It’s not an exaggeration to say that cutting or “freezing” some $4 billion earmarked for the upkeep and restoration of infrastructure along the Colorado River system displays a miserly ideological shortsightedness that is both dumbfounding and perverse.
The cuts are mandated by a presidential executive order called “Unleashing American Energy” that is a direct attack on President Biden’s environmental and climate policies funded by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
In an era of profound and prolonged drought in the West, the infrastructure “freeze” could so weaken the river’s water storage and delivery system that an economic and environmental catastrophe might strike 40 million Western Americans who depend on Colorado river water to drink. It could be even worse for much of the rest of the country which relies on Colorado river water to grow much of the nation’s winter vegetables produced in Arizona and California. Here at home, the cuts could further delay the restoration and reopening of the 1930s El Vado dam and its reservoir in Rio Arriba County.
The Colorado River travels 1,450 miles from Rocky Mountain National Park north of Denver, gaining in size from the Green River in Wyoming and New Mexico’s San Juan and Gila rivers, eventually flowing into the Gulf of California.
It is one of the most developed river systems in the world. Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Los Angeles and San Diego are major urban users of the Colorado’s water. The problem is that many parts of the system, like El Vado, are showing their age.
The loss of that $4 billion would leave parts of the river system broken and unusable. The point is that it is an interconnected system, and it’s increasingly fragile. If neglect forces even the shutting down of one of its dams, major reservoirs or canals, the increasingly arid American West could see a cascade of shortages that might take so long to fix they would force sizable migrations from major cities and the withering of one of the nation’s most productive agricultural regions.
Major farming corporations could be forced to shrink or fold. Urban water rationing might become as draconian as that plaguing the 22 million residents of drought-stricken Mexico City and its environs. It’s not uncommon for some residents there to spend up to 25% of their income on water.
The restoration and conservation of Colorado River infrastructure will be an immense undertaking, lasting decades, and it needs to get into high gear right now. The network involves fifteen major dams, including Hoover, Glen Canyon, Davis, Parker and almost countless smaller ones. It involves dozens of reservoirs, some of them tiny and some immense like Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge, Lake Havasu, Navajo Lake and the Imperial Reservoir. A good number of these bodies of water produce indispensable hydroelectric power used all over the West. Problems with dams could cause major brownouts in cities across the region.
Upkeep and repairs are also needed along the dozens of major canals fed by the river, such as the All-American Canal that supplies the Imperial Valley, and the 336 miles of Central Arizona Project that keeps Phoenix and Tucson alive. The Colorado River also supports a vast but aging irrigation network with deteriorating canals that need constant upkeep and repair.
Cutting that $4 billion would also interrupt major conservation efforts that include paying farmers and tribes to reduce water consumption and irrigation. Those funds are also used to compensate cities for using less water. Water recycling projects and treatment facilities along the river could also be shut down, and tribal water projects disrupted. Essential repairs and upgrades of dams, especially the Glen Canyon Dam behind which sits Lake Powell, could be delayed disastrously. Without those funds, restoring wildlife habitat would come to a standstill and wildfire suppression would be severely compromised.
Here in Albuquerque, a prolonged interruption in our water supply from the Colorado river via El Vado Lake has already required the city to go back to its pre-2008 groundwater pumping regimen, causing considerable damage to more than 15 years of aquifer restoration in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. With the Colorado supplying sometimes 50% of Albuquerque’s drinking water, it’s not hard to imagine that a prolonged interruption in flow could trigger severe water rationing in the city.
Colorado water comes into New Mexico via the tunnels of the San Juan Chama Project, which the Bureau of Reclamation says is in pretty good repair. But seepage problems and partial dilapidation of the El Vado Dam, which is the Project’s major storage dam, throws a monkey wrench into the entire San Juan Chama Project. Repairs have already been delayed for close to three years. The Trump cuts could add many more years to that. This all could result in the dam’s structure being so compromised that a dauntingly expensive new dam would have to be built. Only the federal government could supply such funds, and that looks like a bad bet these days. El Vado’s troubles are compounded by accumulated sediment in its canals that needs immediate attention, according to a report from the engineers advising the Rio Grande Compact Commission two months ago.
Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order cuts the guts out of the Bureau of Reclamation’s repair and maintenance efforts. That kind of irresponsible meat cleaver budget cutting may satisfy some ideological economic theories, but it’s morally despicable, paying absolutely no attention to the real lives and needs of working people and their often-desperate struggles with insecurity, hunger and all that it takes to have to actually work to make a living.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
(Photo by Doc Searls)
Not at all dumbfounding, I don’t think, because it fits right in with the administration’s efforts to destroy all that we’ve achieved through lifetimes of struggle, But perverse, absolutely. Thank you, V. B., for continuing to point out the ways in which these rapid fire assaults on our well being are local, how they affect us here in New Mexico. Because the tendency is to believe that these moves affect others, that we are safe–for the moment. The old saying “When they came for the Jews, I didn’t stand up because I wasn’t Jewish” comes to mind. The truth is, we are facing a deliberate and systematic assault on every aspect of life and every person is at risk.