As Colorado River Water Vaporizes in the Desert, Arizona Faces a New Energy Reality
Recently, the Navajo and Hopi Nations signed a controversial lease with the Arizona public utility, Salt River Project (SRP). Under that agreement, and for the benefit of SRP, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS)
near Page, Arizona will operate until 2044. The primary function of
NGS is to provide electrical energy to SRP’s Central Arizona Project
(CAP). Using that power, SRP lifts 1.5 million acre-feet of water per
annum from Lake Havasu. After pumping it over the Buckskin Mountains,
CAP alternately siphons, pumps and uses gravity to transport the water
east, to Pima, Pinal and Maricopa Counties.
While crossing Arizona’s Tonopah Desert,
the aqueduct consists of a large, evaporation-trench. From Tempe to
Tucson, the water remaining after a scorching trip across the desert
might become mist at an outdoor restaurant. Burning eight million tons
of Black Mesa coal each year, NGS generates more than enough power to
pump a continual flood of Colorado River water across the Arizona
desert.
In the event of a power shortage or a shortage of Colorado River water,
CAP could economize by curtailing deliveries to both agriculture and
its groundwater recharge stations. If CAP water deliveries were to fall
below current per capita consumption, either new water connections
would halt or consumers would face rationing and shortages. With that,
Arizona’s fifty-year construction and population boom would end. With
its economy reliant on new residential development and construction, Arizona's ongoing boom could quickly turn to bust.
If CAP water deliveries were to diminish significantly, the Maricopa County might face its second Great Disappearance
in less than a millennium. In 899 CE, the Hohokam Indians experienced
and then recovered from a flood that devastated their extensive water
storage and delivery systems. In the late fourteenth century, major
flooding again occurred in the Valley of the Sun. This time, recovery
flagged. By 1450 CE, between 24,000 and 50,000 Hohokam Indians had
disappeared from the archeological record.
Currently, the Phoenix-Tucson metropolis is living on borrowed time and
borrowed water. By “borrowed time”, I mean that California, Arizona and
Nevada currently withdraw Colorado River water faster than the
watershed upstream can replenish it. By “borrowed water”, I mean that
as shortages loom,
Arizona’s CAP water rights are subordinate to those of California.
Arizona’s current tourism motto is “Discover the Arizona Less
Traveled”. In the years ahead, the less traveled part of Arizona may
well include Pima, Pinal and Maricopa Counties.
Over
mountains and desert, CAP’s borrowed water travels to an artificial
oasis with a population of five million. Arizona's twenty-year
development plans are a pipe dream. They call for a future Southern
Arizona population of up to ten million. Long before that, the big pipe
that is CAP may be running near empty. One does not need to be a
climate scientist to see that sustained pumping from a declining
Colorado River is not a viable long-term solution. In fact, supplying
sufficient water to current users may yet prove unsustainable.
In order to transport their allotment of Colorado River water across the desert, Arizona dumps its environmental responsibilities
on the Navajo Nation. From mining, processing, transport and burning
of Black Mesa coal, the Navajo and Hopi Nations subsidize profligate
water use in Phoenix and Tucson. When it came to producing additional
power closer to home, no one in Phoenix wanted a coal-fired power
station upwind. Instead, at its Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station
(PVNGS), SRP utilized a “clean power source”. Standing in the Tonopah
Desert, fifty miles west of Phoenix, the massive complex
comprises the largest nuclear power plant in the nation. Tonopah
derives from the word Tú Nohwá, meaning "Hot Water under a Bush". In
fact, PVNGS is the only major nuclear power plant in the world not
situated adjacent to a major body of water.
Owned
by a consortium of utilities stretching from El Paso to Los Angeles,
PVNGS’s biggest advantage is that it does not burn coal. Since its
initial construction in the 1970s, PVNGS has been a magnate for nearby
natural-gas-fired “peaker plants”. Each of those natural gas plants consumes cooling water, emits hydrocarbons and heat into the atmosphere. Both the Black Mesa Complex
(strip-mine) to the north and PVNGS have a public relations advantage.
Located in remote locations, both complexes are out of sight and out
of mind. Few in Arizona realize that their lifesaving air conditioning
depends on a 3,900 megawatt power plant called "Hot Water under a
Bush".
Other than the inherent fragility of 1970’s nuclear power plant design,
the main weakness of PVNGS is its cooling loops. As the sole source for
their cooling water, all of the Tonopah power plants rely on treated
effluent water from Phoenix and other cities. Reduced future delivery
of Colorado River water will force conservation on Phoenix. As
residents curtail non-essential water usage, demand for CAP water will
harden at a lower volume. Inevitably, as Phoenix consumes less fresh
water, sewage plant effluent will decrease as well. I do not know how
much treated water Phoenix currently has to spare, but that would be an
interesting statistic.
Although currently recharged with excess CAP water, the Tonopah Aquifer
is finite. If Phoenix metropolitan sewage plants currently supply most
of their outflow to Tonopah, any decrease in effluent could set off an
unpleasant chain reaction. If treated effluent flow decreased, the
power plants at Tonopah would resort to pumping from their local
aquifers. To see the negative ramifications of such an act, one needs
to look no further than to the depleted aquifers of Black Mesa, to the
north. Not if, but when the Tonopah aquifers run dry, power production
would decrease to whatever diminished level the sewage plants upstream
could support.
Pumping of groundwater at Tonopah will only delay the day of reckoning.
Even today, sixty percent of Arizona's population relies on groundwater
for its domestic water needs. Thus, if history is an indicator,
Arizona will soon tap its desert aquifers. When the aquifers make
their final retreat, CAP customers will discover a new reality. With
insufficient cooling water available at Tonopah, both nuclear and
gas-fired generating stations will curtail output. Unless some of CAP's
then diminished supply of Colorado River water is diverted directly to
the power plants, a downward spiral of SRP power production will
ensue.
Any
decrease in water or power deliveries would strain the economy and
ultimately, the population of Southern Arizona. In subsequent years, the
price of both water and power could exceed many Arizonian’s ability to
pay. Unable to revert to its former ranching, mining and semi-rural
economy, the outlying suburbs of Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties
would be the first to go. Old copies of Arizona Highways Magazine
might look new again. Ghost towns, like Casa Grande, Arizona could
feature both Hohokam ruins and abandoned regional shopping centers,
which have gone to seed. Once again, a complete way of life could vanish
from the Valley of the Sun.
This is Chapter 2 of a four-part series about coal and water in the
Southwest. Whether in power plants or homes, the burning of Navajo
Reservation, Black-Mesa-Coal degrades lasting environmental and health
effects created by the burning of Black Mesa coal in both power plants
and homes on the Navajo Reservation, Read Chapter 3.
By James McGillis at 04:31 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link
