June 25, 2014

A Thirst for Conservation

The United States is the driest it has been in the last 500 years.  If United States citizen’s water consumption happens to remain unchanged, states like California and New Mexico are predicted to have only 20 years of freshwater left.  And if consumption stays as the same rate, there is a predicted shortcoming of 3.2 million acre-feet of water by 2060.  That is approximately five times what the city of Los Angeles consumes every year.  In 50 years, availability of clean drinking water will be more of a pressing issue than access to oil.  Even in present day, water is an issue globally and locally.  Currently, 780 million people don’t have access to safe drinking water; 10 million of those are in developed countries such as the United States.  More locally, the Southwest has been struggling to supply the amount of water that is in demand.  Most of this is due to desert agriculture and large desert cities, such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Per capita, the United States uses 350 liters of water daily; while Europe uses 200, and Africa uses 15. However, when comparing the United States to Africa, water scarcity is the equivalent.  What one can deduce from this is that the United States is using water that it doesn’t have. However excessive water consumption is not the only culprit.  In the Unites States, 40% of rivers and 46% of lakes are polluted beyond the point of human use.  A lot of this pollution comes from sources such as eutrophication, organic matter pollution, and saline intrusion.  The deterioration of our water cuts our water supply nearly in half. Unfortunately, globally and locally water usage isn’t decreasing and water availability is.

Water policy is becoming increasingly important as resources dwindle. Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries, and if water flow continues to decrease (as predicted), conflicts between those countries will rise. Think about the issue America is currently facing with foreign oil.  Now, imagine those tensions, but heightened and about water rather than oil.  After analyzing the excessive water usage in the Southwest and studying the Clean Water Act, the Rio Grande River Compact, and Colorado River Compact, one can conclude that the Southwest ought to implement water management policies to regulate unnecessary water usage in order to sustain water availability.

The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, signed the Clean Water Act in 1972 in order to instigate pollution control programs.  This act expanded on the Federal Pollution control act established in 1948. The Clean Water act makes it illegal to discharge pollutants into water without a permit, and all permits must be approved by the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, aka NPDES.  This system is designed to regulate point-source pollution. The act wanted to ensure that all navigable waters meet certain water quality standards. However, different waterways hold different water quality standards.

These standards are determined by four criteria: designated uses, water quality criteria, antidegradation policy, and general policies.  The designated water use ensures appropriate water use is taken into consideration.  When deciding an appropriate usage of the water source, the value of public water supply, protection of fish, wildlife, recreational waters, agricultural, industrial and navigational waterways are all taken into account.  A water quality criterion is site-specific and puts a limit on the toxicity of the water.  The antidegradation policy forces states to create a three tiered program to maintain and protect water sources.  The general policies include regulations for areas such as mixing zones, variance zones, and low flow zones.  These four criteria help regulate our water sources

This act has proven successful in the US, except it doesn’t directly address ground water.  This could be an issue with the popularization if Hydraulic Fracturing.  From current studies, Hydraulic Fracturing can pollute ground water used as community drinking water.  This could then hurt citizens of such communities, because they will not have access clean to water.

The Rio Grande River compact is an interstate compact that was signed in 1938 in the United States between Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.  The basic perimeters of the compact is that Colorado is required to deliver a certain amount of water to the New Mexico border, and New Mexico is required to do the same to the Texas border.  The exact amount of water is based off of water runoff, which is measured at index stations along the Rio Grande's headwaters. The compact includes a schedule of mandatory water deliveries based on stream flow data.  However the compact allows a system of debts and credits in water deliveries, under the right circumstances.

The Rio Grande River compact also has a minimum quality standard for the water delivered.  Water cannot be delivered unless the sodium ions in the water do not exceed 45% of the total positive ions when the total dissolved solids in the water exceed 350ppm.  This ensures the water to be drinkable.

In the years directly following the compact’s establishment, Colorado completely ignored the rules of compact. The result of Colorado’s non-compliance was a lawsuit in  1966 between New Mexico and Texas versus Colorado.  The resolution of the lawsuit was that Colorado owed New Mexico one-million acre feet of water, and New Mexico owed Texas 500,000 acre feet of water. The compact holds a twist, or loophole, if a state reservoir overflows and that state owes water to another state, their water debt is dissolved. This is relevant because in 1985 Colorado’s Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs overflowed.  This meant that the remaining 500,000 acre feet of debt that Colorado owed to New Mexico was cleared.   However, New Mexico’s remaining debt to Texas was not cleared.

Having learned their lesson, when the reservoir almost overflowed again in 1996, water was pulled out of the reservoir and brought to the New Mexico desert.  Unfortunately, this didn’t help too much because most of the water partially evaporated before New Mexico could absorb it.  Currently, the pressure is on New Mexico to meet its delivery requirements to Texas.  In the dryer years (which occur increasingly more often), New Mexico is approximately 80,000 acre feet of water short.  The future of New Mexican water isn’t looking promising.  Data processed from the United States Geological Survey and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict water runoff to decrease across Colorado, and more importantly at the Colorado-New Mexico border. 

Currently, the Rio Grande Compact Commission is located in El Paso, Texas and they regulate the Rio Grande Compact.  There is a secretary of the Compact Commission who compiles data from stream flow for interested parties.  This data helps groups like the USGS and IPCC predict their statistics.  As water availability becomes an increasingly important issue, the Rio Grande Compact Commission’s power and importance will also increase.

The Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922 and involves 7 states, which are separated into two separate divisions.  The upper division includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; the lower division includes California, Nevada, and Arizona.  The compact states that the upper division must leave a minimum on 7,500,000 acre-feet for the lower division over every 10 years.  The compact allows for widespread irrigation of the Southwest, as well as the development of state and federal water works projects under the United States Bureau of Reclamation.  Such projects include the Hoover Dam and Lake Powel.

Until recently, there was a large surplus of water that went to California, who grew a dependency on it.  When looking at how many acre-feet of water per year each state uses, California is the highest at 4.4 million.  Second is Colorado with 3.86 million.  Next is Arizona with 2.85 million, and then Utah with 1.71 million.  Following that is Wyoming with 1.04 million, and New Mexico with .84 million (8).  Lastly, Nevada receives .3 million.  However the Colorado river water supply has been dwindling, and there will not be a surplus for California to use for much longer.   So in 2001, Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, signed an interim agreement that determined how water surplus from the Colorado River would be allocated between all of the states.  This created a fifteen-year deadline, which allowed California time to put water conservation management methods in place to decrease the state’s water dependence on Colorado River water surplus.

There is also growing concern for Nevada.  Nevada has the smallest allocation of water in the lower division, but their population is increasing at the highest rate.  In the near future the amount of water allowed to Nevada will not meet the needs of the communities there.  Despite this, Nevada’s Water Authority General Manager, Pat Mulroy, claims that she “does not support a water reallocation”.  Her reasoning is that all states in the river basin have grown, and therefor Nevada is not a special case.  She argues that Nevada will have to follow California’s footsteps in water management.

When the compact was signed in 1922, development was the main concern, not the environment.  The increasing usage of river water and the construction of dams are the two factors that negatively affect the environment the most. Dams are specifically harmful to native fish populations because they block fish passages, change the water temperature, reduce silt deposition, and hurt the balance of the overall ecosystem.  Excessive water withdrawal in the United States has deteriorated the river delta in Mexico.  At one point, the delta was green and lush due to the high silt deposit.  However, that once plentiful ecosystem is now desolate.

A lot has changed since the Colorado River Compact was signed in the 1920s.  First of all, our knowledge of climate change has significantly increased.   In addition, our populations and water usage has increased.  This river compact is currently the center of most water related issues in the United States, and most certainly will continue to be.

Due to the urgency of California’s 2016 deadline, it is the one state that has passed a water management policy law.  California’s main pull is their water recycling.  This is when treatment plants use reverse osmosis to clean wastewater to turn it into drinkable water.  Unfortunately, this lacks popular appeal because of the ‘yuck’ factor.  States like Colorado and New Mexico have conservation plans.  However, they are working on the legal aspect to turn these plans into policies.

Water policy is necessary for a sustainable future.  Without legal regulations, companies and communities are unlikely to reduce their water consumption.  Most of this resistance is due to the fact that communities are yet to be affected by the water shortage, and therefore do not understand the reality of it.  So, in conclusion, due to the decreasing water availability in the United States, particularly in the Southwest, the government ought to implement drastic new water conservation policies in order to ensure water security for the future.

1)Michael Snyder, “30 Facts About the Water Crisis that will Change the Lives of Every Person on the Planet”, The Economic Collapse, March 4th, 2013

2)Rio Grande Compact Commission, Rio Grande River Compact, March 18th, 1938

3)U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Water Pollution Control Act: Clean Water Act, November 27th, 2002

4)“Water Rights”, Colorado Division of Water Resources

5)Colorado River Compact Commission, Colorado River Compact, November 24th, 1922

6)“Plans and Policies” California state water resources control board