The Colorado River Ain't Gonna Fix Itself.... We're Going to Have to Do That Thing Nobody Wants
Restricting what we take from the river isn't going to get us what we need.
You may have seen the news that the White House has proposed cutting the allotted amount of Colorado River water that each state takes from it. That’s not going to make anyone happy, and it’s also not going to make anything better or solve any problems.
Due to the combined effects of drought and global warming, the Colorado would be suffering bigly even if it weren’t for people in the American west needing its water and the power it generates. That need is not something we should be debating or pointing fingers over. Regardless of how we got here, water from the Colorado is an integral part of countless systems we have in place, and we need it.
And the thing is, it would be reasonably easy to multiple the water that’s in it, via a national water grid. If the President wants to make big proclamations to the states about the Colorado, then the one he’s making now is the wrong one. The right one would be to impose a national water grid.
Oh, it would infuriate many. Every state, county, municipality, private landowner, Native American nation, and everything else the pipelines would cross would all scream and sue the government.
But as bad as the water situation is now, in 10 years it will be worse. In 50 years it will be far worse. In 100 years the river could well be completely dry and much of the west will be uninhabitable. But I don’t think we’d let it get that far. Sometime in that next century, a national water grid will no longer be optional, and some President is going to have to do the unpopular thing and use Eminent Domain to force the grid. He’ll be hated for it, and it will literally save the nation.
A national water grid would not just save the west, but the east as well. Because while changing climate patterns are drying up the west, they’re soaking the east. These patterns will continue to increase according to every climate model we have. Seasonal flooding will continue to devastate communities in the eastern half of the country. Unless we build a national water grid.
The basic plot would be to take water from the Mississippi and pipeline it to the top of the Colorado. Take as much as is necessary to keep the Mississippi’s flood basins empty and ready for action, and as much as is necessary to keep all the reservoirs on the Colorado at maximum capacity. There is more than enough water to do this.
A more advanced grid would add many more rivers and reservoirs to the system nationwide. No part of the country need ever experience catastrophic flooding, and no part of the country need ever have another water shortage.
Invasive species are one of the problems preventing us from doing this. Now the institutions that fight against invasive species are good and they’re right, but it’s the lesser of the two problems. It’s one we’re going to have to take for the team. And the reality is that nearly all the invasive species that a water grid would move around are already there… this became clear when I did my Skeptoid episode on this.
Cutting the states’ allotments is stupid and will not solve the problem. We only have to do it because we’ve not taken the harder steps that we really need to.