WaterWired

CRS InFocus Report: 'Bureau of Reclamation - FY2021 Appropriations' Updated: 8 January 2021

CharlesV. Stern updated (8 January 2021) this CRS two-pager: 'Bureau of Reclamation - FY2021 Appropriations'.

Download CRS_InFocus_Report_USBR_FY2021_App_8Jan2021

Click on a graphic (or the ? in a blue box) to enlarge it or display it. 

Overview
The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), part of the Department of the Interior, is responsible for construction and operation of many of the large dams and water diversion structures in 17 coterminous western states. Reclamation’s original mission was to develop water supplies, primarily for irrigation to reclaim arid lands in the West. Today, its mission includes management, development, and protection of water and related resources. Reclamation’s mission area and geographic scope are narrower than the other principal federal water resource agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Reclamation manages hundreds of water storage and conveyance projects. These projects provide water to approximately 10 million acres of farmland and 31 million people. Reclamation is the largest wholesale supplier of water in 17 western states and the second-largest hydroelectric power producer in the nation. Reclamation facilities’ operations can be controversial, particularly in relation to effects on fish and wildlife species and conflicts among competing water users.

Reclamation’s role has evolved, and its focus has gradually shifted from construction of new water storage projects to operation and maintenance of existing projects. Reclamation also has expanded into new areas, including funding for water supply projects on tribal lands and in rural areas under congressionally authorized Indian water rights settlements and rural water supply projects, respectively. In addition, Congress has authorized Reclamation grants to nonfederal projects, including those for water reuse and recycling, conservation and efficiency, and desalination.

Reclamation’s Water and Related Resources account funds most agency activities, including construction, operation and maintenance, dam safety, ecosystem restoration, Indian water rights settlements, and most programmatic and grant authorities. Reclamation typically also requests funding for three smaller accounts: California Bay-Delta Restoration, the CentralValley Project Restoration Fund (which is offset by customer receipts), and the Policy and Administration account.

Barely two pages left to read.

Enjoy!

"Now that I have lived through an actual plague, I understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked fat people lying on couches." - Unknown

Radioactive Racism? Nuclear Waste as an Agent of Oppression

I'm a big fan of serendipity. These days I'm inclined to find it more often on the Internet than other places. Today's post is an example.

A Tweet from Audrey Sawyer of Ohio State University started it off: 

Teaching a new module on environmental justice in a grad-level seminar this semester. Have lecture content you're proud of or an EJ topic/pub you'd like me to bring up in my class? Please let me know! I'm especially interested in EJ topics beyond water.

Audrey's post was followed by a response from Lara Fowler of Penn State, which identified a "radioactive racism" NPR article about (from 2005) a Utah tribe, the Skull Valley Goshutes, whose reservation has been divided over the possibility of the storage of around 4,000 nuclear waste canisters. As someone who used to dabble (one really doesn't 'dabble' here) in the nuclear industry when I worked in Nevada I was curious if this storage was realized.    

That led me to a Google search, which turned up the paper, Environmental Racism: Nuclear Waste as an Agent of Oppression? by Andrea Boeckers of Merrimack College.  

Download Environmental Racism

Abstract
This research seeks to analyze the decision-making processes of managing nuclear waste for countries dealing with this problem, as well as the interplay between national and local governments, private companies, the populace, and native nations. The long-term storage of nuclear waste is a serious global problem, and despite the millions of people enjoying the benefits of nuclear power, most refuse to accept the burdens associated with its waste. The driving question for this research largely ties to how governments attempt to designate who will bear the burden of these wastes. When a problem needs to be solved, yet there are no clear, easy solutions, the weight is often placed on those who are either politically, economically, socially, or geographically disadvantaged. Through a deeper investigation into the global community, Australia, the United States, and the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe, we can see how these issues unfold and how affected communities attempt to fight back.

This is a useful paper. It covers not just the Skull Valley Goshutes but an Australian site as well.

And here is a 2012 article from the Salt Lake Tribune stating that the Skull Valley site plan will not be implemented. 

I'm unsure the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe really had sovereignty over its land. I doubt such a facility would have been allowed so close to Salt Lake City.

Enjoy!

"Certain privileges make liars of all men." - Unknown

Colorado River Blues Redux: Going, Going...Gone? (2008 --> 2021)

This is a repost of an article I published on 2 December 2008: Colorado River Blues: Going, Going...I did not intend to add 'redux' to the title and repost it until a few minutes ago. I read a Tweet from friend and colleague Michael van der Valk, who re-Tweeted the post preceding this one, Ground Water: The Water Budget Myth, one of my all-time favorites. I had been reading current depressing articles about water woes in the Colorado Basin. So I thought it might be enlightening to see what was occurring in late 2008. Some of the links may be broken. I added a CRB map, which was absent from the original post.

Interesting to see Wall Street's current interest in the CRB. Could The Water Knife be far behind? 

Enjoy! 

This post is appropriate, given that I am in Las Vegas for the NGWA's Ground Water Expo. The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the NGWA. I'll be curious to see whether the economy affects attendance. The Expo is in Las Vegas every other year, and I think we broke 6,000 attendees in 2006.

I am staying at the venerable Las Vegas Hilton, which, when I arrived in Nevada 32 years ago, was the second-largest hotel in the world after a Moscow hotel. Now I doubt if it is in the Top 15 in Las Vegas, much less the world. That's how this town has changed. The State of Nevada had fewer than 500,000 residents when I arrived in 1976; now, the Las Vegas area alone has over 2 million.

But the LVH has kept up with the times, though - Barry Manilow is playing the showroom. Awesome, dude!

I'm ensconced in a huge suite on the third floor, all for just $125 per night. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this treatment. But I'm still being charged $13.99/24 hours for WiFi, so I guess I'm not THAT special.

Great seeing Kevin McRay, NGWA's Executive Director, and Brent Murray, chair of AGWSE, NGWA's largest division. Two good guys.

Sorry for the digression.

So here is the "appropriate" post, but it's is not good news. Bad enough the economy is tanking, but alas, the Colorado River is not doing much better, according to Patty Henetz's article, published in the 29 November 2008 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

The drought gripping Utah, Southern California and the rest of the Southwest this century shows no sign of ending. Scientists see it as a permanent condition that, despite year-to-year weather variations, will deepen as temperatures rise, snows dwindle, soils bake and fires burn.

That's grim news for all of us in the West, perhaps most especially for the 10 million residents along the northern stretch of the Colorado River -- Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado -- whose water rights are newer, and therefore junior, to those in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

Making matters worse, the Colorado -- the 1,450-mile-long lifeline that sustains more than 30 million souls and 3.5 million acres of farmland in seven states, 34 tribal nations and Mexico -- is in decline, scientists warn.

But the best is yet to come.

Dozens of scientific studies issued since 2004 have documented the Colorado's decline.

The river's annual flow has averaged 11.7 million acre-feet this decade, according to federal records. In 2002, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation measured only 6.2 million acre-feet passing Lee's Ferry below Glen Canyon Dam, the lowest flow of the decade. Even after this year's above-average precipitation, Lake Powell and Lake Mead combined are at 57 percent capacity.

A 2007 U.S. Geological Survey report found that, by 2050, rising temperatures in the Southwest could rival those of the nation's fabled droughts, including the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Hotter weather is expected to reduce Colorado River runoff by at least 30 percent during the 21st century.

If the USGS is correct, and if this century's trend persists, average annual flow in the Colorado could fall to 8.2 million acre-feet per year.

Imagine that. The Law of the River requires 9 million acre-feet to pass Lee's Ferry on the way to the Lower Basin and Mexico. Under a strict interpretation of the law, the Upper Basin could be left with nothing.

You can read the rest of the article. Even Peter Gleick and Pat Mulroy would not be able to make things right.

But at least Las Vegas is using less water these days.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the CRB...I was in the Phoenix area (Tempe, actually) several weeks ago with some colleagues. At Arizona State University's remarkable Decision Theater we got a taste of high-tech decision-making. It is part of the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS).

We heard some interesting things, but one in particular made an impression on me. One of the folks told us that in the Greater Phoenix area, if you go to a local politician/water manager with a predictive model that shows a future with less precipitation, you're out of luck. They're not even thinking about that possibility. Heads in the sand, or what?

I think I am getting close to finding someone who is "thinking about the unthinkable" regarding Southwest water and depopulation, particularly in the Colorado River Basin.

"Las Vegas is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon.  Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor's orgy is now a democratic institution - 'Topless Pizza Lunch'."  ~Alistair Cooke

"Do you know what we call tourists in Las Vegas? We call them 'marks'." - desk clerk, San Remo Hotel, Las Vegas, NV

This is a repost of an article I published on 2 December 2008: Colorado River Blues: Going, Going...I did not intend to add 'redux' to the title and repost it until a few minutes ago. I read a Tweet from friend and colleague Michael van der Valk, who re-Tweeted the post preceding this one, Ground Water: The Water Budget Myth, one of my all-time favorites. I had been reading current depressing articles about water woes in the Colorado Basin. So I thought it might be enlightening to see what was occurring in late 2008. Some of the links may be broken. I added a CRB map, which was absent from the original post.

Interesting to see Wall Street's current interest in the CRB. Could The Water Knife be far behind? 

Enjoy! 

This post is appropriate, given that I am in Las Vegas for the NGWA's Ground Water Expo. The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the NGWA. I'll be curious to see whether the economy affects attendance. The Expo is in Las Vegas every other year, and I think we broke 6,000 attendees in 2006.

I am staying at the venerable Las Vegas Hilton, which, when I arrived in Nevada 32 years ago, was the second-largest hotel in the world after a Moscow hotel. Now I doubt if it is in the Top 15 in Las Vegas, much less the world. That's how this town has changed. The State of Nevada had fewer than 500,000 residents when I arrived in 1976; now, the Las Vegas area alone has over 2 million.

But the LVH has kept up with the times, though - Barry Manilow is playing the showroom. Awesome, dude!

I'm ensconced in a huge suite on the third floor, all for just $125 per night. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this treatment. But I'm still being charged $13.99/24 hours for WiFi, so I guess I'm not THAT special.

Great seeing Kevin McRay, NGWA's Executive Director, and Brent Murray, chair of AGWSE, NGWA's largest division. Two good guys.

Sorry for the digression.

So here is the "appropriate" post, but it's is not good news. Bad enough the economy is tanking, but alas, the Colorado River is not doing much better, according to Patty Henetz's article, published in the 29 November 2008 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

The drought gripping Utah, Southern California and the rest of the Southwest this century shows no sign of ending. Scientists see it as a permanent condition that, despite year-to-year weather variations, will deepen as temperatures rise, snows dwindle, soils bake and fires burn.

That's grim news for all of us in the West, perhaps most especially for the 10 million residents along the northern stretch of the Colorado River -- Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado -- whose water rights are newer, and therefore junior, to those in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

Making matters worse, the Colorado -- the 1,450-mile-long lifeline that sustains more than 30 million souls and 3.5 million acres of farmland in seven states, 34 tribal nations and Mexico -- is in decline, scientists warn.

But the best is yet to come.

Dozens of scientific studies issued since 2004 have documented the Colorado's decline.

The river's annual flow has averaged 11.7 million acre-feet this decade, according to federal records. In 2002, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation measured only 6.2 million acre-feet passing Lee's Ferry below Glen Canyon Dam, the lowest flow of the decade. Even after this year's above-average precipitation, Lake Powell and Lake Mead combined are at 57 percent capacity.

A 2007 U.S. Geological Survey report found that, by 2050, rising temperatures in the Southwest could rival those of the nation's fabled droughts, including the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Hotter weather is expected to reduce Colorado River runoff by at least 30 percent during the 21st century.

If the USGS is correct, and if this century's trend persists, average annual flow in the Colorado could fall to 8.2 million acre-feet per year.

Imagine that. The Law of the River requires 9 million acre-feet to pass Lee's Ferry on the way to the Lower Basin and Mexico. Under a strict interpretation of the law, the Upper Basin could be left with nothing.

You can read the rest of the article. Even Peter Gleick and Pat Mulroy would not be able to make things right.

But at least Las Vegas is using less water these days.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the CRB...I was in the Phoenix area (Tempe, actually) several weeks ago with some colleagues. At Arizona State University's remarkable Decision Theater we got a taste of high-tech decision-making. It is part of the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS).

We heard some interesting things, but one in particular made an impression on me. One of the folks told us that in the Greater Phoenix area, if you go to a local politician/water manager with a predictive model that shows a future with less precipitation, you're out of luck. They're not even thinking about that possibility. Heads in the sand, or what?

I think I am getting close to finding someone who is "thinking about the unthinkable" regarding Southwest water and depopulation, particularly in the Colorado River Basin.

"Las Vegas is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon.  Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor's orgy is now a democratic institution - 'Topless Pizza Lunch'."  ~Alistair Cooke

"Do you know what we call tourists in Las Vegas? We call them 'marks'." - desk clerk, San Remo Hotel, Las Vegas, NV

Paper: 'Exploring Groundwater Recoverability in Texas - Maximum Economically Recoverable Storage'

The paper Exploring Groundwater Recoverability in Texas: Maximum Economically Recoverable Storage by Justin C. Thompson, Charles W. Kreitler, and Michael H. Young is in the current issue (Volume 3, Issue 12) of the Texas Water Journal. As the teaser says, 'This study addresses the question: What are the economic and physical limits to recoverability?' 

I recommend it.

I have reproduced the abstract, introduction, conclusion and Figures 1-3 here to whet your appetite. Download the full paper by clicking here.

Abstract
The 2017 Texas state water plan projects total supply deficits of 4.8 and 8.9 million acre-feet under drought-of-record conditions by the year 2020 and 2070, respectively, driven by a growing population concurrent with declining available water supplies. Reductions in groundwater supply account for 95% of anticipated declines in total water supply. Meanwhile, restrictive groundwater management plans may be creating a regulation-induced shortage of groundwater in Texas, given the significant groundwater storage volumes that are unutilized under many management plans. However, these estimates do not account for many of the physical and none of the economic constraints to groundwater recoverability. We report an analysis of groundwater extraction feasibility and simulate maximum economically recoverable storage for conditions representative of the central section of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer under economic constraints associated with agricultural uses. Two key limitations are applied to simulate recoverability: (1) the value of water pumped relative to pumping costs and (2) the capacity of the aquifer and well to meet demand. Our results indicate that these constraints may limit certain uses to as little as 1% of current groundwater availability estimates. We suggest that Texas groundwater managers, stakeholders, and policymakers assessing groundwater availability need an alternate approach for estimating recoverability.

Introduction
Is Texas running out of groundwater, blessed with abundance, or somewhere in the middle? This question, historically shrouded in scientific uncertainty and political controversy, represents a complex nexus of hydrogeology, economics, and policy with many relevant and potentially conflicting considerations. Hydrogeologic conditions and management objectives vary significantly across the state, and as a consequence there is no universal yield solution.

Nonetheless, one key element common to all human groundwater demand is recoverability, defined as the relative ease or difficulty of extraction. Recoverability is constrained by aquifer characteristics, well design, and economics. While recoverability data is crucial to groundwater planning and management, particularly with respect to availability assessments, Texas’ best estimates of recoverable groundwater volumes reflect only the volume in storage and take no account of well design or economic constraints. This study therefore addresses the question: What are the economic and physical limits to recoverability? By establishing these limits, we can better estimate potentially available groundwater for given uses and infrastructure.

Conclusion
We conclude that Texas groundwater managers, stakeholders, and policymakers assessing groundwater availability need an alternate approach for estimating recoverability. The current metrics employed by the state for estimating groundwater storage and recoverability, total storage and TERS, are highly limited in scope and function. Irrespective of the name, TERS values do not scientifically account for many of the physical and none of the economic constraints upon groundwater recoverability, as noted by the TWDB (Bradley 2016).

The system of equations described above, which constitute the MERS model, represents one method for estimating the limits of groundwater recoverability that accounts for some of the physical and economic constraints upon yields. These constraints can be significant and may limit recoverability to as little as 1% of local storage (or 1.1% and 3.2% of comparable TERS estimates) in deep and confined settings. This suggests that the majority of water stored in the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer (45% of major aquifer storage in Texas) may not be economically recoverable for some agricultural uses. Conversely, recoverability of water stored in shallow and unconfined settings may be limited only by the capacity of the well and aquifer to meet demanded pumping rates.

Future studies expanding on these methods may refine drawdown estimates by replacing specific capacity estimates with drawdown solutions that account for partial well penetrationthough the analyses would become more complex. These or similar methods could also be integrated with the TWDB groundwater availability model and groundwater database data to estimate local recoverability for any use and aquifer.

Ultimately, what is recoverable for a microchip manufacturer may not be the same as what is recoverable for a farmer, and what is recoverable for an alfalfa farmer may not be the same as what is recoverable for a tomato farmer. Moreover, the limits to what is economically recoverable for any user are not economically efficient and pumping costs increase for all users in all cases where depth-to-water increases. Nonetheless, quantifying planned and potential changes to groundwater recoverability using scientific methods with known assumptions, conditions, and infrastructure provides important information for Texas policymakers and stakeholders looking to the future.

Enjoy!

"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are hydrologist reports." - Texas legislative hearing, 2 February 2016 (thanks to Robert Mace)

CRS Report: 'Management of the Colorado River - Water Allocations, Drought, and the Federal Role' Updated: 15 December 2020

Yesterday it was the Columbia River; today it's my favorite river, the Colorado River. Charles V. Stern and Pervaze A. Sheikh have updated (15 December 2020) this important CRS report:  Management of the Colorado River: Water Allocations, Drought, and the Federal Role.

Lots of graphics - click on them to enlarge them or if they are not showing properly.

Download CRS_Report_Mgmt_CO_River_Fed_Role_15December2020

Overview
The Colorado River Basin covers more than 246,000 square miles in seven U.S. states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California) and Mexico. Pursuant to federal law, the Bureau of Reclamation (part of the Department of the Interior) manages much of the basin’s water supplies. Colorado River water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation and municipal and industrial (M&I) uses; it also is important for power production, fish and wildlife, and recreational uses.

The water apportioned to states on the Colorado River is widely acknowledged to be in excess of the river’s natural flows. Although a majority of the basin’s precipitation originates in the Upper Basin, the Lower Basin also has been extensively developed by the federal government. Consumptive uses of Colorado River water typically exceed natural flows, causing an imbalance in the basin’s available supplies and demands. These trends are exacerbated by a drought in the basin dating to 2000, which has raised the prospect of water delivery curtailments and decreased hydropower production, among other things. In the future, observers expect that increasing demand for water supplies, coupled with the effects of climate change, will further strain the basin’s limited water supplies.

River Management
The Law of the River is the commonly used shorthand for the multiple laws, court decisions, and other documents governing Colorado River operations. The foundational document of the Law of the River is the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Pursuant to the compact, the basin states established a framework to apportion the water supplies between the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River, with the dividing line between the two basins at Lee Ferry, AZ (near the Utah border). The Upper and Lower Basins each were allocated 7.5 million acre-feet (MAF) annually under the compact (plus the right to an increase of 1 MAF per year in the Lower Basin); an additional 1.5 MAF in annual flows was made available to Mexico under a 1944 treaty. Future agreements and court decisions addressed other issues (including intrastate allocations of flows), and subsequent federal legislation provided authority and funding for federal facilities that allowed users to develop their allocations. A 1963 Supreme Court ruling also confirmed that Congress designated the Secretary of the Interior as the water master for the Lower Basin, a role in which the federal government manages the delivery of all water below Hoover Dam.

Reclamation and basin stakeholders closely track the status of two large reservoirs—Lake Powell in the Upper Basin and Lake Mead in the Lower Basin—as an indicator of basin storage conditions. Under recent criteria, dam releases from these facilities are tied to specific water storage levels. For Lake Mead, the first operational shortage tier (“Tier Zero”) under which Arizona’s and Nevada’s allocations are decreased by specified levels would be triggered if Lake Mead’s January 1 elevation were expected to fall between 1,075 feet and 1,090 feet above mean sea level. This operational tier is currently in effect, and this is expected to remain the case in the near future. As of August 2020, Reclamation projected a 49% chance, depending on the hydrology assumed, for additional curtailments (i.e., a Tier One or greater shortage) at Lake Mead by 2024.

Operational Changes and Drought Contingency Plans
Despite earlier efforts to alleviate future shortages, the basin’s hydrological outlook generally has worsened in recent years. After several years of negotiations, in 2019 Reclamation and the basin states transmitted to Congress plans to further alleviate stress on basin water supplies. Congress authorized these plans, known as the drought contingency plans (DCPs) for the Upper and Lower Basins, in April 2019 in the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Authorization Act (P.L. 116-14). Among other things, the DCPs obligate Lower Basin states to additional water delivery reductions at specified storage levels (i.e., reductions beyond previous curtailment plans), commit Reclamation to additional water conservation efforts, and put in place plans to coordinate Upper Basin operations to protect Lake Powell storage levels and hydropower generation. Despite the success of DCP negotiations, many remain concerned about the Colorado River Basin’s long-term water supply outlook, including the potential for a compact call (a “call” on water rights between the Lower Basin and Upper Basin) that might lead to a protracted legal issues. Climate change, tribal water rights settlements, and state and local water supply development in the Upper Basin could further constrain water supplies. A central question facing the basin’s decisionmakers is whether current “interim” guidelines will be renewed prior to their expiration in 2026 and what other changes might be made as a part of those agreements. 

Congressional Role
Congress plays a multifaceted role in federal management of the Colorado River Basin. Congress funds and oversees management of basin facilities, including operations and programs to protect and restore endangered species. It has enacted and continues to consider Indian water rights settlements involving Colorado River waters and development of new water storage facilities in the basin. In addition, Congress has approved funding to mitigate water shortages and conserve basin water supplies and has enacted new authorities to combat drought and its effects on basin water users (i.e., the DCPs and other related efforts).

Keep going - lots more to go!

Enjoy!

“A man of the West will fight over water, women, and gold, and generally in that order.” –Sen. Barry Goldwater (1909 - 1998)