J Alper
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This is two Weeks
If you live in AZ or NV are you worried about the water crisis?
- Thread starter Fullthrottleguy
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This is two Weeks
J Alper
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- Apr 30, 2021
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J Alper
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- Apr 30, 2021
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@2442turborail in not even close to the issues, good read made me chuckle,
This is more than a 1 to 2 state issue,
When the water level gets to a point when the lake stops producing power and water for California crops, we are all going to pay for it, 2442 statement is like saying fuel prices will not efect the us, if Russia goes to war,
All of the western states are in this together, being taxes to pay for upgrades, hi power bill taxes or no water, all of the western states will feel this.
This is more than a 1 to 2 state issue,
When the water level gets to a point when the lake stops producing power and water for California crops, we are all going to pay for it, 2442 statement is like saying fuel prices will not efect the us, if Russia goes to war,
All of the western states are in this together, being taxes to pay for upgrades, hi power bill taxes or no water, all of the western states will feel this.
Rockwood
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- May 5, 2021
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Actually put to use by man, sure, but they're excluding runoff into the ocean we don't even attempt to store or utilize:I thought this biggest consumption of the water was the farms, not houses? Regardless, I don’t know why they just don’t get started on the fix. There is ample water to solve the entire southwest region water needs by utilizing the Columbia River. The only real obstacle is that Siskiyou Montains. I don’t know why they can’t just use a TBM and run some tunnels to avoid having to pump the water over the top. There is enough water going out the Columbia to fill Shasta, Powell, Mead and more. Govt just needs to pull their heads out their a-holes and solve real problems. But if you take our water, you have to pay us back by taking our homeless too
Which is the majority of water use in California. Eventually, the grownups need to ask if leaving rivers completely wild all the way up into the mountains is worth continuing to ignore our water crisis.
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Fireballsocal
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- May 6, 2021
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With the rivers around me that are dry such as the santa ana and the Owens, I'd kinda like what we have left to stay the way they are. There used to be sturgeon in the Santa Ana river. Now, just a trickle.
Jammer75
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- May 5, 2021
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There goes the ground water. Unregulated and cheap as it can get.
Rockwood
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Crusty
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Local Reservoir, cool history. Used currently for Water Table resupply and runoff control :dunno:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Dam
MWB
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- May 3, 2021
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We don't do that in Az. We build parks and golf courses in the wash's and riverbeds. In my area all of the storm water from my neighborhood gets pushed into the local park's lake. The overflow from that just sinks into the soccer field.
Look at what Scottsdale did with the Indian Bend wash in comparison what Los Angeles did with their river or what San Diego did with theirs.
MWB
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- May 3, 2021
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One of my earliest memories with my Grandfather was driving up into the mountains near their house ( Duarte, Monrovia) to where they were building this big dam or expanding it I am not sure which. All I know is that is where we would sit and watch the Big Utes drive back and forth moving dirt.
Crusty
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The entire side of the mountain you could see from Duarte/Monrovia/Azusa is a nightmare now..
This report is a few years old but has great photos of the damage, Fish Trail is permanently closed right now because there is so much erosion.
https://www.ci.azusa.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/29343/4-6-15_Azusa_Council_Presentation-Vulcan-?bidId=
A ton of water still flows thru the entire area...thus its posting in this water thread. CA > AZ anyways.
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Cookie
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- May 5, 2021
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Man is there a lot of people in AZ that have their heads in the sand.................Arizona is not safe from running out of water at all.
They are the first ones that have had to take cutbacks from the Colorado River, that was the deal the State made to get the canal built. Why did they need a canal if there is so much water? They currently take nearly 17% of the total Colorado River allocation. AZ gets about 40% of its water from under the ground, 36% from the Colorado River and 20% from other surface water. Remind ya, that Prescott and Flag are mostly ground water and run off. Thus Metro Phoenix has to have Colorado River to survive. You can only take so much ground water before the land starts to sink (look at the Central Valley). Just my view, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.
The Colorado River compact is made up of two areas, Upper basins and Lower basins. The Upper Basins include Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for the most part. The Lower basins include Nevada, California, Az, and Mexico (kind of). Outside of a three year drought that as affected Snow runoff and Soil wetness, the Upper basin has been using more water than in the past. That being said they are still using less water than they their are allocated. Utah is a big water abuser, they use far more water per household than all the states on the Colorado river compact (which was written in 1922 for reference). On paper the allocation between the upper and lower basins is equal. To summarize this issue, they are just coming to the table to look how to conserve the River and water for it's states.
Since a few have already made this a CA vs AZ debate, let's look at some facts:
Two real facts, we are all using more water than the river can provide in drought years and two years of good snow years can fix all or this.
They are the first ones that have had to take cutbacks from the Colorado River, that was the deal the State made to get the canal built. Why did they need a canal if there is so much water? They currently take nearly 17% of the total Colorado River allocation. AZ gets about 40% of its water from under the ground, 36% from the Colorado River and 20% from other surface water. Remind ya, that Prescott and Flag are mostly ground water and run off. Thus Metro Phoenix has to have Colorado River to survive. You can only take so much ground water before the land starts to sink (look at the Central Valley). Just my view, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.
The Colorado River compact is made up of two areas, Upper basins and Lower basins. The Upper Basins include Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for the most part. The Lower basins include Nevada, California, Az, and Mexico (kind of). Outside of a three year drought that as affected Snow runoff and Soil wetness, the Upper basin has been using more water than in the past. That being said they are still using less water than they their are allocated. Utah is a big water abuser, they use far more water per household than all the states on the Colorado river compact (which was written in 1922 for reference). On paper the allocation between the upper and lower basins is equal. To summarize this issue, they are just coming to the table to look how to conserve the River and water for it's states.
Since a few have already made this a CA vs AZ debate, let's look at some facts:
- 80% of the Colorado river is used for AG in the Imperial Valley (mostly alfalfa which goes overseas)
- Colorado River water for Ca is 27% of the total 16.5 maf (which we don't have that much water during the drought), true that this is higher than their allocation. Because in the past other states weren't using all their allocation.
- Between Ca and AZ, we use 44% of the total water supply from the River, Nevada is a total of 2%
- California receives 75% of it's total water supply from Northern California
- One thing to note, the state of Colorado and Utah want to pipe more water from the river. Colorado pipe is across the continental divide, and Utah wants to pipe water to St George.
- Residential usage in most states has been going down for years why AG use hasn't, except for Utah.
- We probably won't see any new dams in the next 30 years that would help.
Two real facts, we are all using more water than the river can provide in drought years and two years of good snow years can fix all or this.
2442turborail
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- May 6, 2021
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How is the real impact, day-to-day, to me and millions of others, actual access to water out of our taps, not the real issue, to me and to the original author of this post and his question? I would argue that the subsidiary economic impacts to the average-joe resident in the West as a result of this issue is less impactful than mortgage interest rate increases or supply chain disruptions. So the “issues” all revolve around my actual access to water and AZ’s ability to continue to develop land and grow economically (AZ’ economy is largely based on this). With that said, there is absolutely a real surface-water scarcity issue within the CO river basin that will impact businesses and individuals in a non-uniform manner, I’m not denying that. All users of the CO River basin are going to be impacted, but not uniformly. The lion’s share of CO river users are agriculture based (although Ag also has the highest priority and will be impacted last). My understanding is that 80% of the CO River water used in the US is Ag and that 80% of that water is used for feed crops like alfalfa. My point in my original response was that as an AZ resident within an Active Management Area, we’re not going to have our potable/urban use wells run dry, which is how I read the original post question. The economic impact to agriculture will be lessened by water reducing practices such as drip irrigation and a switch to lower water using crops. Ag has got to get its chit together as it is a monster draw on a finite resource which they are WAY over using (not sustainable even in non-drought conditions). CA and AZ (to a much lesser extent) farming is a huge component of our Country’s food supply, but it can be done much more efficiently from a water use perspective and that resource is just one part of a global network of Ag resources that will naturally adjust as supply is constrained in one geographic region. Also - as pointed to in another post above, we need to stop allowing the exportation of pelletized alfalfa out of the Country. That’s a defacto exportation of water out of the Country and is being allowed to occur in AZ in non-Active Management Areas in a manner that is totally unregulated because of AZ’s oversized State Legislator influence from rural areas and the fact that Ag was hugely influential in the writing of State Law early in AZ’s existence as State. The unregulated pumping of ground water for inefficient flood irrigation alfalfa farming has to throttle down.
Anyway, I think my position is well thought-through and well informed, as I’m in the subdivision development business and spend tens of thousands annually on water attorneys and other water resource consultants as it is an integral part of my business and as such I keep myself extremely well informed.
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Darkjuju
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I am not a water expert however I believe Az gets the 2nd largest share of the CO river but our state utilizes/has/refills our natural underground aquifers, I think we have near a 40/30/20/10 split between aquifers, CO river, in state rivers, and reclamation projects. So we could lose that CO river allotment (i think it was already cut for this year) and still "survive" but it will take cuts/caps on our usage and population growth.
Race Face
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- May 7, 2021
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It’s interesting we’ve been staying, on and off, at Canyon RV park and for the last year and half they’ve been burying the Santa Ana river in a huge conduit. So it’s dry on top, but under is got to be flowing through the new tunnel….. curious what is the reasoning.
2442turborail
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This is one of the biggest problems we have water they just need to contain it. Ive been hearing this for the last few years about how much water just goes right back to the pacific. They need to work on an aquaduct system. How often do we here a state is in a drought and the state next to them has to much water. Goverment sucks and we just need to keep speaking up it is making a change and will get better if we stand together and let them know they work for us.
Darkjuju
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West of the continental divide had a terrible snow pack, idk about the east. But I just visited the Animas and backpacked Vallecito creek trail up to 92k no snow pack, rivers are bony (white water folks will know what i mean). I drove from phx passed though 6 rivers and double that amount of creeks all the way to Rio Grande in Creed and they are all low this year. The only good sign was that we did get some monsoon action in early June on our trip. I have been Kayaking and/or rafting the Animas and local lakes over the last 9+ years and the last good snow pack/high river action I remember seeing was in '18 maybe '19?
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Fullthrottleguy
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To your point I don't think the collapse of AZ and NV will be that it will look like MadMax and people will be killing people over a glass of water - at least before 2060 - its more of an economic collapse or at least a fight. California is the "breadbasket of America" and AZ has its agricultural base, and let's face it construction and housing is fueling the economy right now although I think "tech" has chance there.
The idea that this could all be slowed or stopped could "Detroit" the state and prices could drop a lot. Especially if hydro-power goes away and right now Mead is at "dead pool" no electricity is really flowing, the only reason prices are not rocketing is that CA is bleeding off tons of free Solar they are making and have no way to store - Instead of overloading the grid they are pumping it into NV and AZ - but this will eventually stop once they figure out how to store it - Lots of Power does not guarantee low prices - CA has one of the highest electric costs in the country if not still the highest because the power cost a lot (think rebates)
Low energy cost has been fueling data-centers in AZ and NV (think the Cloud) they were moving into NV and AZ with low Electricity cost -In fact the Largest Datacenter in the world is located just outside Las Vegas (Switch-SuperNap) and its there 50% because Vegas is one of the most climate stable and non earthquake regions in the world, and because electricity is dirt cheap. AZ and NV are home (well as of 2019) to more crypto miners anywhere in the US except Missouri for the same reason (assuming Crypto comes back...)
I also worry that a big draw are the lakes and recreation. Lake Mead is essentially dead for recreation, they will have to dry up Mojave and Havasu soon (that will be sad and will kill the towns there), and Powell is already at minimum navigation in many areas ... No idea what happens to Blythe and big River etc..
and remember, we have a pact that Guarantee's Mexico 15% of the Colorado's total water yearly
The water scarcity problem gets way better with a few years of above average rainfall in the mountains and buys some time for law makers to argue more - but thats highly unlikely as we move into a new Solar cycle that "likely" will cause more drought til 2035... but maybe we will get lucky? I am hoping for that
I think as much we like to think "Lawyers" and "Government" can fix this ... No water is no water, Sam said it best RIP
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