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New Mexico’s future banks on the Colorado River

Posted by: Maven on March 17, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Reporter John Fleck, writer of the famed Inkstain blog, is a journalist for his day job, writing for the Albuquerque Journal, and he has penned this column on the New Mexico & the future of the Colorado River:

Marty Hoerling sounds a bit like a bank regulator as he explains what scientists know and don’t know about the future of the Colorado River. He talks about risk profiling and prudent reserves in the giant savings accounts backed up behind Glen Canyon and Hoover dams.

It’s a discussion people here need to pay attention to. There was a time when Albuquerque could leave such problems for cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Nev., which depend to some extent on the Colorado for their water. No more. That changed in December, when the Albuquerque area began shifting to water imported from the Colorado River Basin as the primary source of its drinking water. Santa Fe is soon to follow.

Trying to follow the science of climate change and the Colorado River, it would be easy to throw up your hands. Very smart scientists (Hoerling among them) have come up with very different answers about how climate change might affect the Colorado over the next half-century. Estimates over the past few years have varied from a modest 5 percent decrease in the river’s average annual flow by 2050 to an alarming 45 percent decline.

OK, even a 5 percent drop in the Colorado’s average annual flow ought to alarm you. “With over 27 million people relying on the Colorado River for drinking water in the United States, and over 3.5 million acres of farmland in production in the basin,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials wrote in a recent report, “the Colorado River is the single most important natural resource in the Southwest.”

Read more of John Fleck’s column in the Albuquerque Journal by clicking here. If you are denied admission to the article, you’ll need to go through his blog – try clicking here.

March 17, 2009 · Filed Under Colorado River & the Southwest

Comments

One Response to “New Mexico’s future banks on the Colorado River”

  1. WaterSource on March 18th, 2009 6:00 am

    ” risk profiling and prudent reserves in the giant savings accounts backed up behind Glen Canyon and Hoover dams ” …

    Get serious ! … as far as I know I am the only one who has ever come up with a way to legally keep these and other ” savings accounts ” reasonably FULL. There is absolutely no interest by the Bureau or the Compact signatory states in verifying or investigating the fresh water Source that could be developed to allow these facilities to function as ” reserves “.

    WaterSource waterrdw@yahoo.com

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