Aaron

A how-to on doing #Water #ResourceManagement as badly as possible.

"Kevin Rein, who oversees water rights, made a similar sentiment clear to the Colorado River District board last July. “There’s nothing telling me that I should encourage people to conserve,” Rein said. “It’s a public resource. It’s a property right. It’s part of our economy.” "

And that right there is how the colonizer always destroys the Earth.

A cautionary tale future generations.

#Environment

https://www.propublica.org/article/colorado-river-water-uncompahgre-california-arizona

A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River

Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.

ProPublica
Dec 25, 2022 at 8:16pmWeb
Show threadAaronDec 25, 2022

The Baffler did a great article on this #Water #ResourceManagement issue & the wild history around it last year.

The piece points out that the calculation for how much water flows through the Colorado river is enormously off, by "a difference of just under two trillion gallons of water, or roughly the amount New York City uses in six years." (overestimates by over 37%)

This has been widely known since 1953, but the correct calculations have been ignored.

#Environment

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dead-pools-webb

Dead Pools | Zachariah Webb

The signatories of the Colorado River Compact must finally reckon with the shoddy accounting on which they’ve built paradise.

The Baffler
Show threadAaronDec 25, 2022

And of course we have the classic white-guy policymaker move of:

"Plus, there’s still the enormous challenge of how to incorporate Native tribes, which also hold huge water rights but continue to be largely left out of negotiations."

Show threadDwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦Dec 25, 2022
@00Aaron And "Native tribes" vs. "Indigenous nations" as a language choice is another part of the colonialist problem.
Show threadBoglegDec 25, 2022
@00Aaron It's Manon of the Spring on a massive scale waiting to happen with that attitude.
Show threadkscleanenergyDec 25, 2022
@00Aaron when we pipe canals, it's always our mission to put cfs back in-stream. Modernization could relieve a lot of the pressure on the Colorado
Show threadStan McCannDec 25, 2022
I really hate seeing water being wasted on lawns and filling private swimming pools. I support water restrictions.
Show threadJaneETowleDec 25, 2022
@00Aaron I don’t even think Colorado allows rain water harvesting which they really need to get busy with
Show threadLebowskiDec 25, 2022
@00Aaron more generally, the tragedy of the commons. Given the opportunity, humans will fuck it all up.
Show threadACDec 25, 2022
@00Aaron A cautionary tale, for sure, but not just “for future generations”: also for current ones which pretty soon will be suffering shortages due to that kind of shortsightedness by people/public official that should be doing their best to preserve limited and already stressed natural resources.
Show threadJeffreyDec 26, 2022
@00Aaron Colorado River has been in over draft since 1923.
1 million years for nature to collect the water .
100 years for humans to drain it
Show threadKathy WDec 26, 2022
@00Aaron: Irritating low dollar field crops with water from the Colorado River makes no sense - especially when the crops are sent overseas to countries that can no longer pump water to grow their own crops.
Show threadJlewvDec 27, 2022
@00Aaron how long until this situation becomes the norm everywhere?