Global Warming Shreds Colorado River Compact As Glen Canyon Dam Nears End Of Hydropower Generation, Possible Deadpool

[hatrack]

EDIT

Western water law is based on the prior appropriation doctrine, which gives the first entity to make “beneficial use” of water the right to keep on using that amount, even if that means that upstream “junior” users’ spigots will get shut off. By the early 1900s, a rapidly growing California was enthusiastically diverting the Colorado River, with huge irrigation districts gobbling up the senior water rights. Less-populous Colorado, Wyoming and Utah were forced to watch in increasing dismay as downstream users gained control over larger and larger shares of “their” river. To appease these headwaters states — and to garner their support for huge dams and other water projects on the lower river — the seven Colorado River Basin states hammered out the Colorado River Compact of 1922. It divided the states into an Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) and a Lower Basin (Arizona, California and Nevada), with the dividing line at Lees Ferry, Arizona. It aimed to share the river’s water equally between them, giving each basin the exclusive use of 7.5 million acre-feet (MAF) of water per year.

The compact was far from perfect, but the concept of dividing the water equally generally held up, even if the reality didn’t always follow suit: The Upper Basin states have always used far less than their allotted amount (around 4 MAF), while the Lower Basin for years has consumed far more than its share (as much as 11 million MAF). That wasn’t a problem as long as the river had enough water to go around. But for the last 26 years, it hasn’t. Since around the turn of the century, warming temperatures and abnormally dry years have severely diminished the headwaters states’ snowpack, thereby shrinking the river. The annual “natural flow” at Lees Ferry, or the estimated amount of water the river would hold without any upstream diversions or human consumption, has been about 12 MAF on average since 2000, dropping below 6 MAF in 2002, or just over half of what the Lower Basin alone consumed at the time.

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Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell were supposed to make things easier by acting as an Upper Basin savings account that could be drawn from during dry years. But withdrawals have greatly exceeded deposits more often than not in recent decades, leaving Lake Powell at about one-third of its full storage capacity and bringing its surface level critically close to hitting minimum power pool, the point at which water can no longer be released through the hydroelectric turbines. When this happens — possibly as early as this fall, according to current federal forecasts — the dam will stop generating hydropower for Southwestern utilities. It will also force all releases to go through the outlets lower in the dam, which were not engineered for such sustained use. This would compromise the outlets and possibly the dam itself, and Bureau of Reclamation engineers have strongly warned against it, meaning that minimum power pool becomes the de facto deadpool.

If current climate trends continue, the only way to avoid reaching minimum power pool — aside from re-engineering the dam on a very short timeframe — is either to substantially increase flows into Lake Powell by curtailing Upper Basin water use and draining upstream reservoirs, or else significantly reduce releases from Glen Canyon Dam, forcing the Lower Basin — and the river through the Grand Canyon and its endangered native fish — to take major cuts.

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Exposed sand is seen on a northern side of a depleted Lake Powell in 2022, when historically low water levels led to closures of many popular recreational areas.

https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-colorado-river-rift-abides/

[NNadir]

1. A good and interesting succinct article. Thanks.

[Bluestocking]

2. It sounds like Colorado Wyoming an Utah

should be okay but the other States are in trouble.

[hunter]

4. Most of this water is used for agriculture.

About 20% of the water goes to cities. Only a tiny fraction of that water is used to fill swimming pools and irrigate golf courses.

If you live in the U.S.A. the salad greens you buy in the winter were probably grown using Colorado River water.

Supermarket produce sections and restaurant menus across the nation would be bleak in the winter without this water -- cabbages, turnips, and potatoes. No salads, just soup. Some expensive hot-house and imported produce.

Eventually U.S. cities in the Southwest are going to switch to other, more expensive, water sources. They'll recycle more sewage and desalinate more water. Lower elevation cities won't run out of water, but the price of it will increase.

It's the farmers and consumers of fresh vegetables who will experience the worst of this.

[jfz9580m]

5. Thanks hunter

That puts it in perspective.

[jfz9580m]

6. Thanks again hunter

You know I had not noticed it earlier, but I just realized today when thinking of this post that you share Hunter Biden�s name .

Given how poor global education is and how low quality AI (which is most of it) is Gigo, I have had a slowly dawning and horrible suspicion about what happens when a largely brain-rotted population interacts with those foul things mostly unknowingly. Their shills insisting that human meaning, context and sheer nuisance value do not matter as long as those foul things find patterns which makes optimizing sales easy for those guys creeps.

They are probably deploying these damn things at scale. Even humans are susceptible to this:

https://slate.com/technology/2014/09/apophenia-makes-unrelated-things-seem-connected-metaphors-paranormal-beliefs-conspiracies-delusions.html

The various hallmarks of some mental ailments: e.g.: delusions of reference, would then be fed back to the humans reinforcing this hell cycle. Completely irresponsible and sleazy and no doubt with parasitic bullshit studies with no meaningful IRB or informed consent tacked on as �safety�. A bs cottage industry rather than just disabling the damn things and not forcing them on people who do not want them.

I am filing complaints at least in India and wherever else I can isolate the problems to.

But I will go about systematically and meticulously (as complaints are serious things).

Because a lot of those studies and safety spiels are themselves humblebrags meant to confuse people with Promethean narratives about a bunch of buggy code. Okay Two Photo Microscopy..that is real science. LLMs.. faugh..
Such humbug..

Sometimes it is hard to fathom..if you went to school here in India in the eighties and nineties at respectable govt institutions and were in decent NIH labs, it is sometimes hard to grasp the sheer irresponsibility and sleaziness of the tech private sector and this fraudulent hype cycle.

Elizabeth Holmes got caught because thankfully in healthcare (outside of psychiatry) it is hard to get away with bullshit indefinitely.

Clearly in the tech private sector you can keep scamming people till, as Zuckerberg and his moll have done, you buy up most medical research or as Musk has done you destroy the state..Man..pure evil and brainless too..

Anyway, I emailed some scientists finally and alerted my medical marijuana company and anyone I care about. They will not scapegoat me again for objecting to lousy science and creepy people while insisting that their complete irresponsibility and hype swilling makes me a: .

Bollocks..I am not the one going around selling and buying inane crap straight out of second rate movies..lame..