Knowledge is (hydro) power

One of my insecurities as a reporter is my tendency to rely on jargon and technical detail to convey meaning.

It’s an easy habit to fall into. I started my journalism career writing inside-baseball legislative stories for the Arizona Capitol Times. Now, I’m an environmental social sciences PhD student who also covers the politics and policy of water, a mystical world with its own language, its own legends and reference points, much of which obscures the relationship we have with our water supply.

And most of us in Arizona don’t see the water we consume until it comes out of the tap. Our relationship to it is necessarily abstract.

The terms we in water world use reflect this abstraction.

Some realms of government sit in a bowl of alphabet soup — for water, it’s more like an alphabet ocean: ROD, ICS, IBWC, ADWR, BOR, DOI, CAP — need I go on?

Still, we’re dealing with legitimately complex concepts that require specific language to investigate.

But I expect that, as much as I try to communicate these complex concepts in my pieces, I sometimes fall back on language that only those in the know will understand.

I also think I sometimes try to impress the very smart, interesting people who live in my rolodex by sounding smart and interesting myself.

The problem with all this is that it is imperative for average people to understand their water supply. We live in an era of perhaps-unprecedented drought made worse by climate change and a breakdown in water governance.

New plans from the federal government for managing the river could bring huge cuts to Arizona’s water supply.

To know your water is, in at least a small way, to take a role in its future.

And if I had to pick one major criticism of the current system of water governance in this region (aside from the chronic overuse), it is that the politics of the system generally play out over the heads of everyday people.

Fights over data centers and other controversial water users in city and county commission meetings are, to a degree, changing that dynamic. Still, decisions over water use are much more likely to be made in offices, conference rooms, courts and irrigation district board Zoom calls than at the ballot box, for example.

So, today, we’re going to give you a tool, or at least a resource.

It’s a glossary, of sorts, to help you define and contextualize the scary-sounding terms that pervade water world.

What exactly is dead pool? Should you be building a bunker? (Probably no.) Treating and drinking your own urine? (In a very indirect way, a little bit, but don’t be afraid.)

This will be a living, breathing document — one we’d like you to help us with.

We’re starting with a few basic terms today that focus on the Colorado River, and we’ll add more in the future as they come up, including some related to Arizona’s groundwater and other rivers.

But we also want you to reach out with your own questions and requests. You can email me at [email protected].

Happy learning!

The American Nile, Río Colorado, Nts’ósíkooh, among other terms

It may not make up the majority of Arizona’s water, but it certainly contributes the most to water discussions. And it’s the subject of numerous stories in national newspapers about the doomed Southwest.

Indeed, the Colorado River may be the most discussed river in the country.

For some, it’s a resource; for others, an obstacle. It is a living thing, something that has personhood.

It dictates terms to us, and we respond by confining and redirecting it, and to great effect.

The river feeds seven states and dozens of Indigenous tribes — some 40 million people, from La Barge, Wyoming, to Los Angeles — and something like 5 million acres of cropland.

Counting tributaries like the Green River, the Colorado River runs from Wyoming to the Sea of Cortez, where, rather infamously, it is more of a trickle.

Major Arizona tributaries include the Gila River and, through the Gila River, the Salt River.

How these tributaries are counted relative to Arizona’s overall Colorado River allocation (2.8 million acre-feet yearly) was a major reason for the Arizona v. California U.S. Supreme Court case, one of the most important court rulings on the river, formalizing the allocations of the two (often rival) states.

Also called the Upper and Lower divisions

The four upriver states of the river are Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, and the three downriver states are Arizona, California and Nevada.

The basin is divided at Lees Ferry, directly downstream from Glen Canyon Dam.

This geographic divide is central to recent Colorado River negotiations.

One core issue is just how much water those upriver states must allow to reach the downriver states under the terms of the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

Another is whether the upriver states — which historically have not used all the water allocated to them under the compact — should be forced to make cuts to respond to basin-wide drought.

Our favorite unit of measurement

We measure large volumes of water in acre-feet. An acre-foot is equivalent to about 326,000 gallons or 44,000 cubic feet. The term’s origins are fairly self-explanatory: An acre-foot, in theory, is the volume of water that would cover one acre of a surface (e.g., a field) one foot deep.

A ruin before its time?

Most Arizonans don’t live anywhere near the Colorado River.

That posed a problem for local boosters and politicos in the mid-20th century who envisioned sprawling, modern metropolises in central Arizona. But a sprawling metropolis needs water, more than could be found in the Gila and Salt Rivers and the overtapped underground aquifers of the region.

The solution was what we now call the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile system of canals that brings Colorado River water to the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.

You may not have seen the river if you live in Phoenix, but you’ve probably seen the canals.

Construction was a $4 billion, 20-year endeavor that involved the development of a series of pumping plants to move the water uphill.

A project of this magnitude required federal investment, meaning Arizona lawmakers had to get an act approving the CAP through Congress.

As the oft-told history goes, this meant striking something of a devil’s bargain with California.

In exchange for that state’s support for the project, Central Arizona Project water would be last in the priority line relative to other Lower Basin users. In other words, when cuts to Colorado River allocations become necessary — as they are now — the CAP is first in line.

So, when the federal government raises the possibility of more than 3 million acre-feet in cuts to the Lower Basin, know that cuts of this magnitude could wipe out the CAP.

Water attorney: a recession-proof career

Water wonks use this rather dramatic phrase to describe the collective body of law and court rulings that guide river management.

We might think of the germinal piece of the law as the doctrine of prior appropriation — the legal doctrine that rules over most of the West and holds that the first person to use a water source establishes a right to it. Conversely, those who fail to use water they have lose that right.

You can see how this might be controversial to, for example, the Indigenous peoples of the basin, but it’s the system we’ve got — at least for now.

Generally, though, people think of the first piece of the Law of the River as the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

This interstate agreement established allocations for each of the seven states — allocations that still exist in law today despite overwhelming evidence that the compact divvied up more water than the river could reasonably offer.

There are many, many more pieces of this body of law, but we’ll save those for another day.

Lakes in the man-made sense

The two largest reservoirs on the river and in the country are Lake Mead, formed by the Hoover Dam, and Lake Powell, formed by Glen Canyon Dam.

We’ll skip the history lesson for now, but know that (to oversimplify a little) Lake Powell holds Upper Basin water, which becomes Lower Basin water when it is released to Lake Mead.

Releases from the upriver Lake Powell are thus highly contentious and are a major factor in Arizona’s thinking on whether or not to sue over the federal government’s recent plan for the river.

Even more important to know is that both reservoirs are at historically low levels.

If the water drops much lower, hydropower generation at the dams will be limited and, eventually, impossible. You might hear of this as the “minimum power pool” level.

And if Lake Powell in particular drops much lower than even that, the passage of water through the dam at all becomes a major infrastructural challenge, one that could essentially cut off the Lower Basin. We call that reaching “dead pool.”

That’s why some Lower Basin officials have called for more investigations of potential infrastructural fixes to the dam.

Lake Powell and Mead aren’t the only reservoirs on the river, though.

There are several reservoirs in the Upper Basin called the Upper Initial Units (or sometimes Colorado River Storage Project reservoirs), Flaming Gorge being perhaps the most prominent example.

These reservoirs are smaller than Powell and Mead but also in better shape, elevation-wise.

Thus, whether or not the Upper Basin states should release some of that water to stabilize Lake Powell — as opposed to cutting releases to the Lower Basin — is another point of contention.