Colorado River "Solutions" - Desalination, Pumping More Groundwater, Cloud Seeding - Anything But Conserving Water

[hatrack]

The crisis on the Colorado River is simple: The seven Western states that border the essential waterway use more water than it contains. Chronic overuse has drained its two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and a two-decade drought cycle has pushed them to the point of collapse. The dream solution to this crisis is an agreement among all involved to use less water. Such a deal would decide who must reduce consumption, which means asking which cities would ban irrigating lawns and washing cars and which farmers would rip up their fields.

This has proven impossible. The states have been trying to work this out since the last dry spell, in 2022, but talks have ended in frustration and name-calling. The main sticking point is between the “Upper Basin” states led by Colorado and Utah (along with Wyoming and New Mexico) and the “Lower Basin” states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Each side believes the other has a legal and a moral responsibility to cut usage during dry years. The stalemate means the Trump administration must design a schedule of restrictions ahead of a crucial deadline in September. So far, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has balked at resolving the quarrel. Instead, the administration is turning to a far less controversial plan: Throw money at the problem. The Interior Department and Congress are pondering a slew on projects that could increase supply, a reversal of Trump’s zeal for cutting federal grants. The seven state governors have sent Washington a “wish list” of over $50 billion, and several startups have their hands out as well.

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The Interior Department also signed an agreement in early June with San Diego’s water agency that explains how that plant would help. Rather than sending treated seawater inland, states would pay the city to take less from the Colorado River. Arizona stands to lose the most water during drought years, and it would be the most likely to participate in that exchange. But desalination is expensive, requires enormous amounts of electricity, and state-of-the-art industrial technology. The Poseidon facility cost $1 billion, but San Diego has diversified its water portfolio so much that it no longer needs all the water it must purchase from the plant. Trading water could help it offset some of that cost.

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The West teems with companies that have promised miracles, from building a 300-mile pipeline to tapping a hoard of groundwater in Nevada. But perhaps no project has had a longer and more turbulent history than Cadiz, a proposal, almost 30 years old, to export groundwater from an aquifer in the Mojave Desert. This has drawn vicious opposition from environmentalists and the late California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who called it a “grave threat” to the desert. Cadiz experienced several setbacks during the Biden administration: It lost a federal permit, California ended its pipeline lease, Arizona declined to support it, and its stock price fell to almost zero. But Susan Kennedy, its CEO, says Cadiz is flowing again with a funding agreement from the Interior Department to study exchanges between Cadiz and the Colorado River.

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https://grist.org/solutions/the-colorado-river-is-vanishing-and-the-fixes-are-getting-weird/

[NNadir]

1. Well in terms of "grave threats" to the Mohave, I believe the plan...

...is to convert the whole thing into an industrial park for solar energy anyway.

In any case there really isn't any pathway to "conserving" our way out of this without large economic consequences. These consequences will be realized with or without an "agreement."

[Envirogal]

2. Population is always the problem

Too much human migration to these very dry regions and the strains of meeting these needs just exasperates the problem. More air conditioning leads to more emissions.

If policy and business leaders can’t focus on more conservation efforts, nature is eventually going to make that decision for them. And the residents are going to have to do with less if they choose to live there. The proposed solutions are all short term and degrade the environment long term. The river is going to dry out if they can’t get with reality and make everyone take the haircut. Perhaps growing cotton and golf courses in a desert should be rethought.

Growth is a Ponzi scheme that only survives by more growth. Without a solid foundation feeding the system, it will eventual collapse because nothing real holds it together. Population growth has given the false notion of economic “success” but it’s the very thing that will
Collapse the system due to the demands on it.

Every policy leader and engineer needs take a “systems thinking” course to learn how nature works and lean in to that rather than the human hubris of thinking you can one up nature. Nature has 4 billion years of R&D so it would be best to start there. Every economic development agency needs to start figuring out how to be satisfied with their situation instead of adding people or business (new development) as the only solution.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. "Stein's Law"

❝If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.❞ — Herbert Stein