With the Colorado River’s depleted reservoirs continuing to drop to new lows, the federal government has taken the unprecedented step of telling the seven Western states that rely on the river to find ways of drastically cutting the amount of water they take in the next two months
The Interior Department is seeking the emergency cuts to reduce the risks of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest reservoirs, declining to dangerously low levels next year.
“We have urgent needs to act now,” Tanya Trujillo, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said during a speech on Thursday. “We need to be taking action in all states, in all sectors, and in all available ways.”
Trujillo’s virtual remarks to a conference at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder underscored the dire state of the river under the stresses of climate change, and the urgency of scaling up the region’s response to stop the reservoirs from falling further. She provided details about the federal government’s approach to the crisis two days after Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton announced that major cuts of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet will be needed next year to keep reservoirs from dropping to “critical levels.
For comparison, California, Arizona and Nevada used a total of about 7 million acre-feet of Colorado River water last year.
State officials and managers of water agencies have yet to determine how they could accomplish such large reductions in water use Finding ways of achieving the cutbacks will be the focus of negotiations in the coming weeks between representatives of the seven states and the Biden administration.
oh cool so we need to cut half of the water use in 2 months to avoid catastrophe and the government doesn't even know what to do yet. cool. cool. cool cool cool. :agony-immense:
They’ve known this was coming for literally 22 years and are now giving themselves 2 months to solve the problem lol
glad to see the government takes climate change about as seriously as my college finals
Damn ideology thats literally allergic to any consideration of economic planning whatsoever will do that to you
nobody in charge actually thought this was sustainable long term but they did it anyway
They will tell people to stop showering instead of cutting off the unlimited water that flows to almond and alfalfa farmers
This is what happens when you tell hogs in Utah to not use so much water
Love small government and being at the mercy of individual lunatics
what was the Michael Hudson quote about all economics being planned, just a difference in who plans it, which entirely comes down to whether the government is strong enough to tell the powerful interests no. Only in America it seems like they constantly tell the people no, and the powerful "yes".
Just station soldiers at the reservoir and shoot a couple of the hogs
Smith says that most residents pay a flat rate for their secondary water and they aren’t metered for usage.
So the district can’t actually trace just who caused the reservoir to drain earlier this week.
How much of your brain has to be pudding to not have water meters in a fucking desert?
something tells me that the feds saying "you've got 2 months to fix this" means that 2 months ago was the real tipping point :who-did-this:
If it’s been going for 22 years it’s not a drought anymore that’s normal rainfall
You must be wrong, and I know this because Texans keep experiencing 100 and 500 year floods every 2-5 years and the flood maps are not updated. :thonk:
Arctic sea ice has also been declining steadily since 1996 (26 years ago), but I'm sure that's unrelated
I'm gonna be that guy - dairy/beef use way, way more water than almonds.
not sure who can afford beef anymore so they're doing a fine job getting me to cut way way back
livestock are (directly) a miniscule proportion of the use of the Colorado River
making sure grown crops from there didn't go to cows somewhere else could be a thing but they ought to be directly making farmers use less, period.
if they tell me to stop showering before they close the golfpark i am becoming a terrorist :very-smart:
Surely we can build massive cities in the desert with no regard for the local environment! What could go wrong?
Phoenix was the hottest real estate market and the hottest city in the country last year. Awesome combo y'all!! :amerikkka: :meow-cactus:
the real people spitting in gods eye are the boomers in phoenix
Looking forward to the day all the car tires in Phoenix just melt away
Every thing should be fine. It rained for about 20 minutes in LA today. Second day of rain this year I believe. Off to a good start for a change.
We got flooding up in Yellowstone and the Pacific Northwest. Just take the water and push it over there
just fill it up with regular water, then add kosher salt, then wait until climate change lets you cook as much pasta as you want to al dente. ez.
That was phase one. Phase two is taking back our water from the Great Lakes. Lake Victoria, watch your back, you're fucking next.
Second day of rain this year I believe.
i cannot even fathom this and i'm not from a particularly rainy place
LA is essentially a desert but its proximity to the ocean means it gets a little more moisture in the air. The only reason LA can exist with the population it has is because they stole (and continue to steal) water from the Owens Valley (among many other places). I'm just mad about the Owens Valley I'm particular because I've spent a fair amount of time there
Don't the mountains around LA also do some funky shit with the air moisture? I vaguely remember that LA's geography is why they used to have such dangerous smog-problems, since the mountains block off most of the wind, so air pollution used to just kind of hang around.
I know that’s a problem but as someone from Florida where it fucking storms nearly every day having it never rain sounds fucking wonderful. I hate rain so much.
the daily 20 minute storms between 2pm to 4pm are the things I miss the most about FL
Also, for non Floridians the reason this happens nearly every afternoon is it’s so hot here that the rain doesn’t come from cloud fronts moving. Every day is hot enough to cause enough evaporation that basically then just rains right back down where it came from. And the whole state was built on top of swamp land so there’s plenty of water to evaporate
I enjoy learning about Florida's climate because I genuinely can't fathom why anyone would want to live there. The weather seems like it wants to kill you, whatever remains of the wildlife definitely wants to kill you, and half of the year you have mosquito's the size of a small dinosaur. Though it does kind of makes sense that the place with this kind of geography would have weird fucking politics.
We actually don’t have the large mosquitos, those are more of a western thing. But the big mosquitos are also totally harmless, and we have oh so many of the tiny ones that are evil. There’s a trail in the woods behind my apartment but I can’t use it because not only to they attack me in droves I can see them attacking my dog too.
Everything else you said is correct, this place is absolutely evil and humans are simply not meant to live here, it’s fucking insane to me that anglos were willing to do fucking genocide to take this god forsaken place. Seeing a gator on my way to work fairly often is pretty cool tho ngl.
Really? I absolutely despise it. It doesn’t even usually make it feel better outside, it feels nice for 10 minutes and then even worse than it did before because it’s still 95 degrees but now it’s 100% humidity
oh it definitely feels worse outside, but it makes my midday nap so relaxing
Western states prepare for shortages
I would've prepared after 15 consecutive years of droughts, guess I'm just built different.
That scene in Austin powers where they’re slowing running over that guy with a steam roller
Time to expand the household water stockpile, I think
They had two decades to prepare for this, and this is the solution they came up with.
In other news, Stilsuit manufacturers are heading toward boom time.
