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Today the Bureau of Reclamation will host an exclusive
celebration for water buffaloes only at Glen Canyon Dam to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the Colorado River Storage Project Act
(CRSP). The assistant secretary to the Department of Interior,
Mark Limbaugh, will provide the keynote address. The CRSP was
developed primarily to build storage reservoirs in the upper
basin states of the Colorado River watershed, which include New
Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.
The legislative debate for
the CRSP incidentally launched the modern-day environmental movement
in the early 1950s when Reclamation brazenly proposed two dams
in Dinosaur National Monument below the confluence of the Green
and Yampa rivers in the state of Utah. The proposal to build
Split Mountain and Echo Park dams were successfully defeated
by the combined efforts of the environmental groups then involved.
During the congressional hearings
for CRSP, many witnesses testified that the big reservoirs of
the CRSP were unnecessary because they would needlessly waste
water through evaporation and seepage. The evaporation would
also impair the quality of the water by increasing the dissolved
solids, especially salt. It was also pointed out that the hydropower
revenue produced by the CRSP projects would not be economically
feasible once the demand for water equaled the supply, which
would lower the reservoir levels enough to reduce the efficiency
of the turbines. Especially since the negotiators of the Colorado
River Compact (1922) made the huge blunder of over-allocated
the demand by underestimating the supply.
Over-allocation is not the
only reality that will compromise the reservoir level behind
Glen Canyon Dam, which is currently half-full. When considering
the effects of climate change and the scientific projection that
river flows on the Colorado River will be reduced 10 to 30% by
2050, this additional aggravation ensures that the CRSP hydropower
will never fulfill its debt to the American taxpayer.
Now that fifty years have passed
since the first arguments against the project were made, the
warnings have turned into fulfilling prophecies. CRSP reservoirs
do waste more water than they save, the water is undrinkable
by the time it gets Tucson, and currently the demand does equal
supply and the efficiency of the turbines has dropped to the
point that the managers of federal hydropower now buy electricity
from the common market to meet their contractual obligations.
Instead of a celebrating, the
Bureau of Reclamation should be performing a wake for the pending
funerals of the communities that will run out of water once these
reservoirs bottom out and the rivers run dry. Its time to develop
a new project, the Colorado River Survival Project.
Climate specialists warned
Reclamation ten years ago (the aftermath of the 1989-92 drought)
of the consequences that climate change would have on the supply
of the Colorado River and the message went unheeded up to year
2000 as the ink dried on their management plan for the future
called "Surplus Criteria."
It took the reality of water
year of 2002 for Reclamation to finally resonate with the problem
of water scarcity. First came the public relations campaign called
the "2025 Plan," which threw some cash out to water
purveyors to improve efficiency standards. When the drought did
not break, Reclamation finally decided in 2005 to take baby steps
towards developing a management plan called "Shortage Criteria."
Reclamation may be able to
guarantee survival through a small drought, but they cannot guarantee
survival through the severe and prolonged droughts that all of
us are about to face. We are not talking about the daily weather
forecast here. This is a situation about a changing climate of
warmer temperatures that is going to hang around for a very long
time.
The climate professionals have
been successfully modeling Colorado River flows based on the
trend of a increasing temperatures for the atmosphere and oceans.
Their peer-reviewed reports say the consequences of global warming
include a lengthening of the growing season, increasing surface
water evaporation, drier soils, and, most importantly, that it
will rain more than it will snow--the snow that reservoirs require
to refill when it melts each spring.
The CRSP is a water project
that was never needed. It is apparent that all it does right
now is waste water and money, degrade the water quality, and
destroy the national park values of Grand Canyon. The first step
to survive the water scarcity situation that we now face is to
decommission the dam that makes the least sense--Glen Canyon
Dam.
John Weisheit is the conservation director of Living Rivers and the
Colorado Riverkeeper. He lives along the Colorado River in Moab,
Utah. He can be reached at: john@livingrivers.org
For more information:
The report for "Surplus
Criteria" by Living Rivers and calledThe
One-Dam Solution
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