How to make the Colorado River sustainable for the long term
The Colorado River Basin is in the midst of a sustainability crisis.
climate change and severe droughtWith historical overallocation of the river, have caused water users to quickly drain the main reservoirs of the system to their lowest levels since construction.
Prior water management actions, such as urban water conservation, investments in infrastructure efficiencyY reductions in water supply, have bought Colorado River water users time. But that time is now running out. Some water users are already experimenting dire effects of this crisis, while others are preparing for the cuts that are on the horizon.
Policymakers in the Colorado River Basin are at a critical time. They have an opportunity to avoid more severe impacts of the crisis by implementing policy and management changes that go beyond the relatively gradual steps taken so far.
How do we find sustainability in the long term?
However, negotiating such major changes is extremely challenging, especially given the complex legal structure of water rights in the basin, the diverse demands of its users, and the uncertainty about how much water will be available in the future.
This raises the question: How can watershed policymakers create transformative change that advances the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River in the midst of this crisis?
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Taking advantage of our experience study transitions in water management through the lenses of water resources engineering Y collaborative policy makingWe offer three procedural and substantive suggestions that can help Colorado River Basin policymakers achieve transformative change.
1. Get away from a set amount of water
First, lawmakers must stabilize the Colorado River system, which means that water use does not exceed water availability. However, because the river flow is expected to continue to decline as temperatures rise, any stabilization solution must be adaptable to changes in water availability as they occur.
One way to achieve this is to change system-wide indicators of water availability that trigger water management actions. Basin managers currently use slow-response reservoir levels (which can also be confused by complex water accounting) for this purpose. A more responsive indicator, such as an input 5-year moving average, could be used in the near term to minimize reliance on declining storage.
In the longer term, basin managers could also consider a adaptive approach used in other areas of the west which converts fixed-quantity water rights into shares of the total amount of water available, with the share allocation tailored to account for the existing water rights priority structure. The total amount of available water could be adjusted to slowly refill reservoirs, which would serve to mitigate large water shortages in dry years. This additional step would help the system move beyond stabilization and toward a longer-term recovery.
2. Prioritize ideas to reduce uncertainty
Moving to the type of management regime described above is likely to mean painful cuts for water users throughout the Colorado River Basin for years to come. However, it could create more long-term predictability and reliability, values that basin managers hold. previously stated agreement around.
Managing a smaller known amount of water is often easier than managing the unknown. However, achieving this requires that all water users, including historically marginalized tribes and environmental groups, have a a fair seat at the negotiating table to reduce uncertainty about the future uses and needs of water.
3. Think beyond ‘how to share outages’
Finally, policymakers need to broaden their concept of “water sustainability” in the Colorado River Basin. For thriving communities and economies, water is a means, not an end. Beyond the direct use of water for human, public, and ecological health, water enables food production and power generation.
Expanding our thinking from “how to share water reductions” to “how to maintain regional food and energy security” opens up new opportunities for negotiation and collaboration beyond the traditional “zero sum” mentality.
These could include investing newly allocated federal funds for drought mitigation on improving the efficiency of agricultural water use, supporting the clean energy transition, and conserving ecosystems to achieve more holistic sustainability goals, rather than temporarily buying more time through short-term conservation measures.
Transforming the management of the Colorado River Basin to mitigate the current water crisis and achieve long-term water sustainability requires changing not only policies, but also the way we think about water use and needs.
The three suggestions presented above can help policymakers meet this moment of historic challenge and historic opportunity by moving beyond incremental change and fostering a new era of solutions for the Colorado River.
Margaret Garcia, Ph.D, is an assistant professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. Elizabeth A. Koebele, Ph.D., is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she researches the use and implications of collaborative approaches to governance of water resources. reach them in m.garcia@asu.edu Y ekoebele@unr.edu.