No Country for ... Well, Anyone

There's a 50-50 chance that the Colorado River system will dry up as early as 2012, according to a new analysis.

Photo: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

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Call it, Friend-O.

There's a 50-50 chance that Lake Mead and Lake Powell, major sources of water for millions of people in the Southwestern U.S., will dry up by 2021, according to a new Scripps Institution of Oceanography-UC San Diego study published in Water Resources Research. A baby born in Las Vegas today would face a dry tap by age 13.

The Colorado River has long been a subject of controversy, having been diverted, dammed and ditched to make the desert Southwest habitable. The new analysis compares patterns of water usage and population, along with changes wrought by global warming, to conclude that the old way of using the Colorado just won't work for much longer.

All it would take is an unusually dry year, and this is a region that has seen long periods of drought in its history. The Colorado River system is losing 8 million people's worth of water each year.

“We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist who co-authored the study. “Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest.”

The Lake Mead/Lake Powell system includes the stretch of the Colorado River in northern Arizona. Aqueducts carry the water to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego and other communities in the Southwest. Currently the system is only at half capacity because of a recent string of dry years, and the team estimates that the system has already entered an era of deficit.

Climate change alone, as it leads to reduced snowpack and runoff, could reduce the water available by 10% to 30% – removing water enough for as many as 36 million people.

Drinking water isn't the only issue, as the region relies on hydroelectric power. That source of energy could be cut off by low water flows as early as 2017, according to the study.

“It’s likely to mean real changes to how we live and do business in this region,” said co-author David Pierce, a marine physicist.

Worse, due to certain assumptions the researchers made, they believe their estimates are conservative.

“Today, we are at or beyond the sustainable limit of the Colorado system. The alternative to reasoned solutions to this coming water crisis is a major societal and economic disruption in the desert southwest; something that will affect each of us living in the region” the report concluded.

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