Hot
tip for Western speculators:
Invest in water
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
April 3, 2002
Water has always been a hot-button issue in the West, and as more
people choose to live and make a living in a region that is mostly desert --
technically or practically -- water is quickly becoming an even more valuable
commodity.
On the Hopi
Reservation in Arizona, 1,000-year-old springs sacred to the tribe and essential
to its agricultural lifestyle are drying up. An ongoing drought is certainly
a factor, but tribal leaders are convinced that the 1.3 billion gallons a year
that Peabody Coal Co. pumps from the aquifer each year is the cause.
Peabody pays the Hopi and Navajo tribes $3.5 million a year for the contract,
a deal critics say is no deal at all, if it drains the aquifer.
Farther north, the headwaters of the Colorado River are likely to get only 70
percent of average snowpack, worsening the downstream drought and further shrinking
Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Lake Powell is already 51 feet below full pool, Lake Mead is 47 feet shy, and
the desert
cities that depend on the river for their supplies are getting a little anxious.
Nevada, for the first time, expects to draw its full allocation from the Colorado.
But turbidity and algae increase with lower levels, and Las Vegas officials
are concerned about the rising cost of making the water drinkable.
Southern California stands to suffer most. A critical shortage would trigger
emergency measures in the historic "4.4 Plan" engineered by then-Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt, cut off surplus water deliveries to California and
"make the energy crunch of 2001 look like child's play," according
to one irrigation district official.
Complicating the picture for upstream states, a deal decades in the making would
give northern
Arizona tribes control of more than 1 million acre-feet of water, enough
to satisfy the entire state but the only source available for future growth
in urban Phoenix and Tucson.
In the Idaho Panhandle, the aquifer
that underlies rural Rathdrum Prairie north of Coeur d'Alene drains westward
and becomes the sole source of drinking water for the Spokane Valley.
Three companies have applied to draw a total of 20 million gallons a day from
the aquifer for their proposed power plants. Idaho agencies at first seemed
pliant but have stiffened their demands for more study
after an outcry from Spokane-area businesses, industries and officials.
In Reno, the region's 20-year growth-management plan would permit enough new
houses to exhaust
ground water supplies, according to a recent report. The aquifer could supply
only 55 percent of the demand at build-out, the report said, although some local
officials said the shortfall could be made up with contracts for river and stream
flows.
Alberta is running out of surplus water, although government officials ultimately
rejected as too expensive their plans for a new dam and reservoir near the Saskatchewan
border.
Parts of Montana are the driest
in a century, the effects of the drought that has parched a broad swath
south to Texas.
Arizona's
winter was the fourth dry one in a row, leaving reservoirs near record lows.
Utah officials are preparing water-use restrictions, and forest officials in
Colorado
and New Mexico say conditions are already more appropriate for July, and some
areas are as dry as the catastrophic summer of 2000.
An editorial
in the Spokesman-Review was aimed at the power companies maneuvering for
a stake in the Rathdrum Prairie aquifer, but it could also apply to a dozen
hot spots in the region now and an untold number in the near future:
The need for water will not change, nor will the supply. Communities need water to support human life, and also to support commerce. Water is as essential to modern industry as it was to the farm economy of our past. We'll need more of it. Will it be there? Or will the holders of water rights have it all locked up?
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