By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com
Here is a late-breaking flash from a new study released last month at the University of Arizona: westerners use too much water.
Pete Seeger’s 1960s folk standard, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, made a genuine classic through cover versions by the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; and at least 50 others. It is often quoted, generally out of context, as will be the case here, because of the line closing each stanza, “When will they ever learn.”
I hear it occasionally in arguments about endangered species, as in, “Where have all the flowers gone, young girls picked them, every one.” I think of it more in connection with these never-ending “studies” about the Colorado River, how much more water there used to be, and why it isn’t there anymore.
Government agencies spend millions every year on such studies, usually through grants to college professors, whose conclusions are virtually always the same. They invariably conclude either that the original negotiators of interstate agreements were wrong about the flow of the river, or that it is much lower today because of global warming. Most importantly, they always – always – advocate reducing water use as the sole solution.
These studies never – not even once in the last 20 years – discuss the role of federal land management in reducing the flow of water throughout the West. That ignores the most important factor in reduced water flows across the West, especially in the Colorado River Basin.
Numerous forest health analyses show that mismanagement of public lands has resulted in massive unnatural overgrowth that prevents vast amounts of water from reaching the streams. Moreover, volumes of surveys document non-native high-water-consuming plants like tamarisk and Russian olive clogging rivers across the southwest, about which the government has done virtually nothing.
Yet every study of the Colorado River Basin drought ignores the federal government’s poor management that is largely the cause.
Obviously, government agencies do not give research grants to show themselves culpable, so it isn’t difficult to figure out why such studies ignore that.
This latest study is only slightly different, in that it focuses on the loss of groundwater, which is closely related to the reduced flow of the Colorado River. It says the Basin has lost as much water as a full Lake Mead over the last 20 years, roughly 27 million acre feet, especially in Arizona.
The study relied heavily on NASA satellites to detect how much fresh water was in the basin, then extrapolated conclusions about the overuse of groundwater by farmers. It says groundwater is being depleted faster than it can be replenished, which I’m sure is true, but that is a result of wells and pumps, not climate change.
Yet the government-funded study nevertheless reaches the obligatory conclusion that climate change is responsible, and that water use must be curtailed.
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT GREGWALCHER.COM
Greg Walcher is president of the Natural Resources Group and author of “Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back,” now in its second printing. He is a former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and former President of Club 20.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.
