Thread by @jfleck

The #ColoradoRiver news we heard at last week's @sjquinney symposium was stark. As the reservoirs behind Hoover and Glen Canyon dams drop, we have huge problems. But the biggest news you didn't hear is worth noting too.

A thread (1/n)

@sjquinney #ColoradoRiver water users are currently consuming 14-15 million acre feet from a river that's only offered 12.3maf in the 21st century. (See drained reservoirs as a result). (2/n)

@sjquinney Reclamation is scrambling to figure out how to operate Glen Canyon Dam under these lower reservoir conditions. It could be forced to use big reservoir-draining pipes that have basically never been used in this way. (3/n)

@sjquinney Remember it's a 12-and-change maf river in the 21st century. John Entsminger of @SNWA_H2O explained his agencies planning for an 11 maf future. (4/n)

Andy Mueller doubled down

https://twitter.com/annalisemporter/status/1504909581465444352

(5/n)

But a quip from Tom Buschatzke @azwater showed how hard the back-home politics makes this discussion: "I won’t say I agree to 11, or I might get arrested when I get off the plane in Phoenix." (6/n)

Tribal equity was a central theme. As supplies shrink, how do we overcome the inequities associated with indigenous communities unable to use the #ColoradoRiver water to which they're *already* legally entitled? (7/n)

And how do we adapt to a #ColoradoRiver Compact that, as @R_EricKuhn pointed out, by creating a fixed downstream delivery obligation, places much of the burdern of climate change adaptation on the communities of the Upper Basin? (8/n)

For a century we've built our #ColoradoRiver management approach around filling reservoirs in wet times and using water in dry times. Those reservoirs have been amazingly useful, but... (9/n)

"They don't do us much good," said @annejcastle "when they're empty." (10/n)

But here's the thing you didn't hear, but which may be one of the most interesting bits of #ColoradoRiver news in coming months. (11/n)

Sometime later this spring, @SNWA_H2O will turn on massive new pumps driving its new low Lake Mead intakes. Built far deeper in the reservoir, they remove the risk that as Mead drops, a city of 2 million people will be without its primary water supply. (12/n)

Without them, we've be having a conversation in the #ColoradoRiver basin about a trolley car problem kind of tradeoff - use water downstream and cut off a community of 2 million people? (13/n)

(If I was a journalist still, I'd be all over the Vegas pumps story. If we write about communities running out of water, we also need to write about communities *not* running out of water. Understanding how that happens is crucial.) (14/n)

The too-long-for-tweets version of my thoughts on the @sjquinney #ColoradoRiver symposium here (Note that I took the same picture last week as @h2oexecutive - "dangerous currents" indeed :-) inkstain.net/fleck/2022/03/… (15/ maybe done? )