Record low flows on the Gila River in New Mexico
Another of my attempts to visualize data from this remarkably bad water year in New Mexico. The cloud of gray lines is flow at the Gila gauge as the river leaves its headwaters mountains in southwestern New Mexico, one line for each year. The red line is this year – significantly lower than in any of the 89 years of record.
(Code here, modified to plot a log scale on the y axis to make it easier to visualize the low flows.)
San Luis People’s Ditch, May 2018
I took the long way home from a meeting in Alamos, Colorado, yesterday to make a pilgrimage to San Luis.
In the Culebra Valley of Colorado in the high country near the New Mexico border, San Luis lays claim to being the oldest town in Colorado, settled by the descendants of Spanish immigrant families. Native erasure notwithstanding, it’s an important claim and an important place. The San Luis People’s Ditch (above) stakes its water rights claim toApril, 1852, the oldest continuously irrigated water rights claim in the state of Colorado. 21 cubic feet per second, 1,600 acres, still running yesterday despite a vicious drought.
Rio Grande at Interstate 40, Albuquerque, May 21, 2018
I stopped on the Gail Ryba Bridge over the Rio Grande this morning, the bike bridge adjacent to Interstate 40 that offers one of the great views of our river. The morning light was lovely, I saw a couple of egrets in the ditch down below. I love this place.
Flows right now are stable at a bit more than 500 cfs at the gauge just downstream from here. At this point essentially all that water is human water ops. With a terrible snowpack this winter and farm water use to our north in Colorado, the river’s natural flow probably wouldn’t be enough to reach this spot were it not for agricultural water releases by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District from El Vado Reservoir, up on the Rio Chama.
This can’t last all summer, and absent a great summer rainy season and/or some creative juggling by the water agencies to stretch out their supplies, this could very well be a view of a dry riverbed by mid-July.
Putting together a talk for our (UNM’s) big water conference tomorrow, I had occasion to fall completely in love with this Arthur Rothstein photo from his 1936 trip through New Mexico for the Farm Service Administration:
“Opening the gate that allows water to flow into the field from irrigation ditch. New Mexico”
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman
Catching up after a busy final week of the semester at the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, I had time today to sit down and and think through the implications of this remarkable Bureau of Reclamation press release.
It did a great job of achieving one of the primary goals of a news release, capturing a news cycle with the message of increasing risk of a “shortage” declaration by 2020, which would impose water delivery cutbacks on Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico. (“Mexico, 2 U.S. states could see Colorado River cutback in 2020” was a common takeaway.)
But that news peg – a slight increase in the latest Bureau analysis of a risk we already knew was there – wasn’t really news. We’ve known that since January, and the latest numbers represent only a minor tweak in the direction of increased risk. The real action was in Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman’s use of the “press release” platform to issue a very public call for action.
“We need action and we need it now. We can’t afford to wait for a crisis before we implement drought contingency plans,” said Reclamation Commissioner Burman. “We all—states, tribes, water districts, non-governmental organizations—have an obligation and responsibility to work together to meet the needs of over 40 million people who depend on reliable water and power from the Colorado River. I’m calling on the Colorado River basin states to put real – and effective – drought contingency plans in place before the end of this year.”
Henry Brean did a nice job of capturing the key point:
The head the federal agency that oversees the Colorado River has a message for state water managers: The outlook is bleak, so quit squabbling and get back to work.
In a pointed message Wednesday, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman said drought and low flows continue on the Colorado with no end in sight, so it’s up to those who rely on the river to stave off a coming crisis.
This was not a traditional press release. It was more akin to what in linguistic philosophy they call “performative utterances”, where the act of saying a word also carries out the action the word describes. “I apologize” is the most memorable example. The news release is kinda like this. It doesn’t describe Burman’s call to action. It is Burman’s call to action.
And then Burman and her staff did something particularly clever. They got statements of support for early action on a Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan from representatives of each of the seven U.S. Colorado River states. One of the rituals for a reporter in a situation like this is to try to get everyone on the record. Whaddya think, is Burman right, do we need a Drought Contingency Plan right away? Burman and her staff did it for us!
My favorite is John Entsminger from Nevada: “This ongoing drought is a serious situation and Mother Nature does not care about our politics or our schedules. We have a duty to get back to the table and finish the Drought Contingency Plan to protect the people and the environment that rely upon the Colorado River.”
A year-and-a-half ago I wrote that a deal to reduce Colorado River water allocations was “inevitable”. The recent fracas in Arizona over details of such a plan had left me questioning that notion. It’ll be interesting to see how successful this effort by Reclamation is to clearing the logjam and getting a Drought Contingency Plan done.
I went out to the Rio Grande yesterday morning to talk to KOB’s Eddie Garcia about the prospect of a drying Rio Grande through Albuquerque this summer.
The final forecast numbers put this year’s runoff at just 18 percent of the long term average. The flow right now at Embudo, as the Rio Grande is entering New Mexico’s populous middle valleys, is the second lowest it’s ever been at this time of year. Records there go back to 1889 – the oldest USGS gauge in the nation.
It’s not clear yet whether we’ll have complete drying through the Albuquerque reach, but it’s a possibility. The last time that happened – a zero cfs reading at the Central Avenue gauge – was 1977. The last time we’ve been under 30 cfs – which is still a trickle, but for all practical purposes is dry – was 1983.
Days with zero flow, USGS Albuquerque gauge
Our UNM Water Resources Program students used the Gila River in New Mexico for their spring case study projects, so I’ve made it a habit to watch the USGS “Gila near Gila” gauge. Class is finished, but the habit is not.
Flow there dropped below 30 cubic feet per second this evening.
Update: I didn’t do the analysis right. It’s the lowest on record for this point in the year, not the lowest in general.
If I’ve done the analysis right, this is the lowest recorded flow on the Gila – not just for May 9, but the lowest period.
Record low on the Gila
Records go back to 1927.
There’s a rock I keep pushing up a hill. But powerful forces are at work, and the rock keeps slipping my grasp and rolling back down. So I chase it down, and start anew.
I’ve given more than 30 public talks around the western United States since my book came out nearly two years ago, and every time I talk I include a bunch of graphs and data making the same point – water use is going down. Across nearly every geography, water source (surface and ground) or class of users. Water use is going down. And nearly every time, I get a combination of skeptical questions and eager followup from members of the audience on this point, whether the audience is water managers, or academics, or members of a more general public.
Here is no less a luminary than the official Twitter feed of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, arguably the most important federal water agency in the western United States:
As western U.S. water demand grows and water supplies become scarcer, wastewater reuse is becoming an increasingly important water management strategy. https://t.co/d2M9Hcdptj #water #science #wastewater #WasteWaterReuse pic.twitter.com/ahhJvjqfSS
— Reclamation (@usbr) May 7, 2018
BRB, I’m headed back down to catch the rock, in the meantime, via Peter Gleick and Brad Plumer, here’s a graph:
Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 5, 2018
One of the big problems caused by the current breakdown in Colorado River diplomacy is the danger it poses if we have another bad year on the Colorado River.
A new Bureau of Reclamation analysis puts some numbers to the fear – a credible risk that Lake Mead could drop to elevation 1,062 by the end of 2019, just 20 short months away.
This nice chart put together by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, part of Met’s Water Supply Conditions Report (pdf), nicely illustrates what’s been going on in recent years:
Powell inflow, courtesy MWD
There’s a point my friend and book-writing partner Eric Kuhn has been making that shows up nicely in this graph. We’ve had four consecutive decent years. From 2014 to 2017, we have’t been in “drought” (whatever that word even means any more). That string of relatively good years (or at least “not bad years”?) has enabled the 9 million acre foot per year releases that has so exercised the interbasin conflict between the Central Arizona Project and other basin water users. 9 million acre feet per year – well above the Law of the River-mandated 8.23 million acre foot release from Lake Powell – has bought time for negotiations over new management rules to reduce everyone’s demand on the system. But even with those big releases – the Upper Basin from 2014 to this year has delivered 2.3 million acre feet more than the Law of the River requires – Lake Mead has dropped 10 feet.
The bureau’s April “minimum probable water supply forecast” suggests a risk of a 1.2 million acre foot/13 foot drop in Lake Mead in 2019 if the winter of 2018-19 is another bad one. That “what do we do if it’s another bad year” question was lingering in the background of Monday’s meetings in Salt Lake City among and between Upper Basin water managers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and representatives of Arizona.
No one wants to be in the midst of trying to negotiate new rules while Lake Mead water is circling the drain. There are some incentives to laying down a workable framework, a “Drought Contingency Plan” or whatever, this year, before the frenzy.