Nevada did something just lately that the relaxation of the Colorado River Basin should have seen coming: It sued the federal authorities. Along with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the state challenged the Department of the Interior’s new report of choice governing operations at lakes Mead and Powell.
Save The Colorado, our program devoted to defending this river, publicly supports that lawsuit, and we’re contemplating submitting an amicus transient in the case. Here’s why.
Under the plan, Nevada could lose more than 70 p.c of its already tiny Colorado River allocation — a state that only gets 300,000 acre-feet a yr to start with, the smallest slice of any basin state. Meanwhile, the 4 Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — face no necessary cuts at all, only voluntary conservation targets that historical past exhibits not often quantity to much.
That imbalance would be simpler to abdomen if Nevada were a water hog, but it is not.
Not only do Nevada and Las Vegas in explicit use less Colorado River water than any other state in the basin, Southern Nevada has constructed the most aggressive water conservation packages anywhere in the seven-state system. Las Vegas pays residents to tear out grass. It has banned new decorative turf outright. It recycles almost all the water used indoors, returning it to Lake Mead through return-flow credit. Nevada has spent 20 years doing precisely what every drought-stricken Western neighborhood should do: use less, waste less, recycle more.
Compare that to the Front Range of Colorado where I dwell and where our group is primarily based. There is not one well-funded, ongoing “cash for grass” turf elimination program in the complete Denver metro space. And particularly, Las Vegas presents considerably bigger financial incentives and stricter legal mandates for turf elimination than Denver Water by far.
Municipal utilities here have never confronted a necessary discount in what they’re allowed to divert from the river. Quite the reverse, in reality: Denver Water just completed building a massive new dam project to divert even more water from the river, a disastrous project that we fought to stop for over 15 years. Further, believe it or not, the Upper Basin states are proposing more than 30 new dam and diversion initiatives that would drain dramatically more water out of the river before it reaches Nevada.
Our Save The Colorado program exists to defend the ecological health of the Colorado River. We believe the Upper Basin — including Colorado’s Front Range cities and West Slope farms — should be cutting their water use considerably because the river itself wants more water left in it, not less. Every acre-foot that stays in between the river’s banks, rather than getting diverted into another suburban garden or area of alfalfa, is an acre-foot that can support fish, riparian habitat and the river’s own fundamental perform as a dwelling system.
Instead, the bureau’s report of choice does the reverse of what the river wants. By defending Lake Powell’s elevation and prioritizing water storage over releases through Glen Canyon Dam, the plan will maintain back water rather than let it stream downstream.
No stretch of the river will undergo more from the bureau’s choice than the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon riverine ecosystem is already starved by the impacts of Glen Canyon Dam, and the bureau’s choice would further decimate the Grand Canyon’s native fish, seashores and riparian panorama.
Nevada’s lawsuit is, at its core, an argument about equity: Cuts should observe precise water use and precise effort, not just where a state occurs to sit on a map relative to a dam.
Further yet, the objective should not only be to redistribute the ache more pretty among human water customers. It should be to depart more water in the river itself. If the Upper Basin matched even a fraction of Southern Nevada’s water use and conservation ambition, the river would be more healthy and the Grand Canyon more verdant.
Gary Wockner directs Save The Colorado, a program of Save The World’s Rivers.