Water supply stability in the Colorado River Basin? Fleck's water news

John Fleck's water news

There's a newsroom joke we call "Betteridge's Law": "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." So no, we haven't quite brought stability to the Colorado River Basin. But there are some encouraging signs that we're creeping in the right direction.

With an average runoff year, total Colorado River Basin reservoir storage is up 600,000 acre feet from a year ago this time.
Colorado River water use by Arizona, Nevada, and California is forecast to be right around 7 million acre feet this year, well below the three states' 7.5 million acre foot allotment and the lowest since 1992.

This is in part the result of an aggressive conservation program by the states of the Lower Basin, working hard to find ways to leave more water in Lake Mead. As Tony Davis reports in High Country News, Arizona's aggressive management of its groundwater has left it in good shape as it figure out how to cope with reduced Colorado River supplies. And even as California struggles to figure out how to allocate shortage, Colorado River-dependent farmers seem confident that their supplies will be sufficient to continue to grow those delicious peppers.

And yet Lake Mead keeps dropping. Despite all the conservation efforts, the latest US Bureau of Reclamation projections show Lake Mead dropping another 2-plus feet this year. Betteridge's "no" still seems a good bet.

Coming Sept. 1: My book Water is for Fighting Over, published by Island Press. You can preorder it here.

Water news

Despite a better winter, California seems headed for another clash between water users and the needs of the state's fish, the Sacramento Bee's water team reports
One of the most important sources of money for rural US water needs, the EPA's Clean Water State Revolving Fund, is out of whack because state allocations don't match changing state needs, Brett Walton reports
Amy Quinton reports from Paso Robles on the struggle to build self-governance under California's new gorundwater management law

From the wonks

from economist Jeff Michael, another sign of California's drought resilience: San Joaquin County agricultural employment was up in the 4th quarter of 2015 compared to the year before
Globally, access to sanitation and drinking water is improving, but remains a major problem for the world's poor, Stephan Dahan and colleagues report for the World Bank.
Some wise parting words from Phil Isenberg, recently retired as head of California's Delta Stewardship Council: "The San Joaquin Valley will have less irrigated land."

Stuff I wrote

There's a kerfuffle in Phoenix about a new Nestlé water bottling plant. Why I don't think, from a water policy perspective, that it's the right conservation to have.

My blog: jfleck at inkstain

Picture of the week: The Rio Grande in Alamosa, Colorado.