The Colorado River Crisis
Following a recent water theme in my podcasts and newsletters, two panels at the CWA Boulder inspired me to do a podcast on this topic. This newsletter is a summary of sorts.
A quick note before I start
I don’t know nearly enough about the politics, broken agreements, water rights etc. in the Colorado basin – so, I did try to stay away from that. Also, I realized that I don’t have any pictures of the actual Colorado river. Seems like I was more fascinated by the rock formations or dams while I was traveling in the area. Here’s a picture from Milner Pass.
Why is a Swiss woman talking about the Colorado River Crisis?
Well, if you’ve been following me on social media, have read my recent newsletters or listened to my podcasts it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Water has always been an important topic in my life. I live in a very water-rich area of Switzerland. I wrote more about this and the World Water Run I joined here. However, I do feel that we are a bit – or rather very – complacent when it comes to the amount of water that is at our disposal. I wrote more about this here.
It was right before the UN Water Conference that I started thinking about water as a valuable resource a bit more in depth. A bit later I realized that Colorado and the other upper Colorado basin states are in a similar situation to Switzerland. We are at the source of two main European rivers – the Rhine and the Rhone and two other rivers that originate in Switzerland feed into the Danube and the Po rivers. I’m sharing some pictures from the Grimsel Pass continental divide.
So, because the Colorado River crisis had been in the news and because there were two very interesting panels (video links see below) on the topic at the Conference of World Affairs in Boulder Colorado, I decided to find out a bit more about the Colorado River. The aim of my podcast is to learn new things and share them with my listeners. This time around I asked my friend Sharon from Arizona to join me. You can listen to that podcast here [back to edit: the podcast no longer exists - it got deleted when Callin was sold].
Some Colorado River facts
Most water that flows down the Colorado River comes from way up high in the mountains in the upper basin. The upper basin is made up by parts of four US states (Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado). This includes rivers feeding into the Colorado. In the lower basin we find three more US states (Arizona, Nevada and California) and two Mexican ones (Baja California and Sonora). So this topic concerns two countries, nine states, 30 tribes, more than 5 million acres of farmland and 40 million people. I would say it does deserve the publicity it gets.
Now, some other facts really surprised me. The drainage area of the Colorado makes up 1/12 of the lower 48 states and 80-90 percent of it is desert. I mean that’s just asking for trouble right there. Even having traveled in all the basin states I hadn’t realize that they were 80-90 percent desert. When they started talking about acre feet, I had to take a little break. We use m³ and 1 m³ holds exactly 1000 liters - easy! For all my non-American readers an acre foot corresponds to 1,233.48 cubic meters. And one acre foot is 1 ft x 66 ft x 660 ft. We didn’t cover this in the podcast, but I wanted to give you the information in case you do watch the first panel on the subject.
I always find it difficult to just read numbers and not have something to compare them to. Because my European readers should all know the River Rhine, I looked up a few Colorado River facts and put together a table. While the Colorado River is almost twice as long and its basin about 3.5 times that of the Rhine, the discharge (= flow rate) of the Rhine is 4.4 times that of the Colorado. I found this very surprising. Even though I don’t remember the Colorado as this huge river from traveling, just the fact that it created all those canyons made me think of it as this massive water force. For anybody who lives in Switzerland, the Colorado’s discharge is roughly the same as that of the Aare (it originates close to the Grimsel Pass).
What happens to all the water?
Now, as I said I’m not going to go into the politics of it all, but I will put some sources down below if you’re interested. There are so many different water rights disputes that are difficult to grasp if you haven’t followed the entire situation closely.
The lower basin has two reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell (Hoover Dam). They are really low on water at the moment and they are where the lower basin draws a lot of its water from. There are no reservoirs on the Colorado River in the upper basin. So, the crisis is basically that there is less water available than is being used. The use of water is as follows: 70 percent agricultural, 15 percent municipal and 15 percent evaporation. And, the lower basin uses 70 percent and the upper basin 30 percent of the water. Agriculture happens mainly in the lower basin, hence the higher usage rate. Now of course we could just eliminate agriculture, right? Well, we all need food - so that’s not really the answer. The discussion will have to be what to grow and how to grow it.
One speaker stood out
I loved how passionate, yet calm Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk spoke about water and I would like to highlight a few things she said. These are not direct quotes unless marked as such. Water is not something we own; water is something that is given to us by nature, and we can use it. Water is life – essentially. Regina also explained that one of the most important questions to ask is “who is NOT at the table, who’s not being heard”. That really hit home. I was amazed that the tribal sovereigns were not at those tables. It feels insane to me not to talk to the people who have had centuries of experience living in the area. One other thing that I found extremely relevant was that we are in this together as human beings.
If you are an expert, leave the expert at the door and come in as a human being (Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk)
Guest speaker
We then talked a bit about what life is like in Arizona or more specifically in the Sonoran Desert. I’ll mention I few things Sharon said, but I’ll let everyone listen to the podcast to get the full picture.
It’s a very personal topic for Sharon who grew up on a cotton farm. She also mentioned the Central Arizona Project that includes a 36-mile aqueduct. Arizona is an agriculture state, and everybody essentially eats Arizonan water. This means we are all connected. It’s a humanitarian issue. Arizona has junior water rights, which means however the water is divided up or water use restricted - they come last. And “every ounce and gallon of that mighty little river is spoken for”. A lot of family farms are being wiped out already and this is gonna get worse. To Sharon it feels like a way of life is disappearing. If this continues children will soon no longer know where e.g. tomatoes come from.
There needs to be a respect for water and nature. We both agreed that farmers and tribal sovereigns need to be at the table. Farmers are innovationists if we let them, and tribes have been farming on those lands for a long time. We need to honor the past and bring humanity to the table. That also means listening to everyone and finding fair solutions.
Sharon then closed with three things we can do to be more culturally competent (brought back from a workshop in California on generational trauma and I feel like this might have to be an extra podcast).
try to live life in a good way
honor our past and our ancestors
more blessings, less suffering.
I loved that as a final remark. Thanks again to Sharon for joining me.
A little bonus
The distraction I mentioned during the podcast had to do with bridges. This is a list of rail bridges over the Rhine. The logo I chose for my podcast is one of those bridges - the Eglisau Railway Bridge . I walked under it on my long-distance hike from Kreuzlingen to Basel.
Sources CWA
https://www.colorado.edu/cwa/attend/cwa-week/2023-schedule
1. Colorado River Crisis: How Did We Get Here?
2. Colorado River Crisis: Where Do We Go From Here?
https://www.colorado.edu/cwa/sites/default/files/attached-files/cupresentationapril14_0.pdf
https://cwcb.colorado.gov/colorado-river-commissioners-corner
Central Arizona project
https://www.cap-az.com/
Other sources
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre-foot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_over_the_Rhine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglisau_railway_bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_over_the_Rhine
Thanks, Evelyne, for inviting me to lend my voice to your podcast on The Colorado River Crisis. You have summarized it well. It is encouraging to see and hear a world community coming together that realizes that water is and always has been the most critical resource of our lifetime and our children's lifetime. I am rooting for this beautiful relatively small river that runs through my native state to defy all of these political squabbles and do what it does best: rise above them, sink below them and soak through them to continue to give its life's blood to our people, our sovereign tribes and the stunning beauty of Arizona.
I missed the forums on the Colorado River while listening virtually to the conference in Boulder. So pleased you included the links. Will play catch up!