Water scarcity in the Colorado River Basin threatens 40 million people and 5 million acres of farmland from Mexico to Wyoming. Many call this a disaster, but that makes it look like a disaster. force majeureClimate change is not the only cause of low flows. Industrial agriculture, urban sprawl, and concrete infrastructure designed for them. Control Water exacerbates local water problems. Bringing in water from elsewhere does not solve the problem.
Summer is fast approaching, and the Biden administration’s recently proposed watering restrictions along rivers show the gravity of the situation. After decades of drought and the inability of states to compromise on necessary cuts, the Fed may indeed step in.
looking through my book Water always wins: thriving in times of drought and deluge, I met people from all over the world. It has taught us that if we respect and cooperate with the power of water, we can protect ourselves from these extreme situations. Because European-American culture is shortsightedly focused on human welfare, we tend to see water as a commodity or a flood threat. I’m trying to solve these problems with This is a manifestation of the cultural urge to control the environment. Globalized by colonialism and capitalism, this feature has disrupted the hydrological cycle and exacerbated floods and droughts almost everywhere. Instead, we must look at water as a living system and ask: What does water want?
Water wants what development has disrupted: the slow stages of wetlands, floodplains, meadows and forests. Historically, many current seasonal streams flowed year-round, fed by healthy aquifers replenished by remnant surface water. You can make the most of your water by returning space to these slow phases. I came to think of this approach as “slow water movement”. At Slowwater, solutions are system-oriented, equitable, decentralized, community-driven or community-facing. Slow water projects combat floods and droughts, store carbon dioxide, preserve soils, reduce the need for irrigation, and support countless life forms, including humans.
Not everyone sees water as something to manage. Many cultures consider water a friend and relative. This view is held by groups ranging from indigenous peoples in North America to Kenyan government officials to South Indian Tamils, and is shared by some ecologists, landscape architects (including one I met in China). , city planners and environmental engineers around the world. I call these people “water detectives”. Water Detectives make room for the complex relationship between water and all elements of the ecosystem, including humans, and understand that with the right to water comes the responsibility to manage it. Then those healthy systems give us.
We cut off the water cycle. Drained up to 87% of wetlands globally. About two-thirds of the major rivers were dammed and diverted. Since 1992, the city’s paved area has doubled. In addition to this land and water change, overpumping, beaver killing, deforestation, and grassland overgrazing have severed the connection between surface and groundwater. Our development in the Colorado River Basin has demonstrated these trends and dried up the land.
Flood management strategies in California and Washington have begun to secure slow-flow basins, pushing levees back from riverbanks to allow rivers such as the Cosmnes and Nooksack rivers to re-access parts of the floodplain. This strategy allows floodplain water to slowly return to the river, extending flow into the dry months when farmers need it most.
When the groundwater table drops, the risk of fire increases and rainfall decreases. Restoring groundwater and raising the water table within plant reach allows plants to transpire water. On average, 40% of precipitation over land transpires from plants and evaporates from soil. Plant networks pass water through a process called water recycling or water hopping. Projects around the world, including the Colorado River Basin, are already slowing water on private and public lands. For example, a couple in Arizona built thousands of small rock walls in streams. As a result, 28% more water flowed downstream than a nearby untreated stream.
Another strategy involves beavers. No animal is good at healing water systems. About 10% of North America was beaver-created wetlands before hunters nearly drove these animals to extinction. Their dams slow the water down and filter it underground. One researcher found that a beaver stored 75 times more water per 100 meters of waterway than a place without beavers. This reservoir is becoming increasingly important as snow cover and glaciers disappear. Their ponds and well-drained vegetation near them also act as firebreaks. We can help by learning to live with them instead of killing them. Washington State is a leader in Beaver coexistence, and the movement has spread throughout the West.
Still, many engineers and decision makers say nature-based solutions, including slow water projects, cannot be a significant part of the solution. We have caused damage so extensively that we need small distributed projects across watersheds where water can stay on land and move underground.
Another issue is that the cost-benefit analysis we use for gray infrastructure such as dams and levees typically does not cover the benefits provided by a healthy water system, such as flood protection, water storage and purification, precipitation, cooling, food production, and carbon storage. ignoring the benefits. Nor does it deduct the cost of damage to these systems by control-oriented infrastructure.
Our gray, infrastructure-centric approach to water is clearly failing. Importing water from elsewhere is not the answer. Social hydrologists know that adding new lanes to highways will only increase demand, such as more traffic. As a result, human activity has moved to areas where there is not enough water to support it. Long-distance water transfer is also an issue of environmental justice, bringing more water to her 20% of the world’s population, but reducing available water to 24% of the world’s population. For example, much of the Colorado River is drained by US water rights before reaching Mexico, where her two million people in Tijuana depend.
Fortunately, we can change our ways, as the leader behind the Slow Water project shows. In addition to its latest move to reduce human use of the Colorado River, the Biden administration could allocate funds to nature-based solutions, including slow water, through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. However, the scale is still relatively small and funding relies on local and state authorities being aware of and applying for these solutions. The government’s nature-based solutions roadmap might help. It calls for new educational, scientific, financial, and policy initiatives for better cooperation with nature.
A disaster like today’s water shortage is an opportunity to rethink standard practices and make big changes. Agriculture consumes he 80% of the water used by humans in Colorado. However, the biggest consumers are not critical foods, but cash crops such as alfalfa, almonds and cotton. Water should not be unfairly profited, but diverted for greater good.
Landscape irrigation, especially lawn irrigation, uses as much as 70% of residential water in cities in the southwest. But cultures can change. Cities such as Los Angeles are offering rebates to homeowners who replace their lawns with native drought-tolerant plants, and 30 water authorities, including Phoenix and Las Vegas, have pledged to remove ornamental lawns. increase. The cultural shift began in Phoenix years ago, and many residents are now proud of their saguaro and palo verde trees, posting snaps of bobcats and roadrunners in their yards.
California has plenty of water supplies from elsewhere this year, but other western states face continued water shortages and political struggles over sharing the Colorado River remain unresolved. is. It’s time to replace control with collaboration. We make ourselves resilient when we deal with water systems. People all over the world and in the West are already hydrating rather than dehydrating the land. Every part is useful and its effects are cumulative. For example, if you put solar power on everyone’s roof, you will get a lot of electricity. You can start at home today.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American.
