GunnisonComments14

• Basin: Gunnison
• Title: Comments 14
• SWSI - Doc Type: Comments

Gary Hausler
Western States Water Resources, LLC
"A Sustainable Source of Water for the Western U.S."

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A
Sustainable Source
Of Water for the
Western United States

Since the days of the Forty-niners, the Western U.S. has suffered from a chronic
shortage of water. The Colorado River runs approximately 12,000,000 acre-feet of water
annually. This water is split, by means of the Colorado River Compact, between
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico.
With intense population pressure in all these states and Mexico, the Colorado does not
produce enough water to fill demand.
Approximately 400,000 acre-feet of water is diverted from the Colorado River
drainage to the Mississippi River drainage annually. The Mississippi at Tarbert Landing,
Mississippi, up river from New Orleans, runs approximately 2,000,000 acre-feet per day
during spring run-off which lasts about ten days with total average annual flow exceeding
300 million acre-feet1.
During the week after Hurricane Hugo ravaged the SOlltheastern U.S. in 2004,
more water fell as rain in the states east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio Rivers
than flows in the entire Colorado River system in an average year.
In Northern California, water is diverted from the Sacramento River to the Los
Angeles area via the Central California Project. With these diversions, the saline
interface between the salt water of San Francisco Bay and the fresh water of the
Sacramento River is moving upstream threatening pollution and ruin of Sacramento
River Delta farmland, some of the most productive on earth.
In 2003, the U. S. Department of Interior directed California to stop diverting
approximately 800,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water that it does not own but has
been using for years. This has caused San Diego an annual shortage of200,000 acre-feet
for which it does not have a replacement source.
Douglas County, Colorado has recently estimated that the cost of upgrading its
water supply could be between $2 and 4 billion in the next 20 years and is tied to
pumping deep aquifers that are being rapidly depleted.
Las V egas, Nevada has recently contracted with the Central Arizona Proj ect at a
cost of$ 330 million to store 100,000 acre-feet in underground aquifers for future
pumped retrieval or exchange for use in the metro area.
Salinity of farmland along the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado has been
reported to be increasing such that large areas will become non-productive for
agriculture.
The chronic shortage of water has become a critical factor to the basic economy
of the entire Western U. S.

t 1J. S. .A.rnlY Corps of Engineers. Gage Data, Tarbe.t.i T...anding;: Mississippi