The Impending Demise of the Colorado River
As most people in the Western United States know, we
are experiencing an extended drought. The aridness in the West has
resulted in a severely diminished flow of water along the Colorado River.
In fact, the river no longer discharges into the Sea of Cortez in
Mexico. From that now dormant coastal estuary, most wildlife
disappeared long ago. In 2022, with the advent of a limited
pilot-program, a tiny amount of Colorado River water will flow again to
the sea.
That is a hopeful sign during an otherwise bleak hydrological
environment in the West. Ironically, humankind’s misplaced desire to
control that once mighty river could result in a destructive wave
traveling from Glen Canyon Dam
all the way to the Sea of Cortez. Stay with me to the end of this
article to learn how such an apocalyptic fate for the iconic river is
possible.
Why
is the Colorado River failing? Historical and updated river-flow data
allows us to predict its demise. There is no longer an “if.” Now it is
all about “when.” As less rain falls and the snowpack diminishes in the
Upper Colorado River Basin,
another phenomenon takes hold. For some it consists of blind ignorance.
For many, it is the irrational human need to utilize and be wasteful
of water. Either scenario raises demand for water, as if it emanates
from an unlimited source.
One tankless water heater manufacturer promotes “endless hot water,
which is now available” with their system. A nearby neighbor in
Southern California defies current “one-day-each-week”
outdoor watering limits. He runs his lawn sprinklers daily, often
before sunrise to avoid detection, then follows up by hand-watering his
entire front yard. Each day, almost ten gallons of potable water flows
down the gutter past our house. Our front lawn is dead. His lawn is
lush, green, and currently going to seed. In Southern California and
now throughout the Southwest, a green lawn is the sure sign of a
scofflaw. The attitude of many people throughout the Southwest, is one
of entitlement. For them, cheating on their water budget or ignoring
their legal limits is a way of life.
In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the drought now brings Lake Powell
to its lowest elevation since initial filling in the 1960s. How low is
it? In April 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which
operates the major dams throughout the Colorado River system made a
surprise announcement. From Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Wyoming’s largest,
they released 500,000-acre-feet of water. From there, the water flowed
down the Green River, and then into the Colorado River. The plan was
to replenish and stabilize the water level in Lake Powell.
The USBR has touted this plan as a prudent way to keep power flowing
from the hydroelectric turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, at least through
2023. Ironically, the original public proposal for the Glen Canyon Dam,
promoted it as a “flood control dam,” not as a lynchpin in the
electrical grid. Because the reservoir was beautiful and grand when at
least half full, Lake Powell
also became an indispensable recreational resource. Few people
realized that the reservoir rested on soft and porous sandstone. In
addition to relentless evaporation, the reservoir “banks” about fifteen
percent of its water volume each year.
For almost fifty years, the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) operated near the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona. Utilizing coal mined at Black Mesa, Arizona,
its furnaces polluted the air, and its pumps withdrew vast quantities
of water from Lake Powell. While wasting over ten percent of its power
conveying its own cooling water and coal supply, NGS also broke records
for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution. Although there was
onsite wastewater recycling, losses due to both steam turbine
generation and cooling tower evaporation made the NGS the largest
single user of water in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
The main purpose of the NGS was to annually pump 50,000 acre-feet of
“excess” Colorado River water over four mountain ranges to both Phoenix
and Tucson, Arizona. Along the way, Arizona diverted vast amounts of
water into shallow desert aquifers near the Palo Verde Nuclear Power
Plant. The idea was to later mine that water from the desert and supply
it to Phoenix. Currently, a large aqueduct is under construction
there. Since the scheme has no precedent, no one knows if or for how
long this desert water mining will work.
Despite
the excessive air, water and ground pollution associated with the NGS,
for decades it was like the monster that would not die. Not until the
vast over development of natural gas resources
in the Four Corners Region did the NGS's economic costs outweigh its
job-related or power production benefits. In 2019, twenty years into a
regional drought of millennial proportions, the NGS finally shutdown.
If we are looking for a culprit in the current desiccated condition of
Lake Powell, the NGS would be a prime target for investigation. In fact,
the same flawed arguments that allowed the construction of Glen Canyon
Dam go hand in hand with the commissioning of the NGS in the mid-1970s.
In 2022, all of us who now rely on the Colorado River have both an
environmental and an economic bill to pay. How long can we collectively
afford to subsidize lush green golf courses in Page, Arizona, alfalfa
fields in the Imperial County, California, cotton growing in Pima
County, Arizona, or my neighbor’s green lawn? More importantly, do
humans have the capacity to create and implement a plan that will save
the Colorado River system? Taking shorter 
showers, eliminating public fountains and decorative turf will not be enough to turn that tide.
What we need now is a clear-eyed look at the entire Colorado Riverway,
from the high mountains to the low desert and everywhere in between.
Affected states still adhere to the outdated Colorado River Compact of
1922. A century ago, all the states touching the Colorado River
watershed agreed to over allocate its resources for generations to
come. Politics played its role, with water rights assigned according to
historical usage and population density. As a result, the compact
granted the irrigation district in Imperial County, California
(population 180,000), the largest single claim on Colorado River water.
Why? Because long before huge dams and hydroelectric power allowed for
the long-distance pumping of river water, inventive farmers directly
tapped the river. In fact, a Colorado River dike which broke early in
the 20th century resulted in the forming of the Salton Sea. Near
Blythe, California resourceful farming families have succeeded in
transforming the desert into cropland.
The
Colorado River Compact expires in 2026. Often acrimonious discussions
regarding its replacement are already underway. The participants include
the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), the Lower
Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada), Mexico and several tribal
nations. According to a 2019 federal Drought Contingency Plan
(DCP), as Lake Mead falls below 1,045’ elevation, the USBR must now
declare a “Stage 2b Water Shortage Emergency”. On August 8, 2022, the
reservoir stood at 1,229’ elevation, only four feet above a DCP Stage 3
declaration.
As a temporary measure, Congress recently approved $4 billion for
emergency drought mitigation within the Colorado River Basin. Much of
that money will go to pay Indian tribes and alfalfa growers in the
Imperial Valley not to plant crops. The various USBR shortage decrees
have flown by so quickly, it is hard for even the experts to keep track
of water allocations. As of August 16, 2022, a Department of Interior
declaration cut 2023 water allocations to Arizona by 21%, with smaller
cuts to Nevada and Mexico. Senior water rights in California 
assured that there would be no cuts to its water deliveries in 2023.
In a surprise move, the Department of the Interior also allowed the
acrimonious and unfruitful negotiations among the signatories to the “Law of the River”
to proceed. It is an election year, and no one wanted to restrict
anyone’s water rights further than already agreed upon. While Nero
fiddled, Rome burned. While recalcitrant negotiators wrangle over
cutting the allocations of others, but increasing their own, the
Colorado River is not participating in the discussions.
Protracted
negotiations or litigation will extend any true solution until it is
too late to save hydroelectric production at both Glen Canyon and Hoover
Dams. Achieving the “dead pool” elevation of 3,370’ at Lake Powell and
895’ at Lake Mead, when water can no longer pass through either dam,
becomes more likely over time. Prior to dead pool, there will be too
little water in the reservoirs to send down the penstocks and spin the
electrical turbines. The USBR interim plan to “balance the two pools”
will delay the inevitable, but not change the outcome.
In 2022 and 2023, a physical danger lurks in the “minimum power pool,”
coming soon to Lake Powell. With typical 20th century hubris, the
designers of Glen Canyon Dam did not anticipate a future time when its
hydroelectric plant would go offline. As of September 6, 2022, Lake
Powell was at an elevation of 
3,523’, or almost seventy-eight feet lower than two years prior. The lake’s elevation
rests just thirty-three feet above minimum power pool. At minimum
power pool, there will not be sufficient "head" for gravity to send
water down the penstocks and spin the turbines.
Unless weather patterns and water usage change drastically, that
critical level will come sometime in 2023. Below minimum power pool,
the reservoir will still have millions of acre-feet of sequestered
water. What it will lack is a safe method of releasing any of that
water through the dam. To fully grasp this eventuality, picture the
Grand Canyon becoming a permanent dry wash. Still, a potentially unsafe
method of water release from Glen Canyon Dam does exist. It involves
what are known as “diversion tunnels” or the “outlet works.”
To
facilitate construction of the dam in the 1950s, engineers first bored
two enormous tunnels through the canyon walls. They then constructed a
coffer dam, which temporarily diverted river water through the new
diversion tunnels. The resulting outlet works could divert and convey
even a large spring flood safely downstream. Luckily, no major floods
occurred until after the 1964 commissioning
of Glen Canyon Dam. Upon completion, crews dismantled the coffer dam,
and closed the enormous gates at the head of the diversion tunnels.
All went well until the spring of 1983. In anticipation of summer
electrical generation needs, the USBR kept Lake Powell at an elevated
level. As spring wore on, there were huge snowstorms in the Upper Basin
watershed, followed by rainstorms and rapid snow melt. Quickly, water
in Lake Powell reached the top of the dam. Only hastily constructed
plywood and lumber bulwarks atop the dam kept it from a disastrous
overtopping. Unable to divert sufficient water through the
hydroelectric plant, the operators “opened the floodgates,” better known
as the outlet works.
For
weeks, enormous outflows subjected the unlined sandstone tunnels to
unanticipated stress. As a result, the outflow ejected huge chunks of
raw sandstone downstream of the dam. Contemporary reports by persons
not authorized to speak publicly told of the dam humming or thrumming,
as if in major distress. Soon thereafter, the water level of Lake
Powell dropped far enough to allow closure of the outlet works and
resumption of water release solely through the hydroelectric station.
Chastened, the dam’s operators never again let the lake rise even close
to capacity prior to the end of spring runoff. Ironically, this
conservative approach to reservoir management meant that Lake Powell
would never again approach “full pool.”
The 2022 emergency release of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir has
bought the USBR one more year before the prospect of a minimum power
pool at Lake Powell. In their version of Two Card Monte, dam operators
are accepting 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge and
reducing deliveries downstream to Lake Mead by a similar amount. As Oz
famously said 
in
the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
Likewise, should we pay no attention to the huge amount of water
retained in Lake Powell?
If you were to write a disaster movie script,
you would include a scene in which veteran Glen Canyon Dam workers
face the prospect of reopening the compromised outlet works. In
releasing any remaining water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, they fear
the cracking and ultimate destruction of Glen Canyon Dam. In the next
scene, they would open the creaking gates of the outlet works. For a
time, everything would work correctly. Then, they would hear a low
harmonic sound emanating from the dam. Soon, the humming would become a
roar. Too late to save themselves, the workers would run for the
exits, only to have the dam disintegrate around them.
The
result would be the immediate draining of the second largest reservoir
in America. Almost immediately, the biggest flood on the Colorado River
since the creation of the Grand Canyon
would ensue. At Lake Mead, downstream, the wave would surge to a
height greater than any tsunami in history. As the surge created by the
wave would impinge on Hoover Dam, that too would disintegrate. Farther downstream,
the remaining dams would fall one after another. Within hours, the
once sequestered contents of the Colorado River would rush into the Sea
of Cortez, creating a saltwater tsunami.
Such a catastrophe cannot happen, you say. In 1983, the dam almost
failed. There is nothing to say that our next attempt to save the
Colorado River will not result in its untimely demise. Thousands of
years hence, descendants of survivors in the Southwest might tell tales
of a Great Flood, from which their ancestors survived. Other than not including an ark full of animals, that story has a familiar ring.
