Download More Demand, Less Water: The Future of the Colorado River

More Demand, Less Water: The Future of the Colorado River
Dec. 13, 2012
Doug Kenney
Population growth, climate change and drought will overwhelm the capacity
of the Colorado River system to meet all water demands over the next 50
years, according to a study just released by the U.S. Department of the
Interior.
Doug Kenney, director of the Western Water Policy Program at CU-Boulder’s
Natural Resources Law Center, has read the study and says unless something
is done the future looks pretty scary for the Colorado River.
CUT 1 “The study looked at projections of water demands going out to the
year 2060. Those demands keep going up. We looked at projected supplies
after 2060 and those are projected to go down. And this is a basin that has
seen the effects of climate change. (:16) The study estimated maybe 9 percent
drop in water flows between now and 2060. (744) You plot those trends and
you see that by 2060 the demands on the river could easily be 20 percent
higher than the actual supplies from the river, which is a pretty scary number.”
(:35)
Kenney calls the report, “The Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand
Study,” a wake up call for the 30 million people living in Colorado, six other
western states and Mexico that rely on the Colorado River for water needs.
He says new water management strategies need to be adopted as soon as
possible.
CUT 2 “There’s a lot of ideas about how we can conserve water, how we can
use water more efficiently. There are some thoughts about transferring water
out of some agricultural uses. The main water uses in the basin are still for
agriculture. (:12) The thought is that maybe some of that will have to change
-- some sharing water between different interests and different states even
could help shift the risk around a little bit – the risk of shortage.” (:24)
Kenney says the study also included expensive and radical options for
importing water to the Colorado River Basin such as building a pipeline from
the Missouri River to Colorado’s Front Range, float icebergs south and
building desalination plants in California and Mexico.
For more information on the study go to
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy.html.
-CU-