New location of Las Vegas Marina on Lake Mead. Note the bathtub ring in the background. Photo courtesy National Park Service

When I was in Vegas in April, I heard several talks on the way folks on Lake Mead engage in a practice they call “chasing water”. As the water storage reservoir recedes, the Park Service extends boat ramps farther and farther. The owners of the Las Vegas Marina, which used to sit up in Las Vegas Wash, did a series of incremental moves of their infrastructure until the finally had to give up the site entirely and move miles around the lake to a new site that is not as vulnerable to the lake’s rise and fall. Most notably, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is building a massive new intake pipe deeper in the lake for Las Vegas’s water supply: the “third straw”.

I was reminded of that today by a New York Times story about how this is done on the Dead Sea, where dropping water level is a way of life:

“We chase after the water with steps,” said Yusef Matari, a lifeguard at the private beach, Neve Midbar, or Desert Oasis. Mr. Matari has been working in the area for 20 years. “It changes every month,” he said. “There is no permanent shore.”

(h/t Robert Osborne for pointing out the Dead Sea story)

You would think that on the over-appropriated Lower Colorado River, downstream from dwindling Lake Mead, getting by on less water would be a good thing. But this little news blurb from KXO radio in El Centro, in California’s Imperial Valley, suggests otherwise.

The problem, apparently, is that the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest water rights owner in the West (I think) is using less than its full allotment this year. The extra water that it doesn’t use goes to San Diego and Los Angeles:

Last year, the District was 135,000 acre feet under. That water went to the MWD. The under usage is being blamed on the poor agricultural economy resulting in fewer acreage planted. Officials say it would be in the IID’s best interest to use the water reasonably and beneficially, whether it be in agriculture or otherwise.

Michael Campana prodded me a bit this morning on Waterwired regarding a discussion happening here and elsewhere about the possibility of abandoning Phoenix as the place runs out of water. It’s a strong meme, and it comes up frequently among those who recognize the fragile nature of cities of the desert southwest as growth-fueled water demand rises while climate change appears likely to reduce future supply.

Colorado River Supply and Demand, courtesy USBR

This applies across the southwest, and I don’t mean to single out Phoenix. It’s just a handy example of a big problem, which you can see here in a nutshell (thanks to Terry Fulp at the USBR for sharing the latest version of this graph). You can imagine the trend lines continuing in their respective directions, and Phoenix drying up and being abandoned, dust bowl style.

As I explained over in the comments at Michael’s, here is why I think that is not likely to happen, and what interests me about the current discussion of alternative paths forward.

If one quantifies all the water there is available to the lower basin states, and looks at how that water is now being used, one can a number of solutions short of shutting Phoenix (or Las Vegas, Nev., or Albuquerque) down. We know, for example, that Phoenix could consume far less water per capita. There could be a major shift of water from ag to urban users in Arizona and the rest of the West. We could pursue coastal desalination, freeing up Colorado River water. These things are all too expensive and/or politically painful now to contemplate, but they are far less expensive and politically painful than abandoning Phoenix etc. There will reach a crossover point on my hypothetical cost/pain curve where these solutions, or steps like them, will be implemented.

The question I’m thinking hard about is what the political/policy/institutional/engineering framework looks like that we’ll need to have in place to sensibly handle the transition when we hit that point on the pain curve.

update: An eagle-eyed friend points out that when I grabbed this from the original PowerPoint slide, I clipped off the X and Y axis legends. That’s time on the X axis – 1920ish to 2006, and millions of acre feet on the Y axis.

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‘Cause I love the old pictures, and since it came up in the comments. From the Calisphere archives, Imperial Dam, the beginning of the end of the Colorado River, under construction, circa 1938:

Imperial Dam, 1938, via Calisphere

I report without comment reports of alligators in the Colorado River (Palisade is in western Colorado, just upstream from Grand Junction):

Wednesday, a group of kids playing near the water at Riverbend Park raised the alarm when they say they spotted an alligator on the bank. They say their parents didn’t believe them, but a bystander did.

“Everybody thought we were crazy. These ladies said we must be blind or seeing things. But this guy saw it too and he saw it go into the water. And he was trying to tell everyone we weren’t being crazy. We really did see it,” says Josie Brumfield.