A few weeks ago, Lake Powell fell to levels it hadn’t seen since the Colorado River was dammed to create it in 1963. At the same time downstream, Lake Mead, the largest U.S. reservoir by capacity, fell lower than it had been since 1937 when the Hoover Dam began backing up the river. The alarm bells scientists and some officials had been ringing since 2000 have gotten a lot louder in the past couple of years because the lakes and the hydroelectric dams that enclose them are the lifeblood of farmers, Indigenous tribes, and cities in seven states. By late 2021, some of the talk about the region’s two-decade-long megadrought had become positively apocalyptic, with disaster perceived as imminent.
But then came this winter’s stunningly wet weather throughout much of the West, adding high levels—record levels in parts of southern Colorado—to the Rocky Mountain snowpack that melts each spring and summer to feed the river. Levels of both lakes have risen substantially in the spring run-off, and the big melt has only just gotten underway with the arrival of warmer temperatures.
Consequently, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a division of the Department of Interior that oversees the dams, has revised upward its projections for what lake levels will look like at the water-year’s end on Sept. 30. Expectations now are that Lake Powell will reach 70 feet higher than it was at the end of last September. Already, the rising water has allowed managers at the lake to release more water than usual faster than usual in an experiment to see whether such surges can help rehabilitate wildlife and ecosystems along the Grand Canyon. The release, of course, also raises water levels at Lake Mead, which is already making recreational visitors happy.
While the change is a welcome relief, experts warn that the crisis isn’t over and improvement this year is likely to be temporary. Bart Leeflang, the Colorado River program manager for the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, told Scott Dance at The Washington Post, “It’s maybe a year’s worth of breathing room. The crisis is still very real and very much in front of us.” At best, that 70-foot rise would mean raising the lake’s current level from 20% of its capacity to 30%, he said. “It’s not massive gains.” The bureau forecasts that at the end of July the lake will hit 39% of capacity. Right now, both lakes together are at 26%.
Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University said it would take six years as wet as 2023 to refill the lake. Those who suggest this year’s extraordinary precipitation means conservation is less needed are displaying “amnesia and a complete distrust of what the science has shown.” There are no signs of the megadrought ending, he said.
The plunge in water levels isn’t a recent occurrence. Lake Mead hasn’t been at full capacity for 40 years. Together with reckless overuse, the intense 23-year-long drought that scientists say is worse than any seen in the region for at least 1,200 years have combined to create this crisis.
At capacity, the lakes provide irrigation and drinking water to more than 40 million people and electricity to about 5.2 million in five states, but the fall in water levels has meant cuts in deliveries of both. By last summer, Hoover Dam had reduced its electricity generation by 33%, which had a tremendous impact on small communities far from Lake Mead. The number of end users has been cut from 1.1 million to 675,000. The turbines of Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell were spinning out less electricity, too. The standard rate for the dam’s power is $30 per megawatt hour, but last summer cut-off customers were looking on the open market at electricity for $1,000 per megawatt hour. If the lakes were to fall farther and reach “deadpool,” a level too low to generate any electricity, those open market prices could soar even more.
In 2007 and again in 2021, federal and state officials agreed to conservation deals, with financial compensation to users who gave up some of their water allocations. They are currently working on comprehensive changes in water management plans for the Colorado River Basin that will be implemented in 2026 when the current deals expire.
When lake levels were still plunging, discussions grew acrimonious during negotiations about cutting states’ water allocations under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, Supreme Court rulings, and other agreements over the years that govern river usage. Twice the Bureau of Reclamation warned the states last year that if they didn’t agree on cuts, it would do so for them. The bureau was looking at cuts as high as 25% of the total allocation, about 4 million acre feet of water (1.3 trillion gallons). If next year isn’t as wet as this one and the lakes’ levels return to their decades-long retreat, such draconian measures could still wind up on the table.
Currently, the federal government and the states are pushing to come to a basic agreement on cuts by May 30. That’s the end of the public comment period on a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement discussed here. The cuts now being discussed clock in at 2.1 million acre feet (685 billion gallons).
For now, nearly a year’s worth of negotiations among the states have continued with a bit less tension than before the heavy winter precipitation let participants relax a bit. The federal government, California, Arizona, and Nevada have talked about the possibility of leaving 3 million acre-feet of water (nearly 1 trillion gallons) in Lake Mead over the next four years. The plan would also provide $1 billion or more for voluntary water cuts. But nothing yet is set in concrete.
In a 2017 study, Udall, the CSU scientist, together with Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, found global warming to be a major culprit in the current situation. In an interview with Tara Lohan at News Deeply, Udall said:
The first finding is that you can explain one-third or more of the decline [in Colorado River flows] due to warming. What you find is that the 2000 to 2014 period [that] the study covered, the Upper Basin, where most of these flows originate is about 1.6F (0.9C) warmer than the 20th-century average. There’s a big range on that, but the midpoint is one-third—that’s 500,000 acre-feet (617 million cubic meters), which is a lot of water.
The other part, we really want to make clear to people, and oftentimes scientific studies sort of tiptoe around this issue, but if you really want to save the flow of the Colorado River, we need to address greenhouse gas emissions. We need, at some point in this 21st century, to cease all emissions of greenhouse gases.
It’s that clear.
Except for his timing, absolutely right, of course. However, that “at some point” must come many decades before the 21st century becomes the 22nd.
WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO
GREEN BRIEFs
As expected, Republicans who voted against the Inflation Reduction Act have for months been, in the words of Kelsey Tamborrino and Josh Siegel, “Tout[ing] the jobs and economic benefits coming to their states and districts, but not the bill that helped create them.” At Inside Climate News, Dan Gearino explains that the IRA’s benefits for those jurisdictions may be even better than they appear at first because of a series of stackable credits that could reduce the cost of clean energy projects 40% to 70%.
A million-dollar project could get the 30% investment tax credit. Add 10% if the project is in an “energy community” of shuttered coal mines and coal-fired power plants where unemployment is higher than the U.S. average. Energy communities make up some of the reddest parts of red states, including West Virginia, Texas, and big parts of the Midwest and Mountain West. Add another 10% if the project uses U.S.-made equipment. And add another 20% if the project provides a direct benefit to people with low incomes, such as reducing their electricity costs. Thus does a $1 million project get built for $300,000.
Gearino writes:
Much, if not most, of the manufacturing investment tied to the IRA is going to be in places that didn’t vote for President Joe Biden. We can see this already based on the announcements of new solar panel plants in Alabama and Texas, among others.
And, the designation of energy communities is a big benefit for a lot of places that didn’t vote for Biden.
If there was a political calculus, it’s not clear to me. The idea is that U.S. policy needs to take special steps to help communities that are being disrupted by the shift away from fossil fuels, and it just so happens that the main beneficiaries are people who didn’t vote for the president in 2020 and probably still won’t in 2024.
In 1999 with George W. Bush in the governor’s chair, Texas enacted a law boosting renewable energy in the state. Since then, renewables there have expanded to the point that Texas generates more electricity from renewables than any other state. Most of this comes from 15,000 wind turbines, with a generating capacity of 38,000 megawatts. The total installed U.S. wind capacity is 141,000 megawatts. In 2021, 33% of electricity in Texas was generated by renewables. There’s no reason it couldn’t soon be 100%—except that today’s Texas Republicans are a far cry from those in 1999.
State lawmakers are on the cusp of passing legislation to shackle wind and solar projects and boost coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The state Senate has already passed SB 624 and a companion bill is working its way through the state House of Representatives. If it passes and Gov. Greg Abbott signs it, the state will impose tight permitting restrictions and fines on solar and wind energy projects. Such projects will need permits from the state’s Public Utility Commission, but fossil fuel projects won’t. All current PUC members were appointed by Abbott, who has always favored fossil fuels. Worst of all, the bill applies operating permit requirements retroactively on existing renewable energy sites, allowing the PUC to remove installed clean energy capacity if it cannot meet the new permit rules.
This is a screw job for the climate and for Texas consumers. How much so? A new study from Ideasmiths on the Texas wholesale electricity market found that wind and solar power generation saved residents $11 billion in 2022 alone. From 2010 to the end of 2022, wind and solar generation produced $31.5 billion in such savings. Authored by Joshua Rhodes, the report projects that doing what Republicans clearly don’t want—further expanding wind and solar capacity—could save Texans up to $15.2 billion annually.
RELATED STORIES:
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RESOURCES & ACTION
- Building livable cities through clean energy and infrastructure: Buildings alone contribute 35% of cities’ greenhouse gas emissions. That figure jumps to 70% in some Global North C40 cities due to the energy used to power, heat, and cool buildings. Today’s urban planning decisions will affect future generations’ quality of life and cities’ emissions. Only by adopting a sustainable approach to urban planning can cities meet their climate targets. Learn about city action that is speeding up the transition to more sustainable urban development, helping cities reduce their emissions while creating cleaner and healthier places to live.
- A New Generation Of Inspiring Environmental Documentaries .
- Global Safety Net: The first global-scale analysis of land areas requiring protection to solve the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, upholding and strengthening Indigenous land rights.
- Get out in your yard and count bugs: Insects are incredibly important to humanity. They pollinate crops, keep pest insects in check, and tidy up the natural world by decomposing fallen leaves. The data we have suggests that insects around the world are in trouble: You can find plenty of newspaper stories about the “insect apocalypse” or “insectageddon.” Data on more than 1 million bees and hoverflies collected by volunteers across the U.K. and the Netherlands, for example, show that the number of types of bees—their diversity—has dropped since 1980. But the full scale of the problem, and its details, remain murky. We need more information to work out what’s going on with insects and to help them thrive in this rapidly changing world.
- How to Win a Green New Deal in Your State: New York passed a publicly funded renewable energy program. This is how DSA did it—and how you can too.
ECOPINION
It Is Time to Kill the ‘Dirty Deal’ Once and For All. By Maury Johnson at Common Dreams. “Here we go again! Last year my Senator, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), introduced his ‘Dirty Deal Bill’ to placate his fossil fuel friends and funders. This bill would gut the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) and silence most citizens who oppose any fossil fuel project, especially the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that travels across my farm, near my home in southern West Virginia. His bill is also championed by some House Republicans who passed H.R. 1 at the end of March of this year. Both of these bills are just shameless giveaways that contain blatant handouts and loopholes for the oil, gas, and mining industries. H.R.1 was fittingly renamed the Polluters Over People Act by those of us that believe we need to protect our environment. While oil companies’ record-breaking profits make it clear that they’re not an industry that needs any government assistance, Manchin, Republicans, and a few others like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and President Joe Biden continue to push legislation to gut our most fundamental environmental and public health laws, namely the National Environmental Policy Act, legislation that will only lock us in to another generation of unnecessary fossil fuel dependency and line the pockets of industry CEOs.”
The New Landscape for Fighting Fossil Fuel Infrastructure. By Audrey Leonard at Ecowatch. “For more than 20 years, Columbia Riverkeeper has fought dirty fossil fuel infrastructure — and won. Together with firefighters, fishers, foresters, farmers, health professionals, educators, union leaders, and tribes, we stopped more than a dozen proposed fossil fuel facilities, ranging from coal exports to LNG terminals. Because of our success, the fossil fuel industry has begun trying to expand existing infrastructure rather than build new facilities. What’s the difference? Existing infrastructure typically has some of the required permits, and regulators generally approve capacity expansions even where they might reject a new project. Industry often disguises expansion projects with terms like ‘reliability,’ and without effective public notice. In many ways, halting a brand-new oil refinery is much easier than stopping an existing refinery from producing more oil. In a changed landscape, watchdogs and advocates must adapt quickly to keep fossil fuels in the ground and out of our communities.”
How social work can help fight the impacts of climate change. By Raksha Vasudevan at High Country News. “When Lisa Reyes Mason was doing her social work dissertation on water insecurity in the Philippines, she was often asked, ‘How is this social work?’ Today, a decade later, with climate change rapidly transforming communities across the West, she is seen as a pioneer in her field. Not only does Mason see social work playing a critical role in confronting the climate crisis, she also believes the West has much to learn from places that have already taken steps to adapt to climate change. Her research in the Philippines, for example, found that many families, regardless of income, were already recycling their gray water—a practice that is just starting to gain traction in an increasingly water-starved West. In 2015, social work’s accrediting body added ‘environmental justice’ to the competencies that all social workers in the U.S. must possess. Now, every graduate in the field has some knowledge of environmental justice issues and how these might interface with their work. Yet, as both the speed and scale of climate change and natural disasters accelerate, social workers are struggling to keep up with the impacts, especially on the already vulnerable communities that they tend to serve.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Prop 12 is a win against factory farming. But the pigs’ lives will still suck. By Justin Marceau and Doug Kysar at Vox. “The U.S. Supreme Court rarely has occasion to hear an animal law case. Laws having to do with animal treatment are primarily matters of state law, and, historically speaking, precious few of them have threatened industrial animal exploitation to a degree that major federal lawsuits emerged. But California’s Proposition 12, a 2018 ballot measure that was approved by more than 62% of voters, sufficiently rankled the pork industry that it filed a federal lawsuit and, after repeatedly losing, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Prop. 12 bans the sale of pork in California from farms anywhere in the country that confine pregnant pigs in “gestation crates”—cages barely bigger than their bodies—for almost their whole lives. This is standard practice in modern pork production, which meant that California’s requirement that female pigs kept for breeding simply have enough space to lie down, stand up, turn around, and stretch their limbs was regarded as an existential threat by the pork lobby. A divided Supreme Court upheld the California law May 11, in a ruling that holds important implications for judicial power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The case also reflects a vast gulf in U.S. animal law, between those who seek to make the law actually reflect animal well-being and the meat industry officials who usually get to determine what constitutes acceptable animal treatment on factory farms across the country.”
A clean energy transition that avoids environmentally sensitive land. Here is a conversation among Jessica Wilkinson and Nels Johnson of The Nature Conservancy, and David Roberts at his Volts substack (podcast or pdf). “A great deal of confused and misleading information is circulating about the land-use requirements of the energy transition. Everyone agrees that building the amount of clean energy necessary to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require an enormous amount of land. But is there enough land? Will the transition require industrializing green fields and virgin forests and other environmentally or culturally sensitive lands? Can the energy transition be done big enough and fast enough while still remaining respectful of natural resources and other species? What mix of technologies will go most lightly on the environment? To provide a definitive answer to these questions, The Nature Conservancy launched its Power of Place project—first in California, then for the greater American West, and now, this week, for the entire nation. Using various metrics related to wildlife, ecosystems, cultural resources, and protected natural areas, the Power of Place project attempts to comprehensively map out sensitive land areas. It then tallies up the amount of clean energy required to reach net zero by 2050 and tries to match those needs to the available lands, to see if there is a pathway to net zero that protects them.”
Audiences want a different climate change message. Hollywood should deliver. By Amanda Shendruk at The Washington Post. “For decades, Hollywood has produced climate change entertainment that depicts only one potential future: catastrophe. Instead, it should play a positive role in the fight against global warming by offering a wealth of stories that help humanity make sense of and address the present and future of life on a dangerously warming planet. This is not an idle ask. Given their ability to elicit emotion, spark conversation and circulate ideas, movies and TV programs have enormous power to shift cultural norms. … ’Hollywood is the most powerful storyteller in the world,’ said Anna Jane Joyner, founder of Good Energy, an organization that helps the industry tell more useful tales about the climate emergency. … So far, most climate-fiction movies have told bleak tales. After watching 61 of them, Michael Svoboda, an assistant professor of writing at George Washington University, found that most featured disaster. The genre includes all sorts of catastrophes, from floods and ice ages to hurricanes and sea-level rise. The fossil-fuel industry is rarely even acknowledged.”
ECO-QUOTE
“If zoos are like arks, then rare animals are like passengers on a voyage of the damned, never to find a port that will let them dock or a land in which they can live in peace. The real solution, of course, is to preserve the wild nature that created these animals and has the power to sustain them. But if it is really true that we are inevitably moving towards a world in which mountain gorillas can survive only in zoos, then we must ask whether it is really better for them to live in artificial environments of our design than not to be born at all.”—Peter Singer
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Ukraine Is Planning Its Green Reconstruction Even as War Rages On. By Laura Millan at Bloomberg Green. “Thinking about rebuilding in the middle of a war, with a new offensive against Russia in the works, might seem far-fetched. But for Ukraine, green reconstruction is not just good for the planet. It’s essential to the country’s economic recovery and national security. Russian attacks caused damages worth $8.1 billion in Ukraine’s energy sector during the first year of war, the Kyiv School of Economics estimates. The average Ukrainian household endured 35 days without power last winter. ‘It is very important to decentralize our power generation,’ Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Bloomberg Green. ‘The obvious solution is renewables.’ Leaders also see clean power as a way to permanently end the country’s dependence on Russian gas. For decades, Moscow used its control over gas that flows through pipelines across Ukraine and into Europe as a tool to influence officials in Kyiv. (In 2015, Ukraine stopped direct purchases of gas from Russia’s Gazprom PJSC following the country's invasion of the Crimea peninsula and the Donbas region.) ‘We need to speed up [the transition from gas] from the point of view of a military threat,’ Galushchenko said.”
Legalizing Nature’s Rights: How Tribal Nations are Leading the Fastest Growing Environmental Movement in History (a podcast). “The Rights of Nature movement launched internationally in 2006 and is growing fast. Driven primarily by tribes and citizen-led communities, more than three dozen cities, townships and counties across the U.S. have adopted such laws to create legally enforceable rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve. In this program, Native American attorneys, Frank Bibeau and Samantha Skenandore, and legal movement leader Thomas Linzey report from the front lines how they are honing their strategies to protect natural systems for future generations.”
1st Quarter Electric Vehicle Production rose 39% over same period in 2022. By Kyle Stock at Bloomberg Green. “Factories in North America manufactured 219,000 battery-powered cars and trucks in the first three months of 2023, a 39% increase over last year. But car buyers bought 259,000 EVs in the same period because domestic production lags demand so far. While 7.2% of cars sold in the U.S. are now fully electric, only 5.7% are made in North America. Globally, 12% of new car and light-truck sales are now fully electric, up from 9% last year at this time.”
Is carbon capture viable? In a new rule, the EPA is asking power plants to prove it. By Joseph Winters at Grist. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last Thursday proposed a new rule to nearly eliminate climate pollution from the nation’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants by 2040. In contrast to previously proposed regulations that required “generation-shifting” — forcing utility companies to replace their fossil fuel-fired power generators with renewables, a strategy that the Supreme Court shot down last summer—the new proposal focuses on what’s achievable using technologies like carbon capture and storage, or CCS. At least, they focus on what’s theoretically achievable based on optimistic projections from CCS’s proponents. Although the EPA says CCS technology is ‘adequately demonstrated’ and ‘highly cost-effective,’ experts are deeply skeptical that it can deliver on its promised emissions reductions. ‘The EPA is calling the bluff on the power industry,’ said Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘There have been so many arguments that they’ve made in favor of CCS as a mature technology. … Now the EPA is saying ‘OK, you have to do it,’ and I don’t think they really can.’”
Rooftop solar could power up to 35% of US manufacturing—study. By Michelle Lewis at Electrek. “A new study published in the journal Environmental Research: Sustainability and Infrastructure found that rooftop solar arrays on industrial buildings could potentially meet the electricity demands of up to 35% of U.S. manufacturing sectors annually. Northeastern University (NU) researchers used the U.S. Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey to compare potential electricity generation of rooftop solar arrays against the electricity demand per unit of floor space for the average manufacturing building. The researchers found that rooftop solar arrays could completely fulfill the electricity requirement of 5% to 35% of U.S. manufacturing sectors. Said Matthew Eckelman, NU associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, ‘Currently, less than 0.1% of the electricity required by the manufacturing sector in the U.S. is generated through renewable, onsite sources. This must change if we are going to meet decarbonization goals, and in many cases rooftop solar panels are now a feasible option for supplying low-carbon energy. Even though rooftop solar overall, including residential arrays, has the potential to provide 13.6% of U.S. electricity, it currently only provides 2.2%.’”
Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate. By Bob Berwyn at Inside Climate News. “The number of ocean-going birds has declined 70% since the 1950s. New research shows how projects bringing them back can also bolster ocean ecosystems that sequester carbon. Seabird colonies of almost unimaginable size likely persisted through eons of profound climate shifts and the geological upheavals of colliding continents, playing a profound role in the ocean carbon cycle. But even in their most far-flung island realms, they were quickly decimated by humans who colonized and industrialized the planet during the past 200 years. By some estimates, the overall global seabird population has dropped by as much as 90% during that time, with a decline of 70 percent just since 1950. Seabirds are the most threatened group of birds and one of the most endangered groups of species, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Of 346 seabird species, 97 are globally threatened, and another 35 are listed as near-threatened. Almost half of all seabird species are known or suspected to be experiencing population declines. But ongoing analyses of 851 seabird restoration projects around the planet show a high percentage of them are successful and a comeback of some species is already underway.”
GREEN LINKS
California Bill Would Hit Oil Companies With $1 Million Penalty for Health Impacts • This Fund Is Investing $20 Million to Help Black Farmers Thrive • Montana bars climate analysis in energy permitting decisions • How social work can help fight the impacts of climate change • In Texas, Big Oil Is Trying to Buy Its Own Judges • Crud-to-crude: The global potential of biofuels made from human waste • Animals Are Dying in Droves. What Are They Telling Us? • Heat-loving marine bacteria can help detoxify asbestos • The Daunting Task of Cutting Heavy Metals from Baby Food • EPA Announces Crackdown on Toxic Coal Ash From Landfills • Plastic-eating fungi thriving in man-made 'plastisphere' may help tackle global waste