By Alex Hager KUNC The West has been slammed by wet weather this winter: An “atmospheric river” has pummeled California with weeks of heavy rain and the Rocky Mountains are getting buried with snow.
People are also reading… That has created a yawning supply-demand imbalance for a multibillion-dollar agriculture sector and large cities — including Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles — that depend on the river’s water. “It’s great to see a big snowpack,” Udall said. “We would need five or six years at 150% snowpack to refill these reservoirs. And that is extremely unlikely.”
Even the concept of “average” has changed due to warming temperatures. In spring 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shifted how it calculates averages for all of its data. Planning has become much harder as shifting baselines make the future of water availability less predictable.
“That’s just not enough time to make changes that you would have to make,” Campbell said. “But that is where we are. So, in some ways, it might be our worst nightmare.”As supply shrinks, the seven states that use water from the Colorado River have been caught in a standoff over how to reduce demand. The current managing guidelines for the river expire in 2026, and states are mostly focused on drawing up a new agreement before then. Policy analysts and water managers alike have hinted that major cuts will have to come from the agricultural sector, which uses more than 70% of the Colorado River’s water.
Imagine if you covered this properly 15 years ago
74% of Colorado River water is guzzled by BigAgriculture farming of plants unsuited to our arid regions. Yes, there's a drought but the actual shortage is the courage of political officials, local, state & federal, to drastically reduce water delivery to BigAgriculture.