Feb. 22, 2007 - 20:27 MST

WATERMARK

I guess it is because I was raised in the West and knew adults who were deeply interested in water, water rights and droughts.

I guess a person would have to have been through some of the arid parts of our country to have an appreciation of the asset water is to civilization.

And in competition for water is the ever growing population in our country.

There is an article in The Rocky Mountain News by Jim Erickson of that paper dealing with the Colorado River, which begins high in our mountains above Estes Park and flows into the Gulf Of California. Herewith is most of the article quoted:

FIERCER WATER WARS SEEN FOR WEST

Warming report predicts cost hikes

"Global warming likely will reduce Colorado River flows in the coming decades, increasing competition for the West's lifeblood liquid, a federal panel said Wednesday."

"Reduced Colorado River flows also would contribute to more severe, frequent and longer Western droughts, the National Research council panel concluded in a six-chapter report, Colorado River Basin Water Management: Evaluating And Adjusting To Hydroclimatic Variability."

"The Colorado River Basin covers portions of seven Western states. The river has an average annual flow of 15 million acre-feet, and supports tens of millions of Americans."

"As the population boom continues, Western water wars will grow fiercer, water costs will rise and more agricultural water will be diverted to urban use, the report notes. Now about 80 percent of Western water is used for crop production."

" But "the availability of agricultural water is finite," and all signs point to a future "in which the potential for conflict among existing and prospective new users will prove endemic," the report says."

WATER CONSERVATION AND TECHNOLIGICAL FIXES SUCH AS NEW DAMS, CLOUD SEEDING, DESALINATION PLANTS AND UNDERGROUND WATER STORAGE MAY HELP BUY SOME TIME, but ANY GAINS IN WATER SUPPLY WILL BE EVENTUALLY ABSORBED BY THE GROWING POPULATION," according to the report."

"The National Research council is the principal operating arm of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering."

"The point that we make is that the technological and conservation operations, although very useful and necessary , will not in the long run constitute a panacea for coping with the limited water supplies in this desert area," said panel chairman Ernest Smerdon, dean emeritus of the University of Arizona College of Engineering and Mines."

"The new National Research Council document calls for further study of the Colorado River but offers no solutions for the West's water woes."

"The Colorado River has been called the hardest-working river, but how much more work can it be asked to do ?" said study co-author Kelly Redmond, a climatologist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada."

The issue of limitations has to be confronted eventually, and it's just a question of WHICH GENERATION is going to take it on," Redmond said."

"Down the road, we'll either decide that the population cannot continue to grow inexorably, or we will have to go to greater and greater lengths to find (other sources of) water and move it to where the people are."

"There's not much in here that should be a surprise to anybody," Eric Kuhn, manager of the Colorado River WAter Conservation District in glenwood Springs, said of the new study.""

The big question is, will the water management infrastructure -- meaning the big state and federal agencies -- adopt it or dismiss it because it's telling them things they don't want to hear ?"

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And thinking ahead to a possible time in our future the possibility exists that with the increase in population all water in our country will be limited due to population expansion.

It's not just water, but agricultural out put, between population needing food and plants producing ethanol from corn (which in itself uses much power and water) it is conceivable that we will push the limits on foodstuffs.

In a way the time to have acted was far in the past. As our population grew, we just increased the number of dams, power plants, water and sewer lines and blacktopped our little part of the world.

Years ago it would have been a good time to force developers to guarantee water for the new homes they wanted to build. If they couldn't find a source -- no building ! Would have been easy to do that if legislators had been free of lobbyists pushing for development.

But as a world, when it comes to a time that we all stand elbow to elbow, chest to back and everybody has to breathe in unison or smother -- will the biggies decide to do something a bit too late ?

Here in the West it would seem that dried up riverbeds will be our counterfeit protection WATERMARK . . . . . . . . . . . .

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