The drought-hit Colorado River is in critical condition. Nearly two years ago, the federal government declared the river water-deficient for the first time in history, causing a water supply cutoff in the southwest. Currently, river levels remain unsustainably low. Colorado is the lifeblood of the region. It waters some of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, nourishes some of its most fertile fields, and generates $1.4 trillion in economic activity annually. This river flows more than 1,400 miles from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the delta region of northern Mexico, where it ends in a rivulet. The Colorado River Basin is home to seven states and 30 Native American tribes. As we first reported in 2021, rivers are drying up due to historically severe droughts.
Piercing these red cliffs and carving the Grand Canyon, the majestic, meandering Colorado River is a marvel of natural and human ingenuity. The Glen Canyon Dam created Lake Powell, and 300 miles down the river lies Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam. These reservoirs are now being sucked up and dried up by 40 million different straws. That’s the number of people in booming western states who depend on the Colorado River to quench their thirst, power their homes, water their lawns, and soak up the sun. Its water provides irrigation for the farms that produce 90% of the country’s winter greens. Add to all these demands the stress of 23 years of drought – the driest period in 1,200 years – and the river is in jeopardy.
Bill Whitaker: This white bathtub ring. Is this a place where there used to be water?
Brad Udall: That’s right.
Brad Udall, a climatologist at Colorado State University, took us out to Lake Powell.
Bill Whitaker: So this was all under water?
Brad Udall: Yes.
Bill Whitaker: So what does this tell us about what’s happening on the Colorado River?
Brad Udall: Well, this is a sign of long-term problems that we’ve seen since 2000. Climate change is significantly reducing the flow of the Colorado River.
Lakes Powell and Mead, the country’s two largest reservoirs, were almost full in 2000, but by 2021 they were about 30% full.
Brad Udall: The lake is currently 155 feet below full. This year it fell about 50 feet.
Bill Whitaker: So it’s still down?
Brad Udall: Yes. And that’s when power generation really becomes a problem.
Bill Whittaker: I mean, it’s going to be so low that it might not generate–
Brad Udall: Might not generate electricity —
Bill Whittaker: Hydropower?
Brad Udall: Yes.
Brad Udall has a strong connection with rivers. His uncle, Stewart Udall, opened the Glen Canyon Dam as Home Secretary. His father, Congressman Mo Udall, fought to channel the river’s waters into Arizona. In his youth, Brad was a guide on the Colorado River. He is currently analyzing the impact of climate change on water resources.
Bill Whittaker: Are the West Headed for Clash with Climate Change?
Brad Udall: In a way, yes, but we’ve taken full advantage of the system. We have overallocated it and need to figure out how to get some of this back. Because the only lever we can control in Imagawa is the demand lever. We have no control over supply. So you have to dial back the demand.
70% of the Colorado River’s water is used for agriculture. When the federal government declared a water shortage, forced cuts were invoked. Pinal County, Arizona, was hit hard.
Waylon Veltz: Pinal County alone will lose 300,000 acre feet of surface water. It is water delivered from Lake Powell, Lake Mead. As part of the Colorado River. 300,000 acre feet is 98 billion gallons of water.
Waylon Veltz owns a 500-acre farm in Pinal County, south of Phoenix. His family has worked the soil here for his four generations. This is some of the most productive land in the state. Pinal County’s crops are shipped nationwide. Wertz grows gourds, cotton and alfalfa, which are profitable, but crops are drying up and he’s cut his Colorado River water allotment by 70 percent.
Bill Whitaker: Is this the water from the Colorado River?
Waylon Veltz: Yes, our lifeline, irrigated agriculture, is here.
Bill Whitaker: Did this come directly from Lake Mead?
Waylon Wertz: Yes. This goes through hundreds of miles of canal systems. It—here in central Arizona.
Bill Whitaker: So what percentage of your water is supplied by this canal?
Waylon Veltz: Nearly 50% of the water we’ve ever used has been used for farming here. And next year it will probably be about 20% of the water we use.
That’s one-seventh of what he made ten years ago. To make ends meet by using less water, Wertz sold over 300 acres of his land to a solar power plant. He put his retirement money into repairing and restarting an old well. He laser leveled the fields to make irrigation more efficient.
Bill Whitaker: But in the midst of this drought, that’s not enough.
Waylon Veltz: No, it’s not enough.
So he said 150 acres should be left uncultivated.
Waylon Veltz: Anything that looks green here will eventually die. I hope in the future I will have enough water to plant. But it will probably stay brown for quite some time.
Amelia Flores: All water users have to give up something to keep the water in the lake.
Amelia Flores is president of the Colorado River Indian Tribe, Arizona’s oldest and largest water-holding four-tribe reservation just hours west of Phoenix. After being moved to the reservation, the Southwestern tribes gained rights to about a quarter of the river’s flow, but government bureaucracy and a lack of infrastructure prevented them from making full use of their quota. I haven’t been able to. Flores said the tribe had not been involved in water negotiations until the drought.
Bill Whitaker: Why didn’t you sit at the table earlier?
Amelia Flores: Because tribes have always been ignored in policy making and in river law. But those days have come to an end.
When Western states first split the Colorado River in 1922, and then the federal government built the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams, the future seemed limitless and manageable. Through negotiations and legal battles, states worked out an agreement to divide water equally between upstream and downstream states—the law of the river. Subordinate states use nearly all of that quota, which drives its tremendous growth. The top states have never used their full dues. Now they say they are growing fast and need the promised water.
Bill Whitaker: You can also hear the bathtub sound around here.
Zach Renström: We’re trying to keep as much water as possible in this reservoir for drinking next year.
Zach Renstrom manages the Washington County water system in southwestern Utah. The county seat, St. George, is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States, and its population has grown by 29% over the past decade. Utah gets about a quarter of its water from the Colorado River, but most of Washington County has only one source of water, the Virgin River, which fills the reservoir.
Zach Renström: So we’re in the process of having very strict safeguards in place right now. And if cities don’t adopt those standards, they’ll soon run out of water.
Bill Whitaker: What is very fast?
Zach Renström: Within the next five to ten years.
So, in the midst of this drought, Utah is proposing to build a $1 billion to $2 billion pipeline that could deliver 27 billion gallons of water annually from the dwindling Lake Powell. Utah says it has a right to water by law.
Bill Whittaker: You’re talking about sucking water from lakes that are already very low to help grow cities in the desert.
Zach Lenström: States along the Colorado River were allotted an awful lot of water and water budgets. So the state of Utah thought about their water budget and decided they wanted to use some of that water here in St. George, Utah.
Bill Whitaker: But that was the budget set when water was plentiful. Not anymore. What does Utah want?
Zach Renstrom: Utah wants the right to do what other basin states have done. We want to make sure we have water for future hotter dryer scenarios.
JB Hamby: Building multi-billion dollar pipelines to pump more water out of already rapidly declining reservoirs makes no sense in the 21st century.
JB Hamby is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors that runs the Imperial Irrigation District of California. This district is he one of the richest agricultural regions in the country with the single largest water allocation in the entire river.
JB Hamby: There is a lot of urban growth and sprawl happening in other parts of the Colorado River Basin, but it’s not always sustainable.
Hamby says that the Imperial Valley farm in California has reduced water use by almost 16 percent since 2003, but as the population of St. George, Utah grows, so does water use. point out that
JB Hamby: We need to think and rethink how we grow, if we grow and where we grow.
Bill Whitaker: St. George would say he didn’t want more. they want what they need.
JB Humby: I think the reality check we all need here is to realize that we are living in marginal times now and it won’t go away anytime soon. In fact, things will only get worse.
A big part of the problem is the law of the river itself, a collection of rules and regulations over the course of a century. For example, after all the lawsuits and negotiations, the law ended up allocating more water to the Colorado River than it actually did. And this means that in the event of a shortage, the canals that supply more than one-third of Arizona’s water must dry up before California is required to cut back.
Bill Whittaker: So, wait a minute, is Arizona being asked to cut back on water before California cuts off even one drop?
Brad Udall: Pretty awesome. In today’s world that doesn’t work. And this is, in a way, a small microcosm of this whole law of the river in which systems that don’t work are put in place. they can’t work. That is why we need to rethink.
As an example of rethinking, the Colorado River Indian tribes agreed to leave their fields uncultivated, leaving 48 billion gallons (about 3 feet of water) in Lake Mead. Arizona agreed to pay their losses.
Amelia Flores: My people want to help during this drought. We want to protect rivers. Because for centuries the river has always taken care of us. So now we have to take care of the river.
Brad Yudall: That’s what negotiations are for, right? There may be ways to save water and find ways to get the same goods and services with less water. Try growing crops that use less water for ag. Think about how you can use water in cities as efficiently as possible. I mean, we need a certain amount of optimism here, right?
Waylon Veltz: This desert land…
But as the Pinal County Farmers Conference found, optimism is in short supply.
Waylon Veltz: The farmer who spent his life preparing, cultivating and cultivating the land is taking the short end of the stick.
Farmers here and across the Southwest feed the nation. But it takes more than two-thirds of him on the Colorado River to produce that bounty. As lake levels dwindle, Arizona farmers like Waylon Veltz fear their fertile fields will turn to desert again.
Waylon Wertz: We’ve made a lot of cuts and we’re going to see dramatic changes next year. And when it comes to my family farm, I do everything I can to keep it going. But I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before all of that goes away.
Waylon Veltz lost all his property on the Colorado River in January, but his farm survived an unusually wet winter. Colorado remains in dire straits. Arizona, California and Nevada agreed in May to save nearly 1 trillion gallons of water by the end of 2026, hoping unprecedented cuts will stabilize rivers.
Produced by Marc Lieberman. Cassidy McDonald, Associate Producer. Broadcaster Emilio Almonte. Edited by Sean Kelly.
