Never Again Enough: Field Notes from a Drying West

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:




Never Again Enough
Field Notes from a Drying West

By William deBuys


Several miles from Phantom Ranch, Grand Canyon, Arizona, April 2013 -- Down here, at the bottom of the continent’s most spectacular canyon, the Colorado River growls past our sandy beach in a wet monotone. Our group of 24 is one week into a 225-mile, 18-day voyage on inflatable rafts from Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek. We settle in for the night. Above us, the canyon walls part like a pair of maloccluded jaws, and moonlight streams between them, bright enough to read by.

One remarkable feature of the modern Colorado, the great whitewater rollercoaster that carved the Grand Canyon, is that it is a tidal river. Before heading for our sleeping bags, we need to retie our six boats to allow for the ebb.

These days, the tides of the Colorado are not lunar but Phoenician. Yes, I’m talking about Phoenix, Arizona. On this April night, when the air conditioners in America’s least sustainable city merely hum, Glen Canyon Dam, immediately upstream from the canyon, will run about 6,500 cubic feet of water through its turbines every second.

Tomorrow, as the sun begins its daily broiling of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, and the rest of central Arizona, the engineers at Glen Canyon will crank the dam’s maw wider until it sucks down 11,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). That boost in flow will enable its hydroelectric generators to deliver “peaking power” to several million air conditioners and cooling plants in Phoenix’s Valley of the Sun. And the flow of the river will therefore nearly double. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175730/tomgram%3A_william_debuys%2C_goodbye_to_all_that_%28water%29/#more

[Sienna86]

1. Great article

Thanks for helping me discover this website. Fresh water is a finite resource and its scarcity in the west, and other places, is going to hurt. Water rights are a big deal. Every time I hear of someone moving to Phoenix for the warmer weather I think of how they may be affected down the line.

[matthews]

2. Originally places like

Phoenix were full of old people and people with allergies that needed a dry, pollen-free climate. That's why my grandparents went down there in the early 60s. So that they could breath. But within 10 years the Yips and the Yups decided they wanted to live there too, so they went down and started planting grasses and bushes and other plant life. and they had to start diverting water to the desert.

**

Colorado River Water via the Central Arizona Project (CAP)

The next time you turn on the faucet or take a shower, take time to realize that you live in a desert where the average rainfall in the Phoenix valley is less than 9 inches/year but the average person uses 150 gallons of water PER day. So how do we satisfy our “thirst” for water that exceeds our natural supply in the valley?

In 1922, the signing of the Colorado River Compact divided 7 seven states into the Upper Basin (Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado) and Lower Basin (Arizona, Nevada and California) with the intent to divide the Colorado river equally between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. Within 5 months of the signing, all states ratified the agreement except Arizona! It was not until 1944 that Arizona ratified the compact, 22 years later mainly because of allocation issues with California. Arizona continued to dispute allocations until the Supreme Court finalized the allocations in the 1964 decision, Arizona vs. California. Arizona’s current allocation is 2.8 million acre feet / year. The Colorado river drains 244,000 square miles across the seven states that comprise the Upper and Lower Basin states. Because of the dependency of these seven states and Mexico on the Colorado river, historian Norris Hundley, Jr. stated that the Colorado river has been the most litigated, regulated, politicized, and argued-about river in the world.

In light of this history, it is amazing that Senator John McCain, GOP presidential candidate suggested in Aug. 2008, that the 1922 Colorado River Compact be renegotiated due to the population growth in the Lower Basin states. Ouch! That’s one way to lose votes in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Or was it to gain votes in Nevada, Arizona and California! Later, while in Colorado he said he would “never ever” try to take more of Colorado’s water. He found out the meaning of the expression, “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting,”.



http://phoenixwaterfronttalk.com/2009/06/22/water-in-the-desert-phoenix-water-supply/


Of course, that killed off people like my grandfather but people like him are simply collateral damage when it comes to 'progress'.