There has been quite a bit of news lately regarding the Colorado
River: its over-subscription, its shrinking reservoirs, the
possible battles to come. I’ve been tweeting
about a lot of that at @pvowell and @WeWork4Water:
The drying of the West;
""...a bumper harvest of lawsuits is approaching." #water
http://ow.ly/ntjVF
CA's goal should be no #water from CO
River, filling the gap with desal. Other CO River states should support that.
http://ow.ly/nmus2
What Seven States Can Agree to Do:
Deal-Making on the #CO River. Great review of river policy & challenges.
#water
http://ow.ly/n6mEG
California has
taken great advantage of the fact that the other basin states have historically
under-utilized their allocations, using that “extra” water to satisfy an ever
thirstier Southern California. Now that those states are growing and
utilizing their share of the river, California
has to cut back. But with the coming
realities of climate change making even California’s
rightful share of the river unlikely to be deliverable, California
will have to come to grips with the fact that they can not rely on this source
of supply in the future. If California
were to completely forgo its Colorado River rights,
allowing that water, or what there is of it, to be distributed to the other
basin states, it would be a great help in alleviating their water shortage
issues. Of course, California
would have to come up with alternate supplies, or their equivalent. Continued
and expanded conservation will have to be a part of that, but by itself it will
not be, in fact can not be enough.
Continued further imports from Northern California
are also unreliable, and at best will need to be kept at current levels, not
expanded. But with a large and bountiful
ocean at its door, California
must pursue desalination as a large part of its water supply. Energy requirements for desalination continue
to drop, approaching the same requirements to pump water from the Colorado. Advances in technology for seawater intake
are alleviating the issues of ingress and impingement that those intakes can
cause; and similar advances in brine discharge can all but eliminate any
ecological problems with that process. By
agreeing to reduce Colorado River usage through the development of
desalination, other River basin states could also be brought into agreements to
help pay for the development of the resource.
But first, California must
come to grips with the fact that desalination will have to be a part of our
water resources in the future and create a regulatory and legal environment
that allows the permitting of these facilities without the endless lawsuits
that currently plague every attempt to build a desalination plant. As California
water professionals, everyone that works for water in this state must support
the development of a robust desalination program to safe-guard our water
future.