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Sept. 13, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:46
The 100-Year-Old ‘Political Scheme’ Behind the Lake Mead Disaster
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Good evening, and boy do we have a special episode today.
To start with, this right here is an overhead picture of Lake Mead, which is the largest water reservoir in all of the United States.
And not only is it large, it is also quite old.
It was formed about 100 years ago, back in the 1930s, due to the construction of the Hoover Dam.
Meaning that when the Hoover Dam was put up on the Colorado River, behind the dam, Lake Mead was formed.
And Lake Mead is so large that this one reservoir supplies water to over 5.5 million acres of farmland, as well as to over 40 million people across seven different states.
However, there's a catch, which is that this photo, the one that we've been looking at, was actually taken back in the year 2000, when the lake was at 95% capacity.
And unfortunately, when you fast forward to this year, to 2022, this is what Lake Mead looks like today.
As you can clearly see, the lake has experienced a significant drop in water volume over the past two decades, going from quite literally being almost full in the year 2000 to being at only 28% capacity today.
These current water levels are the lowest that they've been since the year 1937, which for your reference was the year that the reservoir was being filled up for the very first time.
And if you've been to Lake Mead over the past year or so, or if you've seen any photos online, then the problem that this situation creates are quite obvious.
For instance, the water levels in Lake Mead are so low right now that most of the boat docks surrounding the lake are quite literally inoperable.
You can see many pictures where the boat docks just lead to little fields, which used to be water.
This is, as you can imagine, having a devastating effect on the tourism in the local area.
Furthermore, at the lake, you can now clearly see the white high water marks that show what the water level used to be, as well as signs scattered throughout the area indicating where the water used to go up to.
Many of those signs, by the way, are now quite literally hundreds of yards to the closest shoreline.
And besides that, and frankly most shocking of all, the water level has gotten so low that over the past several months now, investigators have been uncovering not only sunken boats, but also skeletal remains.
In fact, so far this year, local authorities have recovered at least five different skeletons within the receding waters of Lake Mead.
And to give you just an idea of how old some of these dead bodies are, back in May of this year, in May of 2022, a beachgoer came across a body that was stuffed within a barrel.
Police arrived on site, they conducted an investigation, and they were able to determine, based on the style of the shoes that this person was wearing, that it was the body of a shooting victim who was killed sometime in either the late 1970s or the early 1980s.
And so, that is the general situation at Lake Mead, which can, in the very near future, have devastating effects to all of the western United States.
That's because, as I mentioned earlier, Lake Mead supplies water to over 5.5 million acres of farmland, as well as to over 40 million people across seven different states.
Water that in the very near future might just be unavailable.
Furthermore, the Hoover Dam, which is just upstream from the lake, it supplies electricity to 1.3 million people across the states of Nevada, Arizona, as well as California.
And so, if this continues, well, the rolling blackouts that California is now experiencing will not only likely get worse, but they will also be replicated in other states as well.
However, the logical question to all this is why?
Why exactly are water levels in Lake Mead so dangerously low?
And the answer appears to be the unfortunate confluence of two different factors.
A natural factor, as well as political mismanagement.
To start with, according to this paper here, which was published in Nature magazine, the Western United States is experiencing what those researchers called a mega-drought, which has generated the two driest decades within the last 1200 years.
Now, obviously, it's not exactly easy to measure climate conditions going 1,200 years backwards in time.
However, if we look at the most recent data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, which looks at water conditions in the here and now, we find that almost 93% of the western United States is experiencing either drought or abnormally dry conditions.
On the map on your screen, those are indicated by all of the regions that are not in white.
On that same map, the darker red colors show the regions which are experiencing either severe, extreme, or exceptional drought conditions, which, when you add it all up, amounts to over 70% of the western U.S. And as you can see right there, Lake Mead is located in a region that, according to that map, is experiencing the worst type of drought, signified by the deep red color.
Furthermore, Lake Mead is comprised of 10% groundwater, with the rest coming from the melting of the snow from the Rocky Mountains, which flows down the Colorado River, through Lake Powell, Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon.
And so again, when you look at the map, unfortunately, well, that entire water circulation chain is currently in drought.
And it's also worth mentioning that it's not just currently, because it appears that Lake Mead has been caught up in a drought situation for the past 23 years.
Here's in fact what a report that was compiled by the U.S. Department of the Interior says, And then delivered before the U.S. Senate, said on this particular matter, Just imagine that.
23 years of drought.
That could dry up any reservoir.
But it gets even deeper than that.
Because besides these natural challenges that have been plaguing Lake Mead, there's also another challenge.
A political challenge that has been, quite literally, sucking up water from the lake at an unsustainable level for close to a decade.
However, in order to explain, I have to back up and set the stage for you properly.
All the way back in the year 1922, Seven different states, Indian territories, as well as the Mexican government, they signed something called the Colorado River Compact, which established how the water rights will be shared among all these different competing groups in the area.
And in that agreement, they took the map, they drew a line through it, and they established something called the upper and the lower basins of the Colorado River.
And so, according to the terms of this agreement, the upper basin was comprised of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, while the lower basin was made up of California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Then, after establishing this framework, the agreement stipulated that each of these two basins was allotted 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year.
And just for your reference, one acre-foot translates to about 325,000 gallons of water, meaning, when you do the math, that each of these two basins was allotted 2.4 trillion gallons of water per year.
However, these allotments were not broken down evenly among the different states.
Instead, as you can see up on your screen, the water allotments were broken down by percentage.
With Colorado receiving the largest share of water on the upper basin at about 51%, and California receiving the most water from the lower basin at about 58%.
Mexico, as you can see, was allotted 10% of the total water flow.
And so, okay, you might look at all this and say, so far so good.
That all seems fair.
But there is a problem.
This agreement, which was signed in the year 1922, came at a time when the Colorado River Basin was experiencing several years of higher-than-average rainfall.
Basically, they signed this agreement and divided up these water rights just when there was significantly more rainfall than average, which gave everyone involved a somewhat false sense of security regarding how much water there will actually be to divvy up.
Furthermore, in the 100 years since this agreement was actually signed, there has been significant migration into the southwestern United States.
And with all this increased population, well, these states have been pumping out more and more water to sustain all that growth.
Meaning, that outside of any natural drought, due to this agreement, the southwestern states, as well as Mexico, have been quite literally allowed to draw more water from the Colorado River than what actually flows into it from both rain and snow.
You multiply that situation by 100 years, and you can imagine what happens.
It actually reminds me of an old joke that was said by Milton Friedman, quote, If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years, there would be a shortage of sand.
And indeed, if you put the government in charge of the Colorado River, well, there is now a shortage of water.
Now, to be fair, back in the year 2007...
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Now, to be fair, back in the year 2007, which was 85 years after the Colorado River Compact was signed, the parties involved did realize that there was a problem.
At that point, the lake was already in severe drought, and so these seven states, they got back together, and they built a new framework to better respond to the situation.
And so, under the terms of this new agreement that was signed in the year 2007, the water levels for Lake Mead dropped below certain levels that would automatically trigger mandatory reductions in the amount of water that's allowed in these states of the lower basin.
And under the agreement, the impact on each state varied.
And so, for example, when the water level in Lake Mead dropped below the 1,075-foot elevation mark back in August of 2021, well, that automatically activated the Tier 1 shortage declaration, which caused several states to lower their water allotment.
At that time, it caused Arizona to reduce their water allotment by 512,000 acre-feet, Nevada had to reduce their amount of water by 24,000 acre-feet, And so, as you can see, the penalties for Lake Mead's drop in water levels are not equally distributed.
Even though California receives the most amount of water by volume, they don't have to suffer any reductions until a Tier 2B shortage is declared.
And if that sounds unfair to states like Arizona, well, that's not even the half of it.
That's because, after seeing that this new 2007 agreement was not really helping the situation, in 2019, The representatives for the seven western states, as well as the federal government, they met once again, and they signed another deal laying out potential cuts in the delivery of water through the year 2026.
That was once again signed in order to reduce the risks of Lake Mead hitting critically low levels.
However, just like the previous plan, well, this one did not really work either.
Because the 2019 plan...
Which was again, designed to prop up water levels at Lake Mead, it was signed at a time when Lake Mead was at 41% capacity in the year 2019.
And today, which is three years after the deal was signed, Lake Mead sits at about 27%.
Clearly the plan is not having the intended effect of propping up water levels.
However, what it is doing is hurting the farmers.
As just one example, in this new water conservation agreement, the state of Arizona, they hold the lowest position in terms of water priority.
And therefore, Arizona is the first to experience the effects of any water cutbacks.
And about one year ago, as I mentioned earlier, in August of 2021, when the federal government issued their Tier 1 shortage designation, That required Arizona to reduce their consumption by 512,000 acre-feet of water, which was about 18% of their annual water allotment.
And this reduction in water, it heavily impacted the agricultural sector within central Arizona, with their farms losing access to almost half of the water which they used to grow food, as well as things like alfalfa, wheat, as well as cotton.
But it gets even worse, because one year later, on August 16th of 2022, on August 16th of this year, well, the federal government issued a more severe Tier 2A shortage.
This required Arizona to go even further and reduce their water usage by an additional 80,000 acre-feet.
And when you combine that with the previous cutback, well, it's quite literally devastating to the farmers.
Arizona lost quite literally 21% of their annual water allotment, with much of that hit affecting farmers in places like Pinell County.
Who use about three-fourths of their available water supply to irrigate their crops.
And the reason that farmers are affected more than other citizens is because homeowners in Arizona have a higher priority than the farmers, meaning that while the majority of people might not feel the water pinch, the farmers do.
I guess the rest of the people will feel the pinch when their food no longer arrives at the supermarket store shelves.
Regardless, outside of all this doom and gloom, there is some hope.
That's because, after years of very low rainfall, right now, there's a tropical storm that's crawling its way up the western coast of Mexico, and if its trajectory continues, it's set to dump a massive amount of water across the southwestern U.S. The hurricane is named Hurricane K, and according to the National Hurricane Service, they forecast that K will, quote, Now, obviously, one storm will not fix a problem that's been 100 years in the making, but it certainly won't hurt.
However, there is a big problem coming up on the horizon.
Because again, this is not just an issue of water.
This is a problem of water, agriculture, as well as electricity.
If there is no water to supply this region, if there is no food coming out of the ground, and if both the Hoover Dam as well as the Glen Canyon Dam stop generating electricity, this might very well set off a giant internal migration with anywhere up to 60 million Americans moving away from the southern U.S. in order to live in areas with food, water, and electricity.
But this migration, it will very likely set off a vicious feedback loop where Americans migrate to other regions, leaving large portions of the western U.S. cities abandoned with no tax revenues, making those local governments unable to pay for any improvements.
This would then result in more people migrating away from those places and continuing the cycle until you end up with a bunch of cities that look like Detroit in the southern U.S. And of course, naturally enough, a massive influx into the eastern and southern states like Texas, Florida, New York, and so on, will put massive strains on the water grids, the electrical grids, not to mention the housing markets of those places.
Meaning, in short, that if this Lake Mead situation is not solved soon, well, we face a relatively rough next decade.
If you'd like to go deeper into this story, I'll throw all my research links down into the description box below this video so you can comb through them for yourself.
And also, I'd like to give a big shout-out to Mr.
Eric Schumacher, who helped tremendously with the research for this episode.
And lastly, I'd like to mention that over on Epic TV, we just published a phenomenal documentary called The Great American Race Game, wherein it explores the true history of race politics here in the U.S. Here's a trailer.
There is a whole big cottage industry for racism.
If racism went away, a lot of people would be unemployed.
The mob during the Minneapolis riots following the death of George Floyd.
Bunch of white thugs, frankly, burning down the city's traditional black and Asian business district while chanting Black Lives Matter.
It was literally surreal.
Oh!
But we black!
You gonna tell me how to be black, right?
Y'all don't care about black people!
I am not African.
I am 100% American.
If you'd like to check out that awesome documentary, as well as the plethora of phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw the link.
It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you check it out, because not only is that documentary great, as well as all the other great content, but I myself, I publish somewhere between two to three exclusive episodes of Facts Matter, And so again, the link to Epic TV will be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you check it out.
And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from the Epic Times.
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