EDITORIAL: The Great Western Water Grab, Part Three


Read Part One
The website Water Education Colorado posted an interesting article yesterday, written by reporter Jerd Smith.
Oops! 40,000 acre-feet of water slipped through the cracks at Lake Powell
An agreement from 2007 requires the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to ‘balance’ with the shortages in Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the two largest water reservoirs in the American West — with occasional downstream releases from Lake Powell. Apparently, the managers at Lake Powell miscalculated the most recent release by 40,000 acre-feet, which is roughly enough water to irrigate 20,000 acres of corn, or supply 80,000 homes for up to two years.
Water district managers in Colorado complained about the release, but were told that the mistake was within the ‘margin of error’ allowed by the 2007 agreement.
The American Southwest has experienced many errors where water is concerned, over the past century.  Some experts contend that the filling of Lake Powell, beginning in 1963, was, in and of itself, a huge error.  The reservoir has not been full since 1983, and it loses about 375,000 acre-feet of water annually to evaporation.  That’s about 10% of all the water that flowed into Lake Powell in 2021.
The growing water crisis in the Southwest is partly from natural causes, but mostly the result of unsustainable human uses — nearly all of which are related to agriculture.
Also posted yesterday on the Water Education Colorado website, an article by Shannon Mullane that begins like this:
Colorado River talks are back in gear after stalling earlier this year, but little progress has been made on key sticking points, like how wat …

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