It's dry all over the West,
but the suffering isn't equal

By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Sept. 18, 2002

Big-picture analyses say the current drought statistically doesn't match the Dust Bowl or even the drought and heat of 1988.

Food prices aren't likely to rise anytime soon as a result, homeowners in Los Angeles and Phoenix have yet to empty their swimming pools, most restrictions on water use across the West are voluntary and losses to farmers and ranchers are expected to fall well short of 1988's $56 billion.

And during the height of the Dust Bowl, 63 percent of the nation was in the most severe stage of drought; in mid-August, that figure was 37 percent.

Still, the current drought's duration and geographic reach are longer and bigger than 1988, and the big-picture analyses blur some critical details in the Mountain West.

The Colorado River last month was running at 14 percent of average, the lowest in 150 years of record-keeping. Rocky Mountain ranchers are among the hardest hit, although it's too early to tally losses.

Dry forests have burned in massive fires in Colorado, Arizona, California, New Mexico and Oregon. And conditions are making more timber vulnerable to beetles and disease.

And while many urban dwellers are only slightly inconvenienced, the impact on some small towns, and on forest and field, is dramatic throughout the region. A summary from recent headlines:

Colorado foresters said they see hundreds of thousands of pines across the state dying from secondary results of drought: bark beetles, mistletoe. But what's unusual is that they also document trees dying from simple lack of water. Measurements at the Manitou Experimental Forest southwest of Denver show that the first seven months of 2002 were the driest since records began in 1937.

Thousands of acres of pines in New Mexico wilderness areas are succumbing to beetles, as drought-stressed trees can't produce enough sap to stave off insects.

In northern Utah, near the Idaho border, a significant number of farmers raise wheat, barley and hay without irrigation. They've lost about 70 percent of their yield this year and many say their operations won't survive another dry year.

In southern Utah, ranchers that depend on surface water to irrigate their fields are caught in a bind. Pasture and range is so poor, cattle are dying but it's too expensive to buy feed. And with everyone around in the same predicament, ranchers can't auction off their herds because no one wants to buy them.

Hawkwatch International says its observers have documented a steady decline since 1997 in the number of hawks, eagles, falcons and other raptors at its observation points in Nevada, Utah, Montana, the Grand Canyon and New Mexico. There's no direct cause-and-effect but plenty of circumstantial evidence pointing at drought, biologists said.

And while Phoenix residents are basking by the pool, Colorado homeowners are adjusting to changed lifestyles. Lafayette has put a moratorium on new taps and doubled its water rates. In the towns of Silt and Parachute, lawn-watering violators can get jail time and fines up to $1,000.

Parched Boulder hired six "water cops" to catch criminal lawn-sprinklers, set up a phone line so residents can turn in their neighbors, and from June to mid-July, cited 209 violators. The city stuck rows of plastic pinwheels instead of planting flowers at city parks and didn't open its public swimming pool.

In Denver, an estimated 75 percent of summer water use goes to landscaping, two thirds of that for lawns.

Some observers say that federal dams, canals and other water projects have masked the effect of living, ranching and farming in an arid climate. But as population growth and development pushes the limits of the water supply, and the water cycle turns to the dry phase, Westerners' adjustments may become more permanent.

"It just means we have to adjust our thinking, and come into better balance with the amount of water our arid landscape can provide," says Bart Miller, a lawyer for the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor.

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