The real dirt on the Colorado River
Here’s what you won’t read in the New York Times.
“I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below…” — The Highwaymen, “Highwayman” (1985)
During a hiking trip to Colorado last August, a couple of friends and I spent a serene morning floating the gentle rapids of the Taylor River, a tributary of a tributary of the Colorado River. Our young raft guide told us the snowpack wasn’t awful, but too many early hot days had melted most of the high-elevation snow. The Taylor was lower than he’d ever seen. We kept scraping rocks he’d never encountered.
“For me personally, it’s like a new river,” he said.
Since then, snow drought conditions have worsened considerably across much of the Colorado River watershed. Folks in Rocky Mountain states — folks like our raft guide — have seen the changes firsthand.
So I felt a twinge of guilt writing this opinion essay for the New York Times, which published yesterday. Here’s how it starts:
Lake Mead is two-thirds empty. Lake Powell is even emptier.
Not for the first time, the seven Western states that rely on the Colorado River are fighting over how to keep these reservoirs from crashing — an event that could spur water shortages from Denver to Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
The tens of millions of people who rely on the Colorado River have weathered such crises before, even amid a stubborn quarter-century megadrought fueled by climate change. The states have always struck deals to use less water, overcoming their political differences to avert “dead pool” at Mead and Powell, meaning that water could no longer flow downstream.
This time, a deal may not be possible. And it’s clear who’s to blame.
Go ahead and read the whole thing. But in short, I argue that the river’s Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — aren’t doing nearly enough to conserve water and protect the reservoirs.
I laid out my views in the essay. But some of my reporting didn’t make the final cut, including a few illuminating comments from the state officials scrambling to strike a deal by Valentine’s Day — who may simply be fed up with each other.
Here’s what you won’t read in the New York Times.