"Desert Water" by Hal Crimmel (edited)

Above: Desert Water - The Future of Utah's Water Resources - Hal Crimmel (edited) 234 pages.

Utah does not have a water crisis.

I completed reading this book today.

This book is an anthology of thirteen essays/articles about Utah water. I picked it up at the John Wesley Powell River Museum in Green River, UT last Thursday, 13 September 2018.

It was at Green River that The Mediator and Mwah (sic) had terminated our motorcycle ride through southern Utah. Thereafter each of us rode to our respective homes, The Mediator to Durango, CO, and Mwah (sic) to Park City, UT.

The compiler of the book, Hal Crimmel, is an English professor at Weber State University. The authors of the various articles he includes in his anthology are professors and essayists with knowledge of Utah water issues.

Here are my take-aways:

Utah does not have a water crisis.

85% of Utah's water goes to agriculture... mostly alfalfa for cattle. An acre of alfalfa consumes ten times as much water as an acre of "subdivision." So, counter intuitively, the more people move to Utah, the more water becomes available. An acre of new subdivision takes an acre of what was once farm land (10x the water usage) off line.

There are, of course, costs of extended water infrastructure to bring water to a larger population. But, the problem is not water availability.

Also, this is not to say that there are not some jurisdictions that for localized reasons may have water shortages. In aggregate, however, the statement, "Utah doesn't have a water problem," holds true.

90% of the water consumed by the Wasatch Front, where 75% of Utah's 3MM citizens reside, comes from the Bear River, Ogden River, Logan River, Provo River... and smaller Wasatch streams... drainages. 10% of the Wasatch Front's water comes from a "basin transfer" where, through the Central Utah Project, water from Strawberry Reservoir - Green River drainage water otherwise headed for the Colorado River - is transferred into the Great Basin (Wasatch Front).

The system is set up with numerous mountain reservoirs which enable storage availability for down water periods.

Great Salt Lake Caveat

Utah is in a twenty year long drought. Should the drought be sustained for another twenty years and population continue to grow, the level of the Great Salt Lake would decline to record low levels.

Because of the sustained drought, less water would be available in the drainage, so proportionately more water, otherwise available to feed the Great Salt Lake, would have to be diverted for human and agricultural consumption.

To the extent that Wasatch snows benefit from Great Salt Lake "lake effect," snowfall and overall water volume for the Wasatch could reduce (vicious cycle?). Wildlife, mainly migratory birds, around the Great Salt Lake could be harmfully effected.

Utah's Backstop (dirty little secret)

Utah, the nation's second driest state, uses more water per capita than any other state. By national standards, Utahns are incredibly wasteful with water.

Utah water users, mainly farmers and ranchers, operate under a regimen of "use it or lose it." Much water is wasted when a farmer, who may not need all the water he has been allocated, or inherited from prior generations, doesn't want to lose his rights, so he wastes.

St. George, UT, taking one example, has double the per capita water usage of San Francisco, Seattle, or Chicago. The problem here is that St. George water rates are so low as to not encourage conservation. Real rates are subsidized by property and sales taxes. Utahn's, who make a big deal about being free marketeers, are socialists... and wasteful at that... when it comes to water usage.

The good news here, is that should Utah, because of population growth and ongoing drought, start to feel the squeeze on water, adopting proper, market based pricing could ensure long term an available supply of water through greater conservation. There is a big cushion of water wastage to work with.

Arizona, Nevada, and California, lower Colorado River Compact states, DO have a water problem.

The Colorado river is over allocated. Because of systemic drought conditions over the last twenty years, the Colorado River has a lower flow than when the Law of the River Treaty (The Colorado River Compact) was first signed, to be administered by the US Bureau of Reclamation, in 1922.

In 1922 the flow of the Colorado was deemed to be consistently in excess of 15 million acre feet. Some years, before 1922, the flow had reached 17 million acre feet. Today, after twenty years of drought, the average flow of the Colorado is 13 million acre feet.

The problem is that the allocation between the upper compact states and the lower compact states was done by volume, not by percentage. The Treaty calls for the three lower compact states, California, Arizona, and Nevada, to receive 7.5 million acre feet. Of that amount, California has first dibs on four million acre feet. The upper compact states, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, are also supposed to get 7.5 million acre feet.

Two dams were built, Hoover Dam in the '30's and Glen Canyon Dam in the late '50's, to provide an insurance policy for bad years and a regulatory mechanism to manage the river flow to meet the compact standards. Lake Powell, backed up by Glen Canyon Dam, has enough storage capacity, accounting for evaporation, to hold four times the lower compact requirement of 7.5 million acre feet... in other words, four years reserve.

Houston, we have a problem. Lake Powell is now below 50% capacity and downriver, Lake Mead, is only 30% capacity, not far from dead pool.

Currently, Powell is being disproportionately depleted to give Mead some breathing room. When I was at Lee's Ferry last week I witnessed a very robust river flow down river from Powell and Glen Canyon Dam, heading into The Grand Canyon and Lake Mead, 200 miles downstream.

A day later, I observed a dried up Hite Marina at what was once the upper reaches of Lake Powell.

Because Lake Powell is at historic lows, environmentalists see an opportunity to drain it in its entirety for good. Ever since uber environmentalist Edward Abbey penned the novel "The Monkey Wrench Gang (obviously, by its title, a horrifically racist book) in the '60's, about a gang of rag tags conspiring to blow up Glen Canyon Dam, they have regretted the dam was ever built in the first place and have lobbied to have it decomissioned.

The impending Colorado River water shortage problem has been managed partly by upper compact states, including Utah, not using their entire allocation... but, selling it down river, and that is already after a shortage in upper state contractual volume, after the lower compact's 7.5 million acre feet has been sent down stream. In other words, the over allocated river, despite lower volumes, has met its recent year obligations with Powell and Mead reservoir depletion.

St. George Pipe

The challenge of meeting the lower compact 7.5 million acre feet obligation will become even more difficult if St. George, UT, the fastest growing city above fifty thousand people in the United States, is granted its desire to put a billion dollar pipe into Lake Powell to pump, over three thousand feet of elevation change, 500K acre feet of water.

The St. George pipe would use up the Utah allocation from the Compact and stop Utah's "sold" water from going down river.

Opponents of the St. George pipeline project say water wasting St. George-ites should meet their water needs via market pricing and conservation.

Unsustainable Southwest?

Without a radical change in the volume of the Colorado River... or without a renegotiated treaty... the lower states are in big trouble, water wise. And, so the saying goes.... "whiskey is for drinkin', water is for fightin'. Hold on to your seats... there are big water issues ahead.

Back in 1869, John Wesley Powell himself forecast the water problems we are seeing today. He noted that large scale population centers in the western United States were unsustainable.

Powell's sentiment was echoed in Marc Reisner's seminal book on western water, published in the early '90's, "Cadillac Desert." Reisner noted that in the grand scheme of things, the Colorado River is a meager, unreliable stream.

Moreover, Reisner's book showed how the Colorado River's extreme salt content rapidly renders unusable agricultural lands that it once watered. We are seeing lands taken off line for over salinity in the Imperial Valley today, to validate Reisner's forecast.

Wrap Up

Notwithstanding drought conditions, Utah, relatively speaking is in pretty good shape water wise. Utah can legally up its draw from the Colorado to help St. George... and drought conditions don't pose, now, a great threat to Wasatch Front water users... particularly given the ability to take agriculture off line and/or via introducing market pricing to reduce the state's incredible waste of water.

To be fair...

Several of the book's articles point to more dire conclusions than my summary (buttressed by other articles in the book) suggests. For that reason the book is balanced.

The piece on the fracking boom and potential tar sands boom in the Uinta Basin forecasts a scary scenario when it comes to the high requirement for water for both fracking/drilling and tar sands extraction.

Some predict contamination of ground water coming from chemicals used in fracking/drilling.

If you're interested in this subject... and you should be... this is a good quick read to get a balanced understanding of the state (not State) of Utah water.