Even though the water level on Lake Powell rose half a foot this year, the Bureau of Reclamation announced that Lake Mead is projected to be in a “shortage condition” in 2025 — meaning Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico will see cuts in how much water they can use from the Colorado River.
My company is one of the many that has been doing hydrographic surveys on the Colorado River over the past few years and lemme tell ya, it’s way more fucked than you realize.
Copying this from my comment further down to spread the knowledge:
This is a picture I took after walking half a mile down from the old landing dock. Where I am standing used to be underwater 50 years ago. By looking at the silt on the bottom-right you can see where the shoreline was like 10 - 20 years ago. And if you look at the cliff side you can see what we’ve been calling “bathtub” lines of where the water used to be (the photo from the article shows the bathtub lines even more clearly). Not to mention the Colorado River flowing through right in front of me.
Now imagine everything you see in this photo and think about where it used to be and how much water isn’t there anymore. And just so you know, this was the level of the river during spring run off season. And I still had to walk half a mile from the old landing dock just to see it.
And this was at Glen Canyon, about an hour from Lake Powell. You know, the place mentioned in the article. Half a foot is a drop in the bucket when you see it up close.
What’s going to happen in the long run? Is that part of the country simply going to become uninhabitable? If so, why isn’t the real estate market reflecting that?
(Genuine question)
This is a picture I took after walking half a mile down from the old landing dock. Where I am standing used to be underwater 50 years ago. By looking at the silt on the bottom-right you can see where the shoreline was like 10 - 20 years ago. And if you look at the cliff side you can see what we’ve been calling “bathtub” lines of where the water used to be (the photo from the article shows the bathtub lines even more clearly). Not to mention the Colorado River flowing through right in front of me.
Now imagine everything you see in this photo and think about where it used to be and how much water isn’t there anymore. And just so you know, this was the level of the river during spring run off season. And I still had to walk half a mile from the old landing dock just to see it.
And this was at Glen Canyon, about an hour from Lake Powell. You know, the place mentioned in the article. Half a foot is a drop in the bucket when you see it up close. So the answer is yes, it will be uninhabitable. At least at the standard of living most people consider normal.
Probably because of people hiding how serious it is, the real estate market doesn’t crash until they can offload all their assets at all time high prices.
This is actually why I relocated out of southern California. I miss it, but imagine how crazy dwindling water supply will be. The system’s been unbalanced for more than a century, nature always finds balance even if it’s unpleasant.
How fucked does that mean what parts of AZ, NV, and Mexico are? How does Colorado itself compare, in terms of raw fucked-ness?
Grand Junction, the city just west of the Rocky Mountains, is already in a bad spot. If I were to guess a percentage of how much water we have left versus how much used to be there, I’d say we’ve used about 60% of all the water. The biggest problem is that we are using water faster than it replenishes. Even if Colorado had the worst winter ever recorded, it would still not be enough to replenish what’s been used. I am 100% confident that every single place that relies on water from the Colorado River will be out of water within our lifetimes.
