For now, a Lake Mead “shortage” is off the table

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The booming Rocky Mountain snowpack has eliminated the risk of a formal Lake Mead “shortage” declaration in 2020, and has substantially reduced the risk in 2021, according to the latest Bureau of Reclamation 24-month study. More importantly, in my view, is the reduction of a longer term risk of a legal battle over the Upper Basin’s Mexican Treaty delivery obligation.

The current forecast calls for Mead ending 2019 at elevation 1,080, five feet above the threshold at which a set of rules previously developed by state and federal governments would have reduced allocations to Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico. That is more than eight feet higher than the projected elevation just a month ago.

More importantly, the new projections suggest now that there will be another 9 million acre foot release from Lake Powell in 2020, rather than the 7.48maf 2020 release projected just a month ago. The result is a preliminary end-of-2021 Mead forecast 20 feet higher than was expected just a month ago:

Comparison between Lake Mead elevation forecast in February vs. March 2019

 

It’s that shift from a 7.48maf release next year to a projected 9maf release, the result of operating rules in the 2007 Interim Guidelines governing balancing the contents of Mead and Powell, that’s the huge deal here. It means the water users in the Lower Colorado River Basin will continue to get extra water, above and beyond their legally expected 8.23maf releases each year. If this forecast holds, it would mean that since 2011, the Upper Basin would have delivered an excess of at least 9.4 million acre feet, above and beyond the legal requirements of the Colorado River Compact.

A series of 7.48maf releases from Powell – possible under the current operating rules if we were to have really bad Upper Basin hydrology – would have put us into dangerous legal territory, in terms of how the rules governing water delivery obligations under the Mexican treaty are interpreted. One of the basin’s unresolved legal questions is the extent of the Upper Basin’s obligations to deliver half of the water needed to meet the U.S. obligation to deliver 1.5maf per year to Mexico. A series of 7.48maf release years could have forced a legal test of that question, which is one of my “how the legal system could crash” fears.

This year’s snowpack seems to have significantly reduced that risk for the foreseeable future.

What a good water year looks like

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One of the many reasons the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California interests me so much is the way that it integrates much of the complexities of water management in the western United States. By drawing supplies from the Sierra Nevada as well as the Colorado River Basin, it links the two largest arid-west ag-urban water management complexes. It is, for better or worse, a fulcrum.

Right now, it’s on the “better” side of the fulcrum. Met’s latest “Water Supply Conditions Report” is a remarkable thing to behold. First, the Northern Sierra Nevada:

Northern Sierra Nevada, courtesy MWD

Next, the Southern Sierra:

Southern Sierra Nevada, courtesy MWD

And the Colorado River Basin:

Colorado River Basin, courtesy MWD

You can see why Met is feeling the flexibility right now to make the contributions it’s offering to the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan.

Cutting IID Out of the Lower Basin DCP Would Just Continue a Long Tradition in the Colorado River Basin

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By Eric Kuhn

If, as being widely reported, the Colorado River basin states (and the major water agencies that largely dictate what the states do) ultimately decide to proceed with a Lower Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plan that cuts out the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), no one should be surprised.  It’s simply continuing a long, and perhaps successful, tradition of basin governance by running over the “miscreant(s)”.

The tradition started with the ratification of the 1922 Compact and the authorization of the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act (which authorized Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal).  Arizona, led by colorful governor George P. Hunt, opposed the ratification of the compact. So what did the other six states do?  They designed a six-state approval strategy and implemented it through the passage of the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act, which Arizona opposed but could not stop. By the 1940s when the basin’s attention had turned to the Mexican Treaty, Arizona had joined the compact club, ratifying it in 1944.  The outliers were now California and its nominal ally Nevada.  Both states opposed the Senate ratification of the 1944 Treaty. Their fate was the same as Arizona’s in 1928, led by the other five basin states and Texas (the 1944 Treaty includes the lower Rio Grande), the Senate easily ratified the treaty.

In the 1950s as Congress turned its attention to passing the Colorado River Storage and Participating Projects Act (CRSPA authorized Glen Canyon Dam and a bunch of other Upper Basin projects), the states were aligned 6 -1 with California again on the outside (by then Nevada had joined the other five states). The outcome was the same. Congress and the Eisenhower Administration ignored California’s spirited opposition and CRSPA easily passed. Similarly, Arizonans argue that they were forced by California and the other states to accept the Central Arizona Project’s junior status in return for their support for its authorization in 1968.  (The alternate story and actual reality is that Arizona and its CAP boosters understood that the junior status was the logical outcome of Arizona’s 1964 victory in AZ v. CA and put the junior priority on the table upfront before any Congressional debate.)

In 1970 it was the four states of the Upper Division that got to feel the tire tracks.  The subject was the operation of Glen Canyon Dam.  The four upper river states were strenuously opposed to an annual minimum objective release of 8.23 million acre-feet per year because it arguably included an Upper Basin contribution of 750,000 acre-feet per year for Mexico (1/2 of the 1.5 MAF annual treaty delivery). The outcome was eloquently described by legendary New Mexico State Engineer Steve Reynolds as “they (the Lower Basin and Secretary Walter Hickel) crammed it down our #%&@#$ throats!” The obligation of the Upper Basin to Mexico under the 1922 Compact is still an unresolved issue.

Thus, if the rest of the basin decides to move ahead with DCPs without the cooperation and participation of IID, it will continue a long tradition and one that many argue has benefited the basin as a whole. The major difference between the past and now is that in past decisions to overwhelm opposing states or major agencies, the issue was primarily the development of new projects.  Today, with an overused river, it’s about the reallocation of water between those with senior rights (primarily agriculture) and those with junior rights but in need certainty of supply – the large urban centers that use Colorado River water.

In our new book Science be Dammed, John Fleck and I argue that the beauty of the 1922 Compact was that it was a social contract between the faster growing states on the lower river (primarily California) and the slower growing states on the upper river to leave some water in the river for their future development. This allowed the states to cautiously form the coalitions necessary to pass the federal legislation needed to develop the river. As we have seen, for the major decisions there was rarely unanimous agreement. Today, in an era of reallocation of existing supplies, what is needed is a similar social contract between the haves, the rural areas of the basin that rely on agriculture (with senior rights), recreation and a healthy river and the have-nots, the urban centers with mostly junior rights, but with a need for certainty of supply and the political and economic power to overwhelm the rest of the basin. The goal of such a social contract would be to allow the inevitable reallocations, but only if there is a clear and real benefit to the areas-of-origin.

Leaving IID out of the Lower Basin DCP might make sense for a number of good reasons (especially with the great snowpack which reduces the risk faced by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in shouldering the DCP burden without IID’s help), the question policy makers should consider is in the long run (post 2026 for the Colorado River Basin) is such an action going to make it easier or harder to manage conflicts on a shrinking river?

 

 

 

Institutions, shaping landscapes

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Driving between old Mesilla, New Mexico, and the Rio Grande this evening after dinner, Lissa and I saw a bunch of new pecan orchards going in.

We took last minute advantage of university spring break to head south. We spent some time wandering around looking at and thinking about the border, and also driving the roads of the Rio Grande valley floor as it spreads out south of Elephant Butte Reservoir on its way to El Paso and Juarez.

Both things are, in very different ways, examples of the way human institutions shape landscapes on a grand scale. With the new book done, we’re in the calm before the new book storm, and I’ve been thinking back to an idea I’ve had for some time about at thing to write. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but involves the way what economists would call “exogenous forces” shape landscapes.

In the borderlands country, we’ve got the obvious case of a relatively arbitrary decision nearly two centuries ago to draw a line on a map in a particular place and a particular way that gives us this:

El Mesteño Cattle Co., Santa Teresa, New Mexico, USA

On the left is the El Mesteño Cattle Co. The thing in the middle is the U.S. Mexico border, I guess you’d call that a “fence”. Across the fence is El Mesteño’s counterpart in Mexico. It’s a transboundary cattle shipping point, in the middle of the desert.

Landscape, shaped by rules.

The border was more than a little uncomfortable, so Lissa and I dropped back down into the Rio Grande Valley and drove through miles and miles of pecan orchards, landscape shaped by a different set of exogenous forces.

Down a side road through magnificent, lucrative groves, we came upon this:

Mesilla Dam

If you peer through the graffiti, you can see the “USRS 1915”. The U.S. Congress in 1902 passed the Newlands Act, which created the U.S. Reclamation Service (now the Bureau of Reclamation). In the teens, the Reclamation Service built the Rio Grande Project, which controlled flooding and distributed irrigation water to the Mesilla Valley. (The sand, you’re wondering. They turn the river off here over the winter, and haven’t turned it back on yet for spring irrigation season.)

The result today is forests of pecan trees, at this point more than 30,000 acres and growing. Among the exogenous forces shaping this forest is a set of rules that permits groundwater pumping when surface water flows are scarce, as they have been in recent years. Among the countervailing ecosystem pressures, if one could think of them that way, is a lawsuit by Texas, against New Mexico, arguing that the groundwater pumping violates the Rio Grande Compact’s water delivery rules.

countervailing ecosystem pressures here

A couple more threads here.

Pecan acreage here is up, from 24,000 in 2010 to 33,000 in 2018. Alfalfa, meanwhile, is down, from 30,000 acres in 2010 to 15,000 acres in 2018. As surface water grows scarce, groundwater pumping is expensive, pecans are lucrative, alfalfa is not. (This, at least, is my hypothesis. More study is needed.)

pecans

Exogenous forces, shaping landscapes. There’s a story here somewhere.

Southern California’s Metropolitan is prepared to go it alone to make a Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Work

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The Desert Sun’s Janet Wilson has an important update on progress toward a Colorado River water use reduction plan – the poorly named “Drought Contingency Plan”:

With a Monday deadline looming, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has offered to break an impasse on a seven-state Colorado River drought contingency package by contributing necessary water from its own reserves on behalf of the Imperial Irrigation District. It’s not help that IID is seeking, but Metropolitan general manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said he had no choice.

Now that Arizona finally seems to have its act together, the Imperial Irrigation District has become the lone holdout in piecing together the DCP. Behind the scenes, Met has been putting together its own Plan B: a DCP in which Met makes all the California contributions itself rather than having the deal depend on 250,000 acre feet from IID.

This suggests something fascinating. After some real struggles in the early 2000s as Met was forced to reduce its water use as California cut its Colorado River water use from 5-plus million acre feet per year to 4.4 million acre feet per year, Met is now acting like it thinks it has plenty of water – or at least, enough to shoulder the DCP burden without Imperial’s help.

Why Does the Lower Basin Need a Drought Contingency Plan?

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Editor’s note: This is the first post by Eric Kuhn, former general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation district and the co-author, with Inkstain’s John Fleck, of the forthcoming book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, to be published this fall by the University of Arizona Press.

By Eric Kuhn

There has been considerable media attention to the travails within Arizona and California as water agencies work to complete the intra-state agreements so that along with Nevada, the three states of the Colorado River’s Lower Division can implement their drought contingency plan (DCP).  While there has been coverage of the juicy details of the day-to-day negotiations, less attention has been given to the more basic question: Why does the Lower Basin even need a DCP?

The most common answer to this question largely parrots the talking points of the basin water community – since 2000 the basin has experienced an unprecedented drought causing reservoir levels to plunge to unacceptably low levels, therefore we need to be prepared for deep cuts to our water use in the event the drought continues.  While this answer is partially true, it avoids important details that many basin water managers would rather be kept out of the public dialogue.

For nearly a hundred years experts have been warning the basin that ultimately water users in the Lower Basin would be facing a structural deficit of at least 1.2 million acre-feet per year. The math is quite simple:  When the Upper Basin is only making the releases required by the 1922 Compact, inflow to Lake Mead is about 9 million acre-feet per year; 7.5 million for the Lower Basin, a disputed 750,000 for Mexico, and about 750,000 of inflow between Lee Ferry and Lake Mead.  However, uses from Lake Mead, without additional conservation, average about 10.2 million acre-feet per year; 7.5 million for the three Lower Division states, 1.5 million for Mexico, and about 1.2 million acre-feet of reservoir evaporation and system losses. Thus, outflow exceeds inflow by about 1.2 million acre-feet per year, now commonly referred to as the “structural deficit.”

A structural deficit of more than a million acre-feet per year was first predicted by USGS hydrologist Eugene Clyde LaRue in the early 1920s.  In the 1960s Upper Basin water engineer Royce Tipton told Congress that once the Central Arizona Project was operational, the Lower Basin would have a deficit of 1.2 to 1.9 million acre-feet per year depending on the Upper Basin’s actual obligation to Mexico. So why has the basin waited until now to put in place a serious plan for living within its means?

The Colorado River system is primarily managed under what is referred to as the 2007 Interim Guidelines, a set of rules that defines annual releases from Glen Canyon Dam and the deliveries of water from Lake Mead to users in the Lower Basin, including the shortage criteria.  The Interim Guidelines were negotiated by representatives of the basin states and the Secretary of the Interior in the early 2000s.  At the time the negotiations commenced in 2005, the basin was dealing with the impacts of the exceptionally dry 2000-2004 period.  There was no doubt that the Lower Basin needed shortage criteria and there was little debate that the Secretary of the Interior had the authority to impose shortages pursuant to the 1964 decree in AZ v. CA.  The questions were when would shortages be triggered, how big would they be, and because of the Central Arizona Project’s junior status, what level of shortage would Arizona accept before it decided to plunge the basin into litigation rather accept consensus criteria?

The end-product that Secretary Kempthorne signed in early 2007 included many compromises. Even though it was well understood that at least 1.2 million acre-feet of cutbacks would be needed to stabilize Lake Mead during an extended drought (or under the reasonably foreseeable impacts of climate change which were well documented by 2007), the 2007 shortage criteria were limited to 600,000 acre-feet per year, which included participation by Mexico, only about half of what was needed.  Additionally, the 2007 guidelines have a provision that precludes agencies, such as MWD that fund conservation measures and bank the saved water in Lake Mead, from actually using the saved water during a declared shortage.  The provision is a little like suggesting families have emergency saving for an unexpected income loss, but not allowing them to use it when it happens. However, in hindsight, Arizona’s strategy worked. Under the proposed Lower basin DCP, California, even though not required to do so by the 2007 Guidelines, has offered to participate in additional shortages.

In short, the proposed Lower Basin DCP completes the job the 2007 Interim Guidelines process began, but due to politics, could not fully accomplish. Under the proposed Lower Basin DCP, when Lake Mead drops below critical storage levels, the total cutbacks exceed 1.2 million acre-feet, enough to stabilize storage, and entities like MWD that have banked water in Lake Mead, as a drought reserve, will have access to this water when it is truly needed.

What the Lower Basin DCP does not accomplish is to provide a framework to address a continuing decline in the long-term average flow of the river caused by climate change induced aridification. That will have to wait for the next round of negotiations, beginning soon, to replace the 2007 Interim Guidelines with rules that will manage the river after 2026.

Batman Meets the Penguin

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By John Fleck

~ 1966-67(?)

Batman Meets the Penguin, by John Fleck

It was a sunny day in Gotham City. But it was very gloomy in an old all(e)y in the heart of town for the Penguin. Then he got an idea. He was going to rob the bank. But first he had

Batman Meets the Penguin, by John Fleck

to catch Batman and Robin. That was a problem. All they needed was a bait. Then one of the Penguin’s gang got an idea. “Could we catch Boy Wonder(?)” he said. Meanwhile, in Wayne Manor, Bruce and Dick play

Batman Meets the Penguin, by John Fleck

chess. Then Alfred answered the batphone. Dick and Bruce got the information and went down the Batpole. Then they got in the Batmobile and left. The Penguin had been ste(a)ling fish from fish stores. Then the Penguin

Batman Meets the Penguin, by John Fleck

came bursting in to the room and they all started to fight and Batman and Robin won.

THE END

How Arizona abandoned its plan to reduce its Colorado River water use

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I deeply misunderstood central Arizona’s readiness to respond to declining Colorado River supplies. Because I thought Arizona had a plan.

In fact, Arizona did have a plan, a carefully crafted priority system that provided some users with deeply subsidized water in the short run, with the understanding that they would be the first to have supplies curtailed in the long run, as Colorado River water inevitably ran short.

That actually was a pretty good plan – essentially a subsidy from urban to rural water users to provide a resilient cushion on which to land as supplies run short.

When that time came, however, those with the lowest priorities, after taking the subsidies for years, used political power to end-run the plan.

There’s a nice explanation of this in the staff report for the Phoenix City Council’s discussion on tomorrow’s agenda of the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan:

In addition to the existing priority system on the main-stem of the Colorado River, a separate priority system for Colorado River water exists for users of the CAP. Various cities, Indian communities, mining companies, and private water companies in Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal County, including Phoenix, hold federal contracts in perpetuity for the three highest priority classes of water. In priority from highest to lowest, these are Wellton-Mohawk water, Municipal & Industrial and Indian water as co-equal priority, and Non-Indian Agricultural water. These federal contracts guarantee that delivery of water in the CAP occurs in accordance with the established priority system. All other water delivered through the CAP is in a category called Excess water. Excess water is the water not used by long-term federal contract holders in any given year. Long-term contracts for Excess water are not available, but rather are entered into with the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD) on a year-by-year basis. Because the volume and availability of Excess water is based on the orders of higher priority water users in Central Arizona, there is no guarantee that Excess water will be available in any given year. Moreover, this water is subject to the first reductions in deliveries under shortage conditions on the Colorado River. In any given year, Excess water is only available after the water orders of those holding contracts for Wellton-Mohawk, Municipal & Industrial, Indian, and Non-Indian Agricultural water are fulfilled.

For users in Central Arizona, the cost of Colorado River water consists of: (a) a capital charge to repay the federal government for the canal infrastructure; (b) operation, maintenance and replacement (OM&R) costs for the canal works; and (c) the energy costs associated with pumping the Colorado River water uphill from the Colorado River into Central Arizona. At the time of the 2004 Arizona Water Settlement Act, agricultural districts in Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal counties were struggling to maintain their long- term contracts to Non-Indian Agricultural water because they could not afford the full cost of Colorado River water. To solve this problem, the agricultural districts relinquished their higher priority Non-Indian Agricultural contracts to cities and tribes (including Phoenix) in exchange for a right-of-first-refusal to Excess water at a substantially subsidized cost. Agricultural districts do not have a right to Excess water, but rather only a right-of-first-refusal whenever Excess water is available. CAP agricultural districts do not pay capital charges or OM&R, but only pay the energy costs for Excess water when it is available. According to the agreement between the agricultural districts and the CAWCD, this right of first-refusal for Excess water expires in 2030. As a result of this agreement, to date, the agricultural districts have received subsidies through reduced-cost deliveries of Excess water and other concessions valued at nearly $400,000,000. The CAWCD has taxing authority on real property in Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal Counties and uses the taxes raised to pay for the subsidies provided to the agricultural districts.

This seemed like a good plan, until the water began to run short and it actually required the next steps of implementation – using less water.

Under the terms of the DCP, less Colorado River water will be available in Central Arizona and the likely impact is that Excess water will not be available at all because it is lowest in priority and first to be cut. Because the agricultural districts in Central Arizona depend on Excess water, one impact of DCP is the likely elimination of any deliveries of Colorado River water to the agricultural districts. This was an unacceptable result to the Governor’s office and the Board of Directors of CAWCD, so they determined that the loss of water to agricultural districts must be mitigated as a prerequisite to passage of the DCP in the Arizona Legislature.

The Phoenix City Council seems ready to approve their part of the deal tomorrow.

I’ll be talking about the new book this Friday (Feb. 22, 2019) in Albuquerque

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I’m giving the first real talk about the new Eric Kuhn-John Fleck book – Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River – this Friday to colleagues and friends as part of the UNM Economics Department spring seminar series.

In a nutshell:

The fate of nine states across two nations in western North America is tied to mistakes made a century ago in allocating the waters of the Colorado River. Drawing on early hydrologic studies, John Fleck and co-author Eric Kuhn show that scientists warned as early as the 1920s that there was not enough water for the farms and cities boosters wanted to build. The result can be seen today in declining reservoirs in the western United States, as water managers struggle to come to terms with the mistakes of the past. Understanding how those mistakes were made is crucial to understanding our contemporary problems, and offers important lessons in the age of climate change about the importance of seeking out the best science to support the decisions we make. Based on the forthcoming book by Kuhn and Fleck, to be published fall 2019 by the University of Arizona Press.

Eric and I have actually been talking about this stuff for a while, but this is my first attempt since our crazy December-January finish-the-manuscript-blitz to pull it together into a single book talk.

Room 1002 in the UNM Econ building, 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, 2019. Open to all, I’d be ever-so-happy if you’re in town (where by “town” I mean “in and around Albuquerque”) and would like to join us.

“springs of living water would roll forth from these hills”

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Old irrigation works at the mouth of Bluewater Canyon, near Bluewater, New Mexico. In the distance is Tsoodzil, which we today call “Mt. Taylor,” and is sacred to the Navajo.

A story is told in one of the old accounts of the community of Bluewater, New Mexico, about a visit some time around the turn of the last century, by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., to the Mormons trying to scratch out a farming life in this high desert valley west of Grants. The story involved water, conflict, and gunfire. Water was scarce, conflict over it a commonplace. Told of an incident of gunfire in which one of the Mormon settlers’ adversaries lost his life…

the apostle told us to continue to pray and be faithful and a new and durable good reservoir would yet be built; he told us that springs of living water would roll forth from these hills that surround the valley.

The durable reservoir was built, now holding back Bluewater Lake, which didn’t have much water in it when my friend Kathryn Sorensen and I crunched through recently fallen snow yesterday to the dam overlook. The current dam seems to date to the mid-1920s, as near as I can tell, the work of what was then called the Bluewater-Toltec Irrigation District. I made the pilgrimage with Kathryn because her great-great grandfather, Ernest Tietjen, in the mid-1890s, built one of the earliest dams at the site.

It was a hard place then, and remains so today – above 7,000 feet, hard up against the Continental Divide on the Rio Grande side, with sparse and variable runoff from the Zuni Mountains to the south. Native communities have made their lives here for time immemorial, but it’s not a land well suited to settler agriculture, tied to an export economy.

After getting permission from the current owners of the ranch – descendants of the Nielson family, who with Kathryn’s great-great-grandfather Earnest Tietjen built that 1890s dam – we took a lovely walk up Bluewater Canyon.

Bluewater Creek

There was a steady base flow, iced over in places. The trail, such as it was, was muddy as the recent snow melted. Cliff swallow nests, mud-built works of architectural genius, stood empty, waiting for the migrant residents to return to their summer homes.

At the mouth of the canyon, the irrigation headworks was silted up, looking like it hadn’t seen water other than occasional flood flows for many years. The “springs of living water” Apostle Young promised seem not to have arrived. Perhaps the Saints did not pray faithfully enough.

In the little cemetery on the edge of Bluewater, Kathryn found the headstone of her great-great-grandmother, known as “Emma O.”

Pioneer Cemetery, Bluewater, New Mexico

A note on sources:

  • The story of Apostle Young’s visit can be found in Tietjen G. Ernst Albert Tietjen, Missionary and Colonizer. Bountiful, Utah (845 S. Main St., Bountiful 84010): Family History Publishers, 1992. Kathryn brought her copy, it also can be found in the University of New Mexico library.
  • The UNM library also has copies of Frihoff Nielson’s diaries, kindly donated by the Nielson family: Journal of Frihoff Godfrey Nielson: Born 1851 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Died 1935 in Mesa Arizona. The Mormon tradition of keeping diaries has created a remarkable record.
  • The invaluable “New Mexico Geology”, published by the Bureau of Geology, summarizes additional history of the area.