Water - For What It's Worth

Colorado River - Glen Canyon - 1963

Spring has sprung; when an old hydrologist’s fancy turns to runoff and water supply.  We have a 70% snowpack and if it is anything like last year we can expect 35% of an  average runoff.  This is because of long and short term drought, climate change, decreased supply, increased demand and our inability to accurately model or manage groundwater and surface water conjunction.  No matter the snowpack, it mostly depends on the melt weather in May and June, unfortunately now in April too, but with only half of the reservoir carryover storage and groundwater surcharge we had last year, we are hosed.  No pun intended.

Water doesn’t flow downhill, it flows towards money, and we have money in Park City.  Most of our water is pumped from the Weber River, over Promontory and down to our faucets.  If that keeps happening, why should we worry?  Forty years ago when my mentor Fred Duberow suggested we get our future water from the Smith Morehouse ‘Rese-voie’ on the Weber River, we thought he was crazy, but he was a visionary like William Mulholland and Floyd Dominy, bringing water to the people. 

The Colorado River, which along with the Klamath River, is the poster child for western water and is showing the strain.  While it purportedly flows enough to supply 10 – 20 million acre-feet a year, it now sustains 3-5 million (an acre foot covers a football field one foot deep and is enough for 1-4 families depending on the family).  Lake Powell is 1/4 full and dropping like a stone and may be too low to make power later next year or control flows in the Grand Canyon soon after.  Lake Mead isn't much better.  Neither are Jordenelle, Deer Creek, Rockport or Echo reservoirs.  Yet we are still growing alfalfa and cows up high in the great white north, and cotton and rice down in the desert. 

But we don’t grow much alfalfa, wear much cotton or eat much rice in Park City so why should we care?  We have plenty of water, it is just going to the wrong uses, and we all pay for that to happen.  We are still considering the Lake Powell Pipeline (LPP) to send phantom Colorado water to St George, the worst water wasters in the west, and all of Utah will pay for it.  With inevitable delays, inflation, supply side issues and a pessimistic cost estimate it will cost 5-10 billion dollars, not 2-4.  If Saint George had to pay for it, they would never do it.  If we all had to pay the true cost and worth of water, we might be a little more conscientious and conservative. 

With push coming to shove, the State of Utah is taking $200 million of Federal Infrastructure money to buy meters for secondary water systems to monitor the rampant misuse.  'If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,' a wise man once said.  And with agriculture using 80% of the water in the west, with much of it coming from groundwater, we are only beginning to monitor those systems.  Use it or lose it, but please don’t abuse it.

Lip service and baby steps are finally being taken to promote conservation, water banking and marketing where you can get paid out of a new $40 million State fund if you save, conserve, or dedicate your water to send to the dying drying Great Salt Lake.  Finally, rivers and lakes, fish and riparian ecosystems are getting the respect they deserve.  

The water laws are also being reinforced to assure that if and when it hits the fan, water will go to people first and agriculture and industry second.  With billions of dollars being spent on infrastructure with bad Priority Dates, such as the Central Utah Project or Lake Powell Pipeline; Priorities have more to do with water value than filing dates.  First in time does not necessarily mean first in line, anymore.

So don’t complain the next time it costs you $100 a month to keep your lawn brown.  Water is a priceless, social-welfare, natural resource and a public right, but it is also becoming a market-based capitalistic commodity to be bought and sold by the highest bidder for the best use, promoting conservation and wise use.  The Colorado River is the poster-boy and water is just the metaphor for how we treat all of our natural resources.  The environment, climate and natural resources are just the externalities of this market based economy.  Unfortunately we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The tragedy of the masses is that we all slake our personal needs without much regard for the common good. 

Water is just the metaphor for how we mistreat all our natural resources.  The environment, climate and the underprivileged are just the unfortunate externalities of this new supply side, water economy.  As usual, we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The Tragedy of the Commons is that we all slake our personal thirst without much regard for the public welfare.  It is time to manage this new trickle-down, water economy - including all of the externalities, with practical public benefit regulation, to promote wise use, conservation and the common good.