H20 IN SOUTHWESTERN AMERICA by Jonathan Rubin
The Colorado River is a resource for 40 million Americans or nearly one-eighth our country. It serves as a water supply for farming, and for people’s daily water needs in seven states: New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona in the southwest, and the more northern states of California, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. Areas of this national wealth, the river and the lands along its banks, are preserved as national parks and national wilderness areas. This was implemented mainly by the conservation movement a century ago,and has become especially poignant as these national wealth regions are becoming depleted of H20, the resource necessary for life. In 1922 these seven states signed the Colorado River Compact, concerning the distribution of Colorado River H20 supply to these states. Currently, a problem exists due to drought as the Colorado now meets only one half the water supply agreed to in the 1922 Compact. California is suffering its worst drought in over a century, and the Colorado River supply is a factor in this drought. The decreased amount of H20 from the Colorado River is affecting California, and since California is the world’s fourth largest economy, the H20 supply will affect economics also.
The levels of H20 levels are also so low now in Lake Mead, which the Colorado River flows into, that the lake’s level on 1/23/23 only rose to 1040 feet. Lake Mead is on the Nevada-Arizona border and supplies H20 to 25 million people. If levels drop to 1025 feet, more severe cuts in water supplied to farmers and consumers than those already mandated by the 1922 Compact will need to be made. The height of the H20 level in Lake Mead must be 950 feet as a minimum for the generation of hydroelectric power from Hoover Dam. Below 895 feet, H20 will no longer flow past the dam, a condition called ‘deadpool.” The California government now mandates rationing H20. According to Eric Kahn, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, “there exists a greater use of H20 than nature is going to provide.”
California suffered severe flooding recently with considerable property damage. This might make it seem they have an abundance of H20 yet ironically, as explained above, the drought in California is the worst in about a century.
With relatives by marriage in Colorado, California and Arizona these severe droughts are of concerns for me.
The fact is that despite the agendas of POTUS 45, science, climate change and concerns about the environment should not have been ignored and rejected in his administration. POTUS 45, inconsiderate of science, climate change, the environment and human life, compromised our environment for corporate greed and plunder. With POTUS 45 ignoring the environment, considerable H20 shortage, property damage and destruction by flooding have already occurred from climate change. These problems resulted from corporate plundering, and a lack of conscience regarding human sustainability that compounded massive real property destruction.
The Arctic region and Greenland have experienced massive ice glaciers melting due to climate change, causing a rise in the H20 level in the Gulf of Mexico as well as other areas. There has also been a rise in the H20 temperature in this important H20 area, the Gulf, which is causing flooding and hurricanes as the warm air unleashes more moisture into the atmosphere. The floods and hurricanes have already caused billions of dollars of property damage while endangering the national navy base in Virginia. It must be understood that climate change, beside being a real property problem, is also a national security issue.