Water Wars - Mexico

The folks who make the decisions on what to do with these resources don’t GAF about politics. It says right there in the story they’re gonna try and store as much as they can. What else can they do?

 

The 2023 accumulated snowpack on the Grand Mesa, just east of us is 66 inches, 140% of "normal". It's now beginning to melt and streams of melted snow are rushing into creeks flowing into reservoirs. I was up on the Mesa last week and it's a sight to see. Countless, tens of thousands small rivulets of water are pouring out of sloping gound like streams of sweat pouring out of the pores of an overheated body. This water is headed to the Colorado, either directly or through the Gunnison, which merges into the Colorado about 3 miles east of where I live.

Water levels in local reservoirs have been lowered to receive the Mesa's melting snow in an effort to prevent flooding in villages on the Mesa. It's going to be epic.

Colorado River averages were set - give or take - a hundred years ago when the officials made the distribution pacts for the states receiving a share of the river's water. Unfortunately the rainfall levels around that time were above average and the disbursements since then have ben based on that faulty over estimation. It's been a while since I read about that agreement. I'll see if I can find more information.

 

How much will the record snow falls out west help this issues this year?

 

I don't think New Mexico got nearly as much water as central California did. So, I think some areas will be in good shape for a year or two, but others will continue to have water problems within weeks or months. The water was not distributed evenly with the rainfall, and the ability to store that water also varies greatly from region to region.

 

I'm finishing up our 10 day trip across southern Utah and there are ungodly amount of water and snow left for this time of year. As an example, the Narrows (slot canyon) in Zion NP is usually open this time of year but is running around 850cfs instead of 100cfs. Snow pack levels are still a similar ~800% higher than normal. They don't expect the Narrows to open until late June or July. The Wasatch near Salt Lake City are completely buried.

All this historic snow and my understanding is this will only help Mead and Powell a little bit.

We can't count on consecutive winters like this to fix this problem. We have to address consumption.

 

Thanks. We made up for it just fine.

 

Recent warmer temperatures and melting snow have raised Lake Powell 5 feet.

With projections showing a 50-foot rebound coming, Lake Powell resumes Grand Canyon’s experimental floods

For the first time in five years, high volumes of water are gushing from the drought-depleted Lake Powell, replicating the spring floods that would naturally occur were the Colorado River not dammed at Glen Canyon.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Monday opened the gates at Glen Canyon Dam allowing up to 39,500 cubic feet per second, or cfs, to pour into the river channel at Lees Ferry, sending a flood-stage surge of water through Grand Canyon. That’s like the contents of 27 Olympic swimming pools a minute spouting through the bottom of the dam.

“These experiments are really designed to recreate habitat and the physical attributes that would have existed downstream from the dam, but for the existence of the dam,” said Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah (CRAU), at last’s week board meeting. “In this case, what I’m talking about is building up sandbars using sediment that has accumulated.”...


.... That is about to change drastically in the coming weeks as the upper Colorado basin’s snowpacks, which are 157% of normal, melt and flow into Powell and upstream reservoirs. The lake level is projected to climb by more than 50 feet this year, according to Bart Leeflang, the CRAU’s hydrologist.

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Rainfall the last 4 months here in the Grand Valley is 1.15" above normal.

 

It’s there, you can see the spike on the chart.

Lake Mead Water Level

the lake is defying predictions, just last month the estimate was that it would be at 1040 feet by month end, it’s almost 10 feet over that. Still a long way to go though.

 

Probably 1-3 weeks depending on flow. Between the two reservoirs is the Grand Canyon.

Canyon ecosystems will suck up some water, but it's negligible. I would guess that many orders of magnitude more water evaporates from the surface of the lakes than is "lost" in transit.

 

It was a high pressure release, it was only a few days. If you look at the chart I posted above Mead has already spiked over a foot.

Lake Mead to rise one foot by Sunday after federal ‘high flow’ water release

 

https://www.ktnv.com/news/nevada-ca...ater-cuts-to-protect-lake-mead-colorado-river

cuts agreed to, but it’s a proverbial drop in the bucket.

lake levels at Powell and Mead are still rising.

 

Here is something surprising: our thirst for fresh water is so great that humans have pumped enough groundwater out of the earth to change the tilt of the earth. It is a small change (1.7 inches per year), but apparently measurable.

The two greatest areas for pumping groundwater are apparently the western U.S. and northern India. I'm surprised that China is not mentioned, as the Beijing area has essentially pumped out the largest or second largest aquifer in the world (they now pump water through 6'-dia. pipes from the Yang-tze River, I believe). The U.S. is almost finished pumping out the Oglalla Aquifer (north Texas to South Dakota).

I don't understand it completely, as "tilting to the east" is a meaningless concept when talking about the entire earth.

Humans pump so much groundwater that Earth’s axis has shifted, study finds | CNN

 

By their votes (politicians) ye shall know them. DeSantis certainly isn't making an issue about the environment, and as the governor of an environmentally fragile state, you'd think he'd be at the forefront of this issue.