Glen Canyon

[Southern Elk]

Compromise is so terribly, terribly hard - Big Pivots

Give Colorado River negotiators room, said Jim Lochhead, former CEO of Denver Water. But now, it’s in the hands of the feds

bigpivots.com

That article does a good job of explaining how difficult any reduction through compromise is.

 

[Irrelevant]

I had - somehow - forgotten that such a significant portion of CO's water rights are completely consumptive in that they are relocated out of basin. That's actually a pretty huge impact on the overall decreased flow. Though I suppose that's no different than Vegas or Cali. I just can't imagine that occurring in WA.

 

[TOGIE]

I had - somehow - forgotten that such a significant portion of CO's what rights are completely consumptive in that they are relocated out of basin. That's actually a pretty huge impact on the overall decreased flow. Though I suppose that's no different than Vegas or Cali. I just can't imagine that occurring in WA.

drop in the bucket compared to intra basin irrigated consumptive use.

off the top of my head i'd guess it's like 600,000 AF that leaves the colorado river basin in colorado for front range municipalities and farmers in the form of "transmountain diversion"

i guess i should just "AI" what the number actually is...

 

[Irrelevant]

drop in the bucket compared to intra basin irrigated consumptive use.

off the top of my head i'd guess it's like 600,000 AF that leaves the colorado river basin in colorado for front range municipalities and farmers

i guess i should just "AI" what the number actually is...

Fair enough. But still a shit load of water.
CO Trans mountain: 580k af which is 3.3% of the total Upper Basins allocation. But only about 1/2 of the consumptive use of Lake Powell.

 

[Chama Grande]

Rhett Larson here gives a pretty balanced take on the issues here, and he speaks more to a lay audience than the super nerds who are involved in it daily. My lower basin friend said it was a pretty measured take and I don't disagree

 

[TOGIE]

Fair enough. But still a shit load of water.
CO Trans mountain: 580k af which is 3.3% of the total Upper Basins allocation. But only about 1/2 of the consumptive use of Lake Powell.

yeah it's not insignificant. but also is given the system-wide mass balance. and of course there are borderline endless place in the system to point to and say "that right there is equal to the seepage and evap in lake powell! what a waste!" - it all adds up.

it's all pretty flawed. but i can't say i don't enjoy eating salads in the winter and god knows i love a dry aged ribeye and I greatly love that my faucet in a basin that drains to the gulf of mexico (america? where do we stand on this?) spits out clean cold (colorado river) water

and i think a lot of folks feel the same way i do - from my house in colorado all the way to LA - which is partly why negotiations failed.