Runoff - Are You Kind

 

Well runoff season is upon us, and the days have heated up with a sun as strong as the 24^th of July.  The snowpack is isothermal and ripe and coming off orderly at 1-2 inches of Snow Water Equivalent a day and most streams are flowing Bankfull without much of an issue.  Streams and rivers are peaking in the night and they slow by the next morning, only to ramp up again higher than the day before.  Melt rates of 3-4 inches a day would cause pervasive flooding but nights are cooling and I don’t see that happening any time soon.  We dodged the first bullet by melting low snow first, then the south, west, east and north and finally the deep snow up high.  If we can stage that respectively we should be OK.  Combine 2 or 3 of those areas and we will have trouble.  It ain’t over until it’s over. 

Neighbors seem to be sharing the high water with most people routing what flows they can but there are a few unnamed rich folk and farmers who choose to dump their excess water on others or ignore it completely.    They will undoubtedly want their water back when the summer becomes hot and dry.  Just like we would all like the water back that we pumped from the Great Salt Lake in the 1980’s to evaporate in the west desert.  Now we have toxic dust clouds threatening Vatican-West in Salt Lake City and we are buying water from farmers and sending less alfalfa to China to save the lake.  It’s water Karma. 

 Most communities have helped with the maintenance of their stream channels and underdrain groundwater systems, but some choose to stick their head in the sand and ignore them.  Good luck with that.  But I have seen countless examples of kind neighbors helping neighbors sandbag and clear debris, like they were just released from the local Ward house of good intentions.  No one is blue and no one is red, we are all just friends.  I saw a kindly county commissioner, in fresh-pressed Carhart’s, bend down and lift my dirty, smelly dog into the back of his ATV, while we toured a flooded area.  And that’s how it should be in times of trouble, where everyone contributes what they can with what they are good at.  Some sandbag and some clear debris, some get down and dirty, some buy the beer.  Strength in diversity. 

On a larger, metaphoric scale, the western states are fighting over the shrinking Colorado river like it is the last lifeboat on the Titanic.  Over allocated and under delivered, with increased use and climate change, the river is stretched to the breaking point with the upper basin fighting the lower basin, farmers fighting cities and lawyers fighting engineers.  In a few years we may lose the ability to make power, and in a few more years we may lose control of the Grand Canyon, if nothing is done.  States (mostly California) can’t agree on cuts and President Joe needs Arizona and Nevada to win the White House again, so he does not want to take anyone’s water.

So, with the inevitability of change, death and taxes, the climate is dishing out challenges to us all, both near and far.  Like the Tragedy of the Commons, we can ignore these challenges or dump them on our neighbors to solve, or we can all pitch in and do what we can with what we are good at.  Because that’s what neighbors do in times of need.  Be kind.