Daniel Salzler No. 1213
EnviroInsight.org Four Items August 4, 2023
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- Lake Mead-Size Water Losses Across Colorado River Basin, UCLA Study Says. LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A new study by UCLA researchers says climate change is responsible for water losses across the Colorado River Basin, equal to the size of Lake Mead.
Researchers announced their findings from 2000 to 2021, stating that the system lost 10 trillion gallons throughout the Colorado River—roughly the size of the capacity of Lake Mead.
The study described how the rise in temperatures across the region has led to water losses.
“The fact that warming removed as much water from the basin as the size of Lake Mead itself during the recent megadrought is a wakeup call to the climate change impacts we are living today,” said study leader Benjamin Bass in a press release announcement for the study, which appeared in the journal Water Resources Research.
The system provides water for 40 million people across seven states.
Though Southern Nevada has seen recent rises in lake levels, its still far below previous levels. In 1983, Lake Mead rose to 1,225 feet. This week, it rose to 1,060 feet. In 2022, the lake dropped to the lowest levels ever at 1,044 feet.
“We have been flirting with a danger zone on Lake Mead and Lake Powell in the last few years, where we could see a situation in which one of the reservoirs would go into dead pool, which would be catastrophic,” said Sarah Porter of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU, to our sister station AZ Family back in May.
In May, Arizona, Nevada and California agreed to significant cuts through 2026. The feds must approve the agreement, and are expected to do so in mid-August.
2. Supreme Court Rules Against Navajo Nation In Colorado River Water Rights Case. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.
States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California that are also involved in the case had urged the court to decide for them, which the justices did in a 5-4 ruling. Colorado had argued that siding with the Navajo Nation would undermine existing agreements and disrupt the management of the river.
The Biden administration had said that if the court were to come down in favor of the Navajo Nation, the federal government could face lawsuits from many other tribes.
Lawyers for the Navajo Nation had characterized the tribe’s request as modest, saying they simply were seeking an assessment of the tribe’s water needs and a plan to meet them.
The facts of the case go back to treaties that the tribe and the federal government signed in 1849 and 1868. The second treaty established the reservation as the tribe’s “permanent home” — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. In 2003 the tribe sued the federal government, arguing it had failed to consider or protect the Navajo Nation’s water rights to the lower portion of the Colorado River.
Writing for a majority made up of conservative justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that “the Navajos contend that the treaty requires the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos — for example, by assessing the Tribe’s water needs, developing a plan to secure the needed water, and potentially building pipelines, pumps, wells, or other water infrastructure.”
But, Kavanaugh said, “In light of the treaty’s text and history, we conclude that the treaty does not require the United States to take those affirmative steps.”
Kavanaugh acknowledged that water issues are difficult ones.
“Allocating water in the arid regions of the American West is often a zero-sum situation,” he wrote. It is important, he said, for courts to leave “to Congress and the President the responsibility to enact appropriations laws and to otherwise update federal law as they see fit in light of the competing contemporary needs for water.”
A federal trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit, but an appeals court allowed it to go forward. The Supreme Court’s decision reverses that ruling from the appeals court.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that he would have allowed the case to go forward and he characterized the Navajo’s position as a “simple ask.”
“Where do the Navajo go from here?” he wrote. “To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”
Gorsuch said one “silver lining” of the case may be that his colleagues in the majority recognized that the tribe may still be able to “assert the interests they claim in water rights litigation, including by seeking to intervene in cases that affect their claimed interests.”
Gorsuch, a conservative and Colorado native who has emerged as a champion of Native rights since joining the court in 2017, was joined by the court’s three liberals: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
During arguments in the case in March, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the Navajo Nation’s original reservation was hundreds of miles away from the section of the Colorado River it now seeks water from.
Today, the Colorado River flows along what is now the northwestern border of the tribe’s reservation, which extends into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Two of the river’s tributaries, the San Juan River and the Little Colorado River, also pass alongside and through the reservation. Still, one-third of the some 175,000 people who live on the reservation, the largest in the country, do not have running water in their homes.
The government argued that it has helped the tribe secure water from the Colorado River’s tributaries and provided money for infrastructure, including pipelines, pumping plants and water treatment facilities. But it said no law or treaty required the government to assess and address the tribe’s general water needs. The states involved in the case argued that the Navajo Nation was attempting to make an end run around a Supreme Court decree that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.
In a statement, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren called the ruling “disappointing” and said the tribe’s lawyers “continue to analyze the opinion and determine what it means for this particular lawsuit.”
“My job as the President of the Navajo Nation is to represent and protect the Navajo people, our land, and our future,” Nygren said. “The only way to do that is with secure, quantified water rights to the Lower Basin of the Colorado River.”
Rita McGuire, a lawyer who represented states opposing the tribe’s claims, said the court “ruled exactly right” and that “we’re very pleased.” Associated Press reporter Michael Phillis in St. Louis contributed to this report.
3. When Blowing Bubbles With Water, Bubble Gum Or Dish Washing Liquid, Etc. Eventually The bubble will burst. What causes the bubble to burst?
a. Atmospheric pressure
b. Gravity
c. Dirt
d. Water
Answer at the end of the newsletter
4. Colorado River Task Force Focuses First Meeting On Hopes, Concerns About Fast-Paced Process. Members from around Colorado met to discuss how the task force can fulfill its job: providing a unified recommendation for state legislators by December.
Members of the Colorado River Drought Task Force met for the first time Monday to lay the groundwork for five months of water supply problem-solving.
The Colorado General Assembly passed legislation in May to create the interim task force, which will study and recommend ways state lawmakers can address Colorado River water scarcity in the future. As the members head into those discussions, several of them said one of their main priorities is to condense diverse and at times conflicting perspectives into a unified message for lawmakers.
The 17-member group had to hold its first meeting by July 31, according to the legislation. The meeting primarily focused on the members’ hopes and concerns about the task ahead and logistical questions about how to proceed when time is in short supply.
“We really have a big responsibility here, a huge opportunity,” Kathy Chandler-Henry, an Eagle County commissioner and chair of the task force, said during the online meeting. “We don’t want to recreate the wheel (and) do a lot of things that haven’t been done before.”
The Colorado River begins in Rocky Mountain National Park and flows through the western U.S., where it and its tributaries form the Colorado River Basin. The basin supplies about 40 million people with water, but its future has become increasingly uncertain in face of warmer temperatures, more than two decades of drought and overuse by water users.
This year, state officials started the 120-day lawmaking session saying water was going to be the “centerpiece” of Democratic environmental policy. Out of 16 water-focused bills, the task force bill was the only piece of legislation that directly addressed Colorado River issues.
The group is made up of appointees from around the state who represent local and state governments, the agricultural industry, tribes and water management boards. All appointees and nonvoting, advisory members of the task force attended the meeting Monday.
The task force’s first phase will focus on information gathering and assessing members’ priorities in one-on-one conversations with the Langdon Group, a Utah-based company hired to help facilitate the meetings.
During Monday’s meeting, task force members voiced their goals, questions and concerns for the process ahead.
Several members said they would like the group to come to a unified agreement on its recommendations for next year’s legislative session.
Members also said they want to build on the existing body of work — years of analysis, policy recommendations and program proposals about Colorado River issues — that has already been done.
“I think my biggest concern is the short amount of time we have,” said Lisa Yellow Eagle, the attorney for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. “But I am hopeful because we do seem to have a lot of people in this group who have already been working on these issues, so I definitely look towards them as I learn about what has been done before.”
Lee Miller, general counsel of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, said his main hope is that the group does no harm.
“My greatest fear about the task force is that, we know the Lower Basin is going to be watching — other states in the Colorado River Basin are watching — that we don’t give them fuel to divide us more or to use it against us in these negotiations for the interim guideline extension,” Miller said.
Other task force members also echoed concerns about presenting a unified front as representatives from the seven Colorado River Basin states negotiate interim- and long-term guidelines that will impact how water is shared during supply shortages.
“We don’t want to do anything that weakens our position with the Lower Basin states when we’re looking at the big river issues,” Chandler-Henry said. “Even though this task force is within the state of Colorado, we have a big responsibility to the Upper Basin as well.”
Colorado officials argue that overuse in the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — is a primary driver of water shortages in the Colorado River Basin. Source: https://www.postindependent.com/news/colorado-river-task-force-focuses-first-meeting-on-hopes-concerns-about-fast-paced-process/
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Answer: C. Dirt
Everyone has a memory of blowing bubbles. They probably remember watching in awe as the tiny pocket of soap floated blissfully along, and then the horror that followed when the bubble popped. While there are a few different reasons why a bubble can pop, the most common reason is that there are tiny specks of dirt and debris being blown around in the air at all times. When one of the larger ones of these hits a bubble – POP! Source: https://www.needtoknowfacts.com/trivia/science/what-causes-bubbles-to-pop-after-being-blown/results/63041dd4fde3b6ec5970a03c
