Colorado River

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by COcheesehead Drove past a church in western Colorado yesterday. Suns out, middle of the day. They had about a half acre of grass between the road and the parking lot. Something easily graveled over or xeriscaped. Sprinklers going full blast. There are hundreds of examples like this. It’s high desert. Grass is not needed here, but yet there it is. Most new homes around me are xeriscaped. Maybe there should be incentives to tear out grass on older properties.

Watch people put in sod, so they can get the $$$ incentives to replace it.

Instead of incentives, treat it like speeding tickets.

• just ban sprinkler operation
• Have a tiered water price, dramatically increasing the price as usage goes up the levels.

[JoeWras]

I'm always amazed at green lawns in the desert.

Here in the SE, droughts are rare. We only need infrequent lawn watering, depending on species, and most people are choosing better species.

Watering is allowed, but man they really "hose" you for it. Lawn watering means you get put into higher rate tiers, and they hurt. Are all these desert water users paying hundreds of dollars per month for water?

Myself and many of my neighbors do a lot of watering with rain barrel catchment. I understand that generally is not allowed in the Colorado River basin. (EDIT: looks like perhaps this has changed and allowed for homeowners in small use. Good to hear!)

[COcheesehead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset Watch people put in sod, so they can get the $$$ incentives to replace it. Instead of incentives, treat it like speeding tickets. just ban sprinkler operation Have a tiered water price, dramatically increasing the price as usage goes up the levels.

We already have tiered water pricing. It’s still too cheap. It goes up $5-$10 a month if you are a heavy user.
As far as replacing sod, it’s expensive to put in so why would they do that just to break even?

[gayl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by COcheesehead You know how much it costs to get water from the Colorado River in western Colorado? About $20 a month for the average household. Water the lawn, fill the pool, let the tap run… If water is rare or soon to be rare, it needs to “cost” something.

100% [emoji106]

[SnowballCamper]

Which is worse, the loss of hydropower or significantly less food production from the loss of irrigation? A hydropower loss will be regional, but fallow fields will ripple across the country's grocery stores on top of existing inflation. Is another dustbowl situation coming? I sure hope not, but we'll find out this summer.

[mojavesue]

But my question was more about why they are letting Mead drop to unproductive levels (no power generation).


Lake Mead isnt in danger of losing power generation. Lake Powell is. The Bureau just installed low lake level turbines on the generators at Hoover Dam. I believe they can now generate power down to around 950 ft elevation? The bottom line for the past 20 years is the river does not flow enough to cover demands. We've been running at a deficit for many years. Honestly, the water system has been very robust. With the drying out, when the mountains do get snowpack, it has been warming too much too fast for the snowmelt to make it to the rivers. When the CRC was done back in the 1920s, managers had no idea how many people would be out here. John W. Powell knew though that it could never sustain a major population. I think in all of SoCal there were just over a million people, Phoenix had around 100k and Vegas had just 5k! Now, including people in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado there are 60 million people living in the west.

[ncbill]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojavesue I've lived in Las Vegas since the mid 90s. The last time Lake Mead was close to full was I think in 99. The past 20 or so years have been really dry across the west. Las Vegas had the foresight to put in a 3rd straw at a lake elevation of 880 ft. So Las Vegas could literally be the last user of the lake if it got to that point. The first intake was exposed just last week as the elevation has reached around 1050. Full pool I believe is 1225 ft. The problem is the Colorado just doesnt have the volume it once did to satisfy the demands. California and Arizona get the majority of the lower basin water and a big portion of that goes to irrigation farming. The Bureau of Reclamation and the federal government is going to have to get aggressive with reducing allocation. There was a possibility that Powell would drop below the level to produce power so they are releasing water from Flaming Gorge in Wyoming to supplement it. Just a temporary move to buy some time though. I believe they are also holding some water back in Powell so that will affect Mead. The Bureau estimates Mead elevation next year at around 1025 feet. The snowpack has not yielded the same water in recent years due to the extreme drying of the atmosphere. So instead of normal runoff, it dries and evaporates or gets absorbed by the soil. I do agree with COcheesehead that water rates are really low to promote real conservation. There will be some hard decisions made soon otherwise I think we're in for some not good outcomes.

One study I read said the West was unusually wet for the first half of the 20th century so everybody started assuming those higher levels of precipitation were the norm.

Yeah, agriculture will shift but there will be word-wide impacts...when Australia shifted land previously used to grow rice to vineyards because of drought conditions the world-wide supply of rice dropped & those in poorer Asian countries suffered the price increases, while we here in richer Western countries got more decent, affordable wine options.

[Turbo29]

Agriculture uses ~80% of the water from the Colorado River

"If you eat carrots or lettuce in the winter, chances are the Colorado River irrigated those crops. The Colorado River irrigates 3.2 million acres within the Colorado River Basin itself and 2.5 million acres outside of the basin, places like California’s Imperial Valley. That’s a total area nearly the size of New Hampshire."

Coming Together for the Colorado River Learn how farmers and ranchers are working to keep more water in the river


Interestingly, when agricultural land is used for housing development there is drop in water usage. An acre of homes uses much less than an acre of farming.

[mojavesue]

I read a story not long ago about the Southern Nevada Water District invested millions of dollars with the California water districts to help build a huge water reclamation operation to reuse reclaimed water. That would allow California to take less water from the Colorado and help with the lower basin system shortage.

The city of Las Vegas has really done an excellent job with conservation. We use less water today than we did 20 years ago. The city pays a lot of money to get rid of grass. Its now on a big push to get grass out of areas that are around apartment complexes and along sidewalks. All of the water you see at the Bellagio fountains is reclaimed water. Also, since Las Vegas has a natural drainage to Lake Mead, the state of Nevada gets credit for water sent back to the lake.

The biggest water users though are in Imperial Valley in California. The big impact on the country will be winter food production.

[rodi]

Cheap water in Colorado... NOT cheap in San Diego. Unlike LA and north, we get our water from the Colorado. Latest water bill was over $120 for a month. We do not have lawn - use drip irrigation for fruit trees and veggie garden. We use gray water where we can. No pool.

The city is putting in a toilet to tap capital improvement project but that won't come online for another 3 years for phase one. This is to help with our dependence on the Colorado. (It also addresses our sewage problem - which is why we aren't just doing desalination).

[skyking1]

Wow $120.
My brother put in dwarf tall fescue in Central Washington where it's very dry and hot. It does not use much water at all, nor does it spread.
It's a pretty good alternative to zero scaping.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ponyboy I cant speak for the colorado river but I have seen archeologists find fossils of sea creatures in mountains before. Guess water levels have been adjusting for millions of years.

This is common. Dead sea creatures build up on the ocean floor. A lots of sedimentary rock comes from ocean and lake beds. When plates collide this stuff gets scraped off and collects on the overriding plate. When mountains form, also due to plate collision, land is lifted high up to form mountains (the Himalayas are a good example). The rock layers in the mountains can come from many sources, including sedimentary rock formed underwater and containing sea fossils. Sea creature fossils at tops of mountains were lifted up there.

[MarieIG]

Desalination for farmland close to the coast?

[JoeWras]

Possible, but expensive and resource intensive.

[zinger1457]

Looks like things may get even worse for Lake Mead, at least in the short term. Lake Powell officials are taking emergency steps to increase the water levels in Lake Powell to keep hydropower generation going. Those steps will likely decrease the water going to Lake Mead.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/us/la...ate/index.html

[Turbo29]

‘It feels like a dying reservoir’: Deltas of sediment are pushing into Glen Canyon as Lake Powell disappears

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbo29 Agriculture uses ~80% of the water from the Colorado River "If you eat carrots or lettuce in the winter, chances are the Colorado River irrigated those crops. The Colorado River irrigates 3.2 million acres within the Colorado River Basin itself and 2.5 million acres outside of the basin, places like California’s Imperial Valley. That’s a total area nearly the size of New Hampshire." Coming Together for the Colorado River Learn how farmers and ranchers are working to keep more water in the river Interestingly, when agricultural land is used for housing development there is drop in water usage. An acre of homes uses much less than an acre of farming.

But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

[Turbo29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

You have to eat the houses too to get the fiber.

[SecondAttempt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojavesue Lake Mead isnt in danger of losing power generation. Lake Powell is. The Bureau just installed low lake level turbines on the generators at Hoover Dam. I believe they can now generate power down to around 950 ft elevation?

Bingo! I was using an old value for Minimum Power Pool of 1050 feet, which the level is within 5 feet of. With 200 more feet of margin I can see why they are making the decisions they are.

[ncbill]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

Soylent green is people!