|
|
|
Agencies have sophisticated and
coordinated tools
to deal with most natural disasters, except drought |
By Mike Johanns,
governor of Nebraska
for Headwaters News |
| Pick up your daily paper or
scroll through your favorite Internet news site and all too
routinely you can read the latest bad news about the drought
and the havoc it is wreaking on communities, agriculture,
the economy and the environment across parts of the West and
the nation.
In my home state of Nebraska, dramatically lower water levels
in some of our lakes are spawning the creation of algae plumes
that could pose health risks to people and animals.
In Las Vegas, water restrictions have been imposed on homeowners
and businesses as Lake Mead drops to its lowest level in 35
years.
In Washington state, thousands of agricultural and aluminum
manufacturing jobs have been lost over recent years because
of the drought. Washington now estimates drought-related losses
from 2001 through 2005 will exceed $1.2 billion.
The effects of a drought
Historically, the worst drought on record hit hardest in the
central and eastern U.S. in 1988. At least 5,000 deaths were
attributed to the drought that year, and an estimated $40 billion
was lost by agriculture and related industries.
Looking to the future, the Denver Post reported recently that
$100 million worth of hydropower generated annually by Lake
Powell could dry up by 2009, if water continues to be released
at pre-drought rates.
While there are reams of documentation that drought visits some
part of the country every year and causes billions of dollars
in impacts, there still does not exist a permanent national
policy to prepare for and respond to drought disasters.
This lack of a coordinated, integrated federal drought policy
causes confusion at the state and local levels, and results
in actions being taken mainly through special legislation and
ad hoc measures, rather than through a systematic and permanent
process, as occurs with other natural disasters that fall under
existing law known as the Stafford Act.
My colleagues in the Western Governors' Association believe
there is a better way to do business. Govs. Bill Richardson
of New Mexico, Judy Martz of Montana and Mike Rounds of South
Dakota have joined me as lead governors for addressing drought,
and we continue to urge Congress to act on this critical issue
before the year is out.
Specifically, we advocate an approach offered by Sens. Pete
Domenici (R-N.M.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)
in their drought preparedness bill pending before the Senate,
"The National Drought Preparedness Act of 2003."
This legislation would establish a comprehensive national drought
policy and designate the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the
lead federal agency for drought.
If enacted, the measure would create the National Drought Council
to coordinate and integrate federal drought assistance programs.
The advantage of this one-stop-shopping approach is that it
would encourage drought preparedness planning at all levels
of government, and, as droughts emerge, would focus federal
funding on the implementation of the preparedness plans in order
to proactively mitigate the drought's impacts.
Another important provision of the bill would establish the
National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), a vastly
improved drought monitoring and forecasting system. Over the
past year, WGA has worked with experts in government, the private
sector, academia and nonprofit groups to develop recommendations
contained in our report released in late June titled, "Creating
a Drought Early Warning System for the 21st Century: The National
Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)."
The governors recognize that timely, integrated and reliable
science is key to responding proactively to droughts. The effects
of a drought are not immediate and obvious, like those of a
hurricane or tornado, but they are at least as damaging.
As with other acts of nature, preparation can be the key to
lessening the blow. Tools, like NIDIS, that will alert us to
potential drought situations can help us make better mitigation
decisions. And, if everyone is basing those decisions on the
same information, we can work together, both locally and regionally,
to be more effective in our preparation.
The NIDIS will provide water users across the board –
farmers, ranchers, tribes, land managers, business owners, recreationists,
wildlife managers and decision-makers at all levels of government
– with the ability to assess their drought risk in real
time and before the onset of drought.
It is up to Congress to pass the legislation that will provide
this powerful tool to all these water users. We urge them to
make it a priority when they return to work in September.
Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns is one
of the Western Governors' Association's co-leaders for drought,
along with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Montana Gov.
Judy Martz and South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds.
For information on the Governors' policy position and for links
to the federal legislation, visit the Western
Governors Associations' Web site.
Download
Senate Bill 1454, the "National Drought Preparedness
Act of 2003
Download
the NIDIS report (pdf). |
| |
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Aug. 18, 2004
The National Integrated Drought Information System would
take an existing but widely varied set of technologies, merge
them, fill in the gaps, crunch the numbers, and create a tool
to not only assess drought in the West but predict its consequences.
And the data would be available not only to an alphabet soup
of state and federal agencies, but to water managers, farmers,
ranchers, anglers and anyone else who relies on water -- and
in the West, that's just about everyone.
The Western Governors' Association report, released last
June, emphasizes that for most natural disasters – hurricanes,
floods and tornadoes, to pick the most dramatic – agencies
coordinate their prediction and tracking efforts, and relief
is streamlined under the authority of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
By contrast, drought is much less dramatic and despite its deepening
impact on the West, there is no synchronized effort to predict
it, track it or deal with it. The association's report
would create a smoothly integrated system of drought analysis,
drought forecasting and drought response, and put someone in
charge of overseeing it.
The Western Governors' Association first proposed a national
drought policy in 1996. It prompted Congress to create the National
Drought Policy Commission, which recommended a national policy
in a May 2000 report.
In February 2003, Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns met with the chief
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to draft
a plan. The association's plan call for NOAA to be the
lead agency.
Now, relevant information is collected by various agencies and
differing methods. The U.S. Geological Survey collects real-time
streamflow information and beams it via satellite from a network
of sites across the West and the nation.
The National Weather Service has a network of professional and
volunteer data collectors across the nation who record temperatures,
rainfall, humidity and other familiar numbers.
Natural Resources Conservation Service sites send information
on the depth of mountain snowpack and its water content to satellites
with a different technology. Data on soil moisture, soil temperatures
are collected by other agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers
and Bureau of Reclamation handle reservoir releases, and almost
no one measures the use and fall of groundwater reserves.
Research on the impacts of drought are scattered among universities
and federal labs across the country.
All these elements would be melded into an accurate view of
current conditions, but it still wouldn't be enough, the
plan says.
The National Weather Service would expand its reporting network.
Data on reservoir levels and demand would be factored in, and
local and state officials would begin collecting and sharing
groundwater measurements.
Experts would find ways to merge those different reporting technologies
and parse the data into a common format. Agencies would expand
their satellite communications in the often-inaccessible western
mountains, and in a partnership that could save more than $1
million a year in costs, piggyback on law enforcement land-line
networks in the Midwest to transmit data.
Other experts would create computer models that would churn
the data and draw maps of likely future conditions, the key
to planning for next season's challenges, instead of reacting
to next season's crises.
The system would be developed in phases, according to funding.
Some of the work would be contracted out to private companies,
the report says, under government oversight. There are no cost
figures in the report.
A whole other realm of information is lacking, the report says,
on the human costs of drought. The plan proposes a system to
gather data on elements such as drought-relief payments, mental-health
visits in drought-stricken areas, and loss of revenue to the
gamut of water-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, river
and fishing guides, barge traffic, hydropower production, municipal
water systems, ski resorts and golf courses.
The proposal calls for first developing ways to collect and
tally those firm costs, as well as estimating the less-apparent
impacts to less-visible assets: timber, wildlife, energy, recreation
and tourism.
A big part of the plan is making the data and the predictions
available to those who need it. The report criticizes current
information as “often technical, complex and typically
is not presented in a standard format.”
The report envisions an interactive Web site accessible to nearly
anyone who cares, an ongoing program to teach consumers how
to best use it, and a means for feedback to help refine it. |
| |
| |
|
|
|
Send
this page to a
friend or colleague
Readers
respond
Grazing must adapt
In addition to misappropriated water, based on unseasonably
wet years, we must deal with misappropriated grazing permits.
Our grazing permits have a
double edged sword cutting against historical use.
First, ranchers have upgraded their herds significantly from
the days permits were doled out. The
consequences of a mother cow weighing 800 pounds raising a
300 pound calf vs. a 1,200-pound cow weaning a 600-pound calf
are significant, indeed.
Now, cut the average precipitation in half and something has
got to give.
Sure, we have improved the rangelands significantly since
those early days. Stock water development, irrigation, and
many types of grazing systems have
resulted in more efficient harvesting of the rangelands.
But when push comes to shove, ranchers argue historical preference.
Even in this most severe of droughts, many ranchers argue
that there is no basis for stocking rate reductions below
historical permitted use.
If the drought continues,
something has got to give.
On the other hand, many environmentalists argue of ridding
the land of cattle. Yet this would do more harm than good
in our arid environment.
Many practicing Holistic Management and other means of planning
grazing, which simulate the grazing practices of the bison,
have actually improved land health while increasing their
stocking rates.
These same practitioners are quick to respond to less production
and increase recovery periods for stressed plants. These practices
tend to cover the soil surface and hold water in the soil
mantle.
With a covered soil surface, water tends to soak in rather
than run off and there is less evaporation.
In the west, we have a brittle environment, which means we
have little atmospheric humidity at the soil surface. This
causes decomposition to happen chemically through oxidation
or through fire rather than
biologically.
Chemical decomposition sends energy into the atmosphere, while
biological decomposition builds soil.
In a brittle environment, the tool of rest tends to move our
ecosystem to less biodiversity.
But in a non-brittle
environment, like the Amazon jungle, rest tends to move our
ecosystem toward more biodiversity.
In dealing with drought, we must make adjustments. Mimicking
the bison's migrating habits will help manage the water cycle,
improve our stocking rates, and move our arid ecosystem toward
more biodiversity.
To achieve this, we need adequate plant recovery periods and
a covered soil surface. This
will stretch the minimal rain that we do get in our arid environment.
In a drought, something has got to give. For the sake of biodiversity
and a better water cycle, let's hope the give is in better
grazing practices and not the removal of livestock.
Tony Malmberg
Lander, Wyo.
Analysis:
Drought may shape future of the
region
By Shellie Nelson, assistant
editor
Headwaters News
Aug. 18, 2004
Much of the western United States has been
grappling with the effects of drought for the past five years.
Whether the drought is part of the area's natural cycle or
a climatological change back to the norm, western states are
caught in changes forced by drought some have categorized
as worse than the Dust
Bowl.
Research into drought cycles over the past 800 years suggests
the relatively wet climate enjoyed by the West during the
20th Century was a fluke, and current arid conditions are
merely a shift back to normal conditions.
If this proves to be true, then the massive relocation of
population to the West has been premised
on a gross miscalculation.
Entire forests
across the West, weakened by the drought, are being decimated
by beetles, as are stretches of pinion pines across Colorado
and New Mexico.
Sagebrush,
one of the most durable plants in the arid West, is also falling
prey to the drought.
Water levels in Lake
Powell are at the lowest since the reservoirs first began
to fill in 1970. Utah's
Great Salt Lake has dwindled, too, to the lowest level
since 1970.
The Rocky Mountain West is home to five
of the nation's fastest growing states: Nevada, Arizona,
Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver are
all gobbling up land and water resources at record pace, and
farmers, irrigators and small towns are wondering what will
happen when those communities
come knocking for their water.
Some farmers are discovering their share of irrigation
water is their best cash crop, and they are selling their
water to thirsty developments.
Many western cities have passed water-conservation
ordinances. Some, including Denver,
have been so successful that the water company has been forced
to raise rates as consumption levels dropped.
And the lack of formal adjudication of water
rights in some states has sharpened conflicts. Most of the
Rocky Mountain states ascribe to the "first in time,
first in right" principle of apportioning water to users.
In New Mexico, where water rights are a complex tangle of
rights conferred under U.S., Spanish and tribal laws and agreements,
some suits have dragged
on for decades.
And looming on the horizon are further conflicts
arising under the multi-state Colorado
Water Users Compact, signed by governors of Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming in 1922.
The agreement basically states that Colorado, Nevada, Utah
and Wyoming would not allow Colorado River water flows to
drop below a certain level, in exchange for Arizona, California
and New Mexico ceding any rights to flows above that level.
But in 1922, flows were high, optimism was higher, and the
deal was based on conditions some experts now call a fallacy.
|
|
