stick, I like to check it out, and my understanding of stuff like ancient Greece, like much of the material I pretend to know, is modest. So I went to the Google. Which gave me, right out of the box, the “Homer’s Odyssey” episode of the Simpsons! (Google’s a good dog – not up to the standards of my golden retriever, you really have to tell it where to look for sticks, but a good dog.)

The “truth” part is the sort of thing ChatGPT isn’t very good at yet – excellent at stringing together words that might reasonably follow, that sound plausible, but not so good about knowing if the words are right. The old journalist’s cliche, “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out” applies to ChatGPT and also my dog’s sticks. The stodgy, plodding Google search is great to have at moments like this.

The meat of the post was straightforward – short term EIS, longer term EIS, etc. – but the real fun was yet to come.

In search of a Homer Simpson kicker, my golden retriever writer brain somehow rummaged up the old 2013 Eric Kuhn/Dave Kanzer* Homer Simpson Colorado River Stress Test CRWUA slide! Again, I’m in admiration of my dog’s fetching skills, like where the hell did you find that?

* I tried calling Eric to confirm, couldn’t reach him, but one of the sticks my retriever fetched was about Dave having something to do with that slide. (Some stuff I can’t Google and have to call Eric.)

** Eric called back. DK was, in fact, instrumental in the Homer Simpson Stress Test Slide, one of the great contributions to the 21st century Colorado River canon.

Deadpool Diaries: The numbers in the states’ two proposals

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states’ proposal for Colorado River cuts. Lake Mead elevation along the x axis, millions of acre feet of cuts along the y axis

Getting ready for an interview this morning with Mark Brodie at KJZZ (waving at my Phoenix friends!) I put together a table to make it easier to compare the six-state proposal submitted Monday to reduce Lower Colorado River Basin water use, and the California proposal submitted yesterday (Tues. 1/31/23).

Perhaps worth sharing here? “Elevation” is Lake Mead elevation, the numbers are million acre feet of total cuts.

Two keys to note.

First, despite big disagreements about how to approach this, we have unanimity among all seven states that very deep cuts in Lower Basin water use are needed. At the lowest Lake Mead elevations, the numbers are similar.

The difference is in timing. California’s cuts don’t kick in until later – essentially a gamble on good hydrology once again helping us avoid conflict by letting us use more water in the short term.

The six-state proposal says “go big” any time Mead drops below 1,050. The California proposal doesn’t start “going big” until 1,025.

The six-state proposal yanks the bandaid off now.

Under the current “most probable forecast” for the coming year, we’d end up in 2024 with:

  • Six state proposal: 3,168 million acre feet in cuts
  • California proposal: 2,188 million acre feet in cuts
Tier Elevation 6-state California
Tier 0 1090 1,784 1,241
Tier 1 1075 2,156 1,613
Tier 2a 1,050 2,918 1,721
Tier 2b 1045 2,918 2,013
Tier 2c 1040 2,918 2,071
Tier 2d 1035 2,918 2,129
Tier 2e 1030 3,168 2,188
Tier 3a 1025 3,168 2,525
Tier 3b 1020 3,368 2,675
Tier 3c 1015 3,368 2,875
1,010 3,368 3,125
1,005 3,368 3,325

There are other differences too – huge disagreements on how to approach the allocation of the cuts! No time for that this morning, I’ve a book to write, but I hope to get back to that in the next few days, stay tuned.

As always, if you find this content useful, be sure to hit the “like” button, it really helps the channel! (There’s not really a like button, that’s just what YouTubers say, it’s a family joke after I started teaching my classes over Zoom back in the pandemic.)