Much of the western US is facing a drought. What’s the best way to deal with it?

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, how extreme weather, drought and dwindling water levels in the Colorado River are all connected. It's been one of the hottest summers on record for many parts of the western United States. Some cities, like Phoenix, have had temperatures reach above 115 degrees. And that means a high attendance at cooling centers around the city. KJZZ reporter Catherine Davis-Young spoke with a man named Jonathan Nelson, who's relied on some of these cooling centers. I come in every day because the heat is really, really bad. I've been in the hospital because of the heat.

0:35I've been in kidney failure because of the heat. Nelson has been homeless in Phoenix for 15 years, but he says this has been his hardest summer yet. If not for this site, he says he might not survive. I'd probably be dead. Honestly, I'd probably be dead because of the heat. And I know it's killing a lot of people out there, too. On top of the health risks associated with heat, much of the western U.S. has been dealing with drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. In times like these, water and access to it becomes a contentious issue. Consider this. As the western U.S. deals with heat and drought, a new federal proposal aims to reallocate access to water from the Colorado River.

1:13What impact could that have on more than 40 million people who rely on that water? From NPR, I'm Rob Schmitz. This message comes from WISE, the smart way to manage your money around the world. With Wise, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies at the mid-market rate. Learn more at wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Made in Cookware. President and co-founder Jake Halick shares why he was inspired by his family's fourth generation kitchen supply business. Growing up in a commercial kitchen at home really opened my eyes to bringing what was cool in restaurants into your home.

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2:37It's Consider This from NPR. When it comes to water, what happens in Colorado does not stay in Colorado. Over the last 25 years, water levels in the Colorado River have been steadily dropping, causing crucial reservoirs across the West to dry up, impacting more than 40 million people in seven U.S. states, dozens of tribal communities, and Mexico. On Friday, the federal government offered a solution. It proposed a 10-year framework to reallocate access to water from the Colorado River among a handful of states. This comes at a time when states like Colorado itself are going through yet another historic drought.

3:14Joining us now is Russ Schumacher. He's a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. and he advises the state on climate matters. Welcome, Russ. Thanks for having me. So, Russ, tell us a little more about this plan. In the West, with water in the Colorado River Basin, there's a somewhat complicated compact that was established a little over 100 years ago about who gets to use how much water in the Colorado River. It's divided between the upper basin states, which are Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, and the lower basin states, California, Arizona, Nevada. And so essentially the upper basin states and the lower basin states get an equal allocation of water from the Colorado River Basin, but there's not as much water in the system now as there was in the 1920s when that compact was established.

4:05There's more demand for water because a lot more people are living in the West. And so it's led to this complicated situation of negotiations between the upper basin and lower basin states and the federal government about what to do with the declining water supplies. And the plan that was released by the federal government indicates that the lower basin states especially would be subject to reductions in use of Colorado River water. What will that mean for those states, for the states in the lower part of the river? These are states like California, Arizona, and Nevada. These are states with huge populations, obviously.

4:40Yeah. And what a lot of that Colorado River water supports is agriculture in those states. And so it'll mean that most likely in dry years, those states will have to reduce their use of the Colorado River water, whereas the upper basin states, the cutbacks will be more voluntary. The majority of the reductions or the conservation requirements will be on the lower basin states. And how have these lower basin states reacted? The negotiations or some of the tension over the years have been that generally the lower basin states have been using more of their allocation, whereas the upper basin states haven't.

5:20But at the same time, the agricultural production in those lower basin states is crucially important, big populations. And so this is where a lot of the tension comes around. The supply is up where we are in Colorado, in our mountains. So the snow that falls in our mountains in the winter is the source of that water that goes into the Colorado River as it melts out in the spring and summer. And then it goes into those reservoirs and then gets released for use further downstream. So when we have bad snow years like this one, there's less water on the supply side. the demand tends to go up in the dry years.

5:59And we've had a lot more dry years than wet years in the last couple of decades. And so that's brought us to the challenges that we have here today. Now, Russ, I'm asking you a lot of questions about this new federal plan, but you are a climatologist. And I wanted to ask you about this drought that the southwest region of the United States has been experiencing for so many years. Why has it persisted? Yeah, we've had years with not very much snow in the southwest or in the mountains. This past winter was in Colorado, the worst winter for that mountain snow that we've had since snowpack has been measured in our mountains.

6:41And it's also been very warm. We had record-setting months for warmth in December and February and March. And now we've gone into a quite hot and dry summer as well. And so we've had fast growing wildfires. We've gotten some relief with the monsoon setting in in July and getting afternoon thunderstorms that have helped with the fire risk. But then that's led to flash floods. I think this year, going back to last fall and into this year, has been one of the worst that we've had, but we've had a lot of these bad years with not very many of those bountiful years in between. And so the supply of water that comes from that snow that falls in the mountains has been on the decline.

7:27And then of course, the demand for water in the Southwestern US has continued to go up and that's left the Colorado River Basin, as well as some of the other river basins in the West in the rough position that we're in right now. Yeah, I was just in Colorado, actually. I was just in southwestern Colorado, and I was within a mile of a wildfire that was sort of on its tail end. And then suddenly you mentioned the monsoons. It started raining quite a bit, and there was actually flash flooding in the area. You know, this summer in particular has been among the driest in the region's history. What do you think that spells out for the future of Colorado?

8:05Yeah, you know, we're cautiously hopeful that as we get into the fall, maybe in the next winter, we have this probable super El Nino that's been discussed quite a bit that's now in place and expected to strengthen. then El Nino leads to bad weather and climate outcomes in a lot of the world. But in the Western US, especially in the Southwest, it does tend to be wetter during fall and winter and spring during El Nino. So there's a bit of cautious optimism that we'll at least get some relief from the drought as we get later into the fall and winter. But in the near term, we've got another big heat wave on the way and we can't count on it.

8:45There's no guarantees with El Nino that it's going to provide a lot of relief. And then in the longer, longer term, we have climate change, we have warming that's especially been affecting the southwestern US. When droughts happen, of course, droughts are a natural part of the weather and climate in this part of the country, but they're getting made worse as we warm up because warmer air is thirstier for water. And so the atmosphere is trying to just pull more of that water out of the landscape. And so that makes, a hot and dry drought is worse than it just being dry. And we're, I think, really seeing the effects of that this year.

9:20That's Russ Schumacher. He's a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. Russ, thanks so much. Thank you. This episode is produced by Daniel Othman with audio engineering by Becky Brown. Our director is Mark Rivers. It was edited by Michael Levitt and Tinbeet Hermes. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney.

9:42It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Rob Schmitz.

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