Colorado Water
Here's an opinion piece, written by Paul Larmer, from yesterday's Denver Post assailing current water policy in the west [January 23, 2005, "Pray for dry weather"]. He writes, "Early January surveys of snowpack show that the Colorado River Basin, which gathers runoff from Wyoming to Southern California, will receive 98 percent of 'normal' precipitation this year. If the rest of the winter meets historic averages, Lake Mead and Lake Powell - the West's most massive reservoirs which have shrunk over the past five years to 56 percent and 36 percent of capacity, respectively - will rise. That's good news not only for the recreationists who love to boat in the desert, but also for the tens of millions of people who rely on the river for agricultural and drinking water, including farmers in Arizona and urbanites in Las Vegas. But I wouldn't bet on the reservoirs filling up just yet. Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered through analysis of the growth rings of trees that drought is a persistent visitor to the West. Over the past 500 years, a half-dozen major droughts, some lasting many decades, have struck the Colorado River Basin, according to research from the university's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. So the current drought could last a long while, whether it is interrupted by an occasional wet year or not."
Update: Here's an article from the Denver Post about the signing of the Front Range water pact Saturday [January 23, 2005, "27 Front Range cities' water pact pledges to improve conservation"]. From the article, "The signing of the pact follows the release of the Statewide Water Supply Initiative, which found that Colorado likely will add another 2.8 million people by 2030. As a result, it will need at least another 202 million gallons of water annually. Currently, about 80 percent of Colorado's water supplies fall in the form of snow on the Continental Divide's west side. But about 80 percent of the population lives east of the divide. Fulfilling that need in the last century required massive construction projects to ship water from west to east, leading to bitter resentment among some residents of the Western Slope."
6:39:36 AM 
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