The Dwindling Colorado River

When one of my buddies announced plans to move to Arizona after retirement, the first thought that occurred to me was that I'd read a lot of articles about water shortages in the Southwest in general, and Arizona in particular.   He told me that "everyone" he'd spoken to in Arizona said water was not a problem, despite the fact that much of the population growth was in what had previously been desert.

Map from USGS.gov

Turns out that the water supply in the Southwest is getting scarcer, and so far, the place that's suffering as a result is Mexico.  The Colorado River begins in Northern Colorado and winds through Utah, Arizona, and California before entering the Mexican State of Sonora and the Gulf of California.   Only these days, not much water is left in the river by the time it arrives in Sonora and that's primarily because of the diversion of the water in the above-mentioned States.  Some of it irrigates the crop growing areas of California and some of it provides water for the growing populations in Las Vegas and Phoenix, as well as other areas in the parched Southwest.  The lack of water that reaches Mexico has caused farm failures in that country which some say has fed the migration of Mexicans into the U.S. in search of jobs.

Marketplace.org ran a story ("Downstream, Death of the Mighty Colorado") on July 23 about a photo essay of the Colorado River, documenting the deterioration of the river's flow and the impact on people.   It's worth reading (or listen to the podcast) to see what part of the cost of the huge increase in population of the Southwest has been.  The story consists of an interview with a photo-journalist who has published a book about the river.  His concluding observation is chilling:

Yeah, this thing has a lot to do with money... the majority of this water is siphoned off before it gets to our southern neighbor, and it's siphoned off in order to help feed places like Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Without this water source and without the power and agriculture it provides, these economies would not be booming the way that they are. That many people should not live there. There is no way that area can ecologically support that population. Unfortunately, that might mean that this problem isn't going to go anywhere.