Colorado River Basin Water Management: Evaluating and Adjusting to Hydroclimatic Variability

摘要

The report presents population growth data for much of the western United States that is served by Colorado River water. The cities in the region are collectively the fastest growing in the nation. Of further concern is that this growth seems to be occurring with little regard to long-term availability of future water supplies. Ideally, these issues will be openly discussed and squarely addressed before the water supply-and-demand balance across the region becomes more critical. This is important because, for example, the drought of the early 2000s turned out to be even worse than many assumptions regarding a worst-case-scenario drought. This ongoing drought has contained a sequence of exceptionally dry years. Inflows into the basin's storage reservoirs have been well below normal and it may take 15 years of average future hydrologic conditions to refill the basin's largest water storage reservoirs, Lakes Mead and Powell. These hydroclimatic trends are especially troubling in light of rapidly increasing water demands.