On Monday, May 22, the lower basin states on the Colorado River announced an agreement to cut their use of the river's water by about 13% over the next three years.
The deal avoids federal intervention for now and offers a short-term fix to the long-term issues related to global warming and over consumption of the river by the seven states in the region that depend on it.
Sam Fuqua speaks with Professor Jack Schmidt, Director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, about the agreement.
Sam Fuqua: So give us your overall quick take on this deal announced Monday for the lower basin states.
Jack Schmidt: Well I think you have to start somewhere. I mean, there's countless analogies, you can only start a path one step at a time.
So this is one step and we ought to congratulate that a step has been made.
The agreement essentially averages out to reducing lower basin consumption by a million acre feet, which, as you say, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 to 15% reduction.
In light of this year's big runoff, that sort of gets us into the range where we are matching consumptive use with runoff right now if we use the averages of the past.
I think that the other attributes we ought to mention about this deal, one is this deal is accomplished largely by paying farmers not to farm.
Is that sustainable? We don't even know if this money's going to be available, if the whole system collapses.
That ought to be kept in mind.
The next thing is, if you look over the long term, are those sums of money going to be available in perpetuity in the future?
I think that's a serious question.
Sam Fuqua: Well let me stop you there, just so listeners are clear on (this.)
So there's over, is it over a billion dollars in federal money that's in this deal in the form of grants?
And if I heard you correctly, most of that money is going to go to farmers to pay them not to grow.
Jack Schmidt: Yes, the details of all of this are still a bit foggy.
Some money is going to go to cities certainly.
And Nevada's going to decrease some of its use.
It's hard to squeeze any more water out of Nevada, but most of the money has to go to agriculture because agriculture is the biggest user of water.
Sam Fuqua: And you know, a billion is a big number, but in the scheme of a federal budget, it's not that big.
I mean, could this be part of a longer term fix, continuing to pay farmers not to grow water intensive crops?
Jack Schmidt: Sure, of course that's possible if the federal government wants to spend that.
I think what's important here is, let's sort of use some very round numbers.
With this reduction basin-wide water use is going to be probably somewhere in the realm of 13 and a half million acre feet, which is sort of the average water supply for the 21st century.
Things sort of match.
But what this doesn't get us is any significant recovery of reservoir storage, that's important, we're going to need to cut even more.
And then we need to remember that all the climate change projections predict that there'll be even greater reductions of additional one to 3 million acre feet by 2050.
So these cuts are only the beginning of a series of significant cuts.
And is that all going to be accomplished by continuing to pay massive amounts out of the Federal Treasury?
That's going to be a significant debate in the future.
Sam Fuqua: I've read that one of the big crops that needs a lot of water and is part of agriculture in this region is alfalfa, (it) feeds cows.
Is reducing meat consumption, just to connect it back to, you know, plant-based diet versus so much animal food in our diet part of the solution?
I don't want to go outside your area of expertise, but it seems to me that reducing the amount of water that goes to crops that feed animals for human consumption may be part of a solution.
What do you think?
Jack Schmidt: Well, let's just look at the numbers.
Agriculture uses between 70 and 80% of all the water in the basin.
The use by municipalities is much less.
Recent studies published in Nature (magazine) and reported widely suggested about 55% of all the agricultural crops are used for livestock feed, particularly in the upper basin, and growing alfalfa in the summertime in the Imperial Valley.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this water crisis might not actually be all that challenging if we begin to seriously reallocate where we use water.
So you are completely right when you're using more than half of the water for livestock feed, you need to seriously ask a question of whether that's the way we want to proceed in the future.
This story from KGNU was shared with KSUT via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico including KSUT.
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