August 21, 2024

OK, this rumor is probably false but still really fun to perpetuate. We enjoyed thinking about the implications as part of our new paper on what we are calling Assigned Water in Lake Mead now available at this link: Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River.

News: Imperial Irrigation District inked a deal to leave 700,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead

With a fistful of dollars, alongside a year of bonus precipitation, reservoir levels seem to be holding. Various Arizona farmers, cities and tribes joined in compensated efforts to leave water in Lake Mead and Imperial Irrigation District also recently inked a major deal worth a mighty lot. Why does this matter in Arizona? Well, because western and central Arizona depend on Lake Mead and it is nice to make headway on mutually beneficial projects. Also, we’d like to thank California for allowing thousands of Zonies to escape our summer heat and roam around La Jolla for a while.

News: It rained somewhere in Colorado

We focus a lot on snowpack, but apparently it rained somewhere in Colorado, like a lot, and this made a material difference in Lake Powell.[1] Here in Arizona, we are grateful for both, anywhere they occur, and also appreciate something called fog, which we’ve heard exists but have never seen. Virga, while beautiful, is disappointing—it’s just a vision of good things that could arrive but then don’t..

Due both to shortage and compensated System Conservation efforts, farmers in Pinal County Arizona will largely remain without much access to Colorado River water for their crops and there will be less Colorado River water available for aquifer recharge in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. It could be much worse, and we remain grateful it isn’t, but this is nothing to celebrate. Rather, it points to the need for work on the flux capacitor to take the weather back to 1983.

• NEW! Explore our paper Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River.
• Try our Colorado River Story Map, that explains all things shortage in Arizona.
• Read our paper on Colorado River Shortage Impacts to Tap Water Deliveries in Central Arizona, that details where major water providers get their tap water and how they will continue to meet tap water needs under shortage conditions.
• Our Shortage Impact Calculators might also be helpful.

Photo credits:  20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, United Artists