Welcome to the Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien podcast, where we go behind the scene of the Arizona PBS documentary series Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien.

We are discussin the challenges, the discoveries, and the things you might not get from watching the TV series alone.

I'm your host, Elise Hu, and joining me is the veteran science journalist himself, Miles O'Brien.

In this episode, we're looking at the strain on the Colorado River, and we'll meet the farmers, water managers and negotiators working towards solutions.

Miles, thanks for joining me.

Good to be with you Elise.

Let's begi by describing the problem here.

First, why is the Colorado River so vital and what's happening with it now?

The Colorado River is absolutely foundational to where you live right now.

At least there would be no LA as we know it without the Colorado River.

It is, it supplies drinking water and water in general for 40 million people now, and it irrigates 6 million acres of farmland up and down the seven states in the Colorado River basin.

And it is it is one of the most over utilized rivers in the world.

The West has grown rapidly, thanks in part to a big part thanks to the Colorado River.

And that growth is, you know, not stopping.

Look at what's happening in places like Phoenix and Tucson as far as the growth goes.

And yet the river is shrinking steadily.

What's happening is we're now about 25 years into an epic drought that hasn't been seen in a millennia.

And scientists actually believe, you know, climate chang obviously is at the root of it.

But what they think is happening is it's not just a drought.

It's what they call aridificatio which means the process of turning a place much drier over the long haul.

And that is probably what's happening right now in the West with climate change.

And, you know, the Colorado River is 100% created by winte snowpack in the Rocky Mountains.

And without that, there is no Colorado River.

And the this in this past year in particular, was very war and not a lot of precipitation.

And the snowpack is just a fraction of what they would normally expect.

So it's even more acute this year.

So what you have is increasing relentless demand on a river that is steadily shrinking.

And you have off to the side here, Mother Nature plays this out.

The political system is fighting over allocations of that water, which probably were never realistic in the first place.

And so there's this kind of cognitive dissonance between what's happening with the rive the snowpack, climate and aridif and what's happening in the political structure as peopl fight out who gets this water.

what happens to all of the agriculture that is supported by the Colorado River?

If this river is, as you say, in retreat, so much of the world, or if not the world, this country's food is grown from the water that's provided by the Colorado River, right?

Yeah.

I mean, if first of all, you have to understand, when you talk about the Colorado River and the crisis that it is facing.

Yeah.

People get nervous about, you know, whether their taps going to keep running in San Diego or whether they have to you know, shorten their showers.

But the truth is that the municipal use of water is only about 20 or so percent of the river.

Fully 75% of the water consumption along the Colorado River is agriculture.

So if you use the Willie Sutton rule, you know the famous bank robber, why do you rob banks?

Well, that's where the money is.

If you want to solv the Colorado River water crisis, where's the water?

The water is being used by agriculture.

And so one way or another, to solve this problem, AG is going to have to make a sacrifice.

And, you know, the truth is places like Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, they have grown rapidly.

And yet their water consumption has plateaued, in some cases decreased.

They've done a great job of pulling up lawns and and coming up with conservation measures which have made the municipalities not the real problem.

And so no one should be worried that that the West is going to dry up in that respect.

But if you really enjoy winter vegetables or, you know, if you're in New York and you want to Caesar salad in February, you want the Imperial Valley to keep producing what it produces, which has 12 month growing season, some of the most productive farmland in the world, which was Colorado Rive water directed into the desert.

And this oasis has emerged.

Let's talk about some of the characters we meet in this episode, who are kind of part of the debate, part of the dialog, starting with Brad Udall.

So Brad Udall is the son of Mo Udall, famous congressman from Arizona.

His family is a very politically minded family, but he is he's an academic, and he grew up as a river guide on the Colorado River and just has a huge passion and love for the river.

And that turned into an academic career, a Colorado State University.

And he is one of the scientist who first identified this idea of aridification.

But what he explained to me you because he understands he's a pretty astute student of the politics, especially given the family he came from.

And it goes back to 1922, whe the seven states along the river basin got together to figure out how to divide up the river.

And the concern at the time wa that California would gobble up all the water and and claim water rights that would transcend state lines, and people upstream would not have rights to the water as it passed by them.

It would be owne by folks in the Imperial Valley.

And so it was divided in two: upper basin, lower basin, split the river in half.

And then within those two basins, there's a priority and seniority syste which determines who gets water.

But at least the river would be divided in two.

Well, in any case, that division which allocated a specific amount of water to the uppe and lower.

7.5 million acre feet which is, I forget, over 2 trillion gallons, but an acre of water at one foot depth.

When the river was divided up it was a particularly wet time.

And so they thought the river could deliver a lot more than it ever could.

And so the West grows.

Climate change comes into play.

All of a sudden the river is, you know, down by at least 20% over its 20th century average and actually down much more and more recently.

And this growth of of the the West continues.

And that leaves agriculture really feeling the squeeze, because farmers are facing all kinds of pressure to use less water, grow crops that need less water, or put their fields in fallow, or just go out of business.

And the water goes to the municipalities.

So it's a very complicated issue.

You know, Elise, I covered NASA for many years.

CNN.

Yeah, rocket science is easy compared to the water rights there, because every time I think I understand it, I learn something new.

And it's not only fraught, there is a ticking clock.

It sounds like negotiations need to be done by the end of this year between the upper basin and the lower basin.

And we met Becky Mitchell in Colorado, one of the negotiators, and it did seem like a pretty emotional interview for her or an emotional topic for her.

What do you feel like was happening there?

In the upper basin, They they rely.

Mother nature is in charge of the reservoirs there.

It's basically snowpack.

If you have a lot of snowpack, you have a lot of water in the spring and you have a goo you have a good growing season in the the lower basin, they have the advantage of two big dams, the Glen Canyon Dam and the Hoover Dam, which create the two largest reservoirs in this country, Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

And so any people who are downstream of that including folks in Los Angeles, have that that cushion, that bank account and water can be turned on and off with a lot more precision.

And they're not subject to th vicissitudes of Mother Nature.

And so this year, the farmers we met in the upper Basin in Colorado and the Western Slope, many of them are getting half or less of the water than they normally would get, simply because the snowpack isn't there.

They don't have a Hoover Dam o a Glen Canyon Dam and a spigot they can turn on and off.

And so it gets very emotiona when the the lower basin calls for cuts to the upper basin Their response is, well, Mother Nature has already determined we're getting cut.

And for you to ask me to cu further makes no sense at all.

And so that's their argument up there.

Farming, of course, takes up a lot of water.

And recently there's been a lot more discourse, debate and demonstration even about data centers, AI data centers.

How does that facto into the impact for this region?

Well, I've done the math on this.

And it's actually data center are gobbling up a lot of things and a lot of resources.

But at this juncture, even if you look at the optimistic projections it still doesn't come close to, you know the uses of the Imperial Valley or for that matter, just pick one crop, alfalfa, which is an extremely thirsty crop and is used, you know, for dairy farms and cattle ranchers, not just in the US, but much of it is exported overseas.

And so, you know, when you start picking, well, is it the data centers that the problem is it the growth of Phoenix, or is it all the alfalfa that is planted up and down the seven basin states, which is a very thirsty crop and ultimately goes int to make milk and and hamburgers?

And is that the most efficient way to use that water and should it be exported?

Which is another fraught question.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And what are the what are the tensions there?

Where is that debate at as to whether all of this alfalfa that's grown with water that is a diminishing resource from the Colorado River, whether that that alfalfa an hay should be shipped overseas.

Yeah.

Well, who's going to tell a farmer not to?

Right.

You know, when you know, you've talked to enough farmers over the years, they they are they're not to be persuade if there's a crop that they can sell and make a profit with, they will do it full stop.

And getting into telling them, you know, you should or should not plant a particular crop is a very slippery slope in their view.

But you know, there are ways to incentivize things one way or another.

And, you know, and truthfully, this is a this is a problem.

Like every problem, every farmer will tell you they don't want to quit farming something they've been doing for 4 or 5 generations, and they don't want to leave the Imperial Valley because that's what their their ancestors did, and they want to continue doing that.

And this is our our culture and our economy is built all around it.

But the honest good is truth is everybody has a price, right?

And there are ways that wit some money, you could facilitate a transition out of some of this farmland.

Maybe it's maybe it's just the alfalfa or some percentage of the acreage to take some of the pressure off the river.

And you know that that might be the way to go.

But right no there is no grand plan like that that is out there.

That's what I was going to ask you, Miles are there places in the country with more water where farming would present less of a strain on natural resources?

Yes.

Of course.

Right.

You could grow alfalfa in a lot of places, but, you know, you also can do in the Imperial Valley 11 cuttings a year.

And so it's really interesting when you think about the productivity of that particular farmland.

It's the year round status of it and our expectations for getting fresh produce year round.

Yeah, it becomes a little more challenging because, you know, in Colorado it's a short season and they grow great vegetable and apples and so forth there.

But they're not growing anything in the middle of the winter.

But in the Imperial Valley they're cranking it out.

So there is great value to what oasis farming in the southern part of our country provides this country.

It provides food security year round, you know, selection of good whole foods for all of us.

And so, yes, it would it would be nice if we could grow more of it up in the northwest, but you wouldn't have quite the steady supply.

So there's got to b a way of threading that needle.

This episode doesn't end with a clear cut solution because there really isn't one right now.

The problem is also so multi-pronged.

It's spread across so many different players.

Is there any news of collaboratio happening to try and solve this?

Where are things at right now?

Yes, and I will.

I will confess this of the ten stories we did in Resolve to Solve, this is the one that I reall didn't get to a solution, did I?

I try, I got close, but not really because they're so at loggerheads at this point.

So the federal government has come in and imposed a, a decree on the on the upper lower basin states, and it has forced the lower basin to take a 3.2 million acre foot haircut over two years, a reduction in their usage, but has not imposed any mandatory cutbacks for the upper basin.

And this is the this is the friction point between the two basins.

The folks in Nevada and California and Arizona would like the upper basin states to cut back as well.

And of course, what share the pain.

But they're saying we're living the pain every have no snowpack.

We have no we have no water.

So that's their point.

So I do think, however, as it gets more and more dire and the federal government has to come in more, that might be a motivation for these players to come to the table an think about how to share this.

You know, this is just because in 1922, they all got together and signed, you know, parchment paper and said, this is what I get.

It's really not a birthright.

And it Mother Natur has a seat at the table always.

And Mother Nature always bats last.

And this river is just not delivering what they imagined in 1922.

Not even close.

Are there any practical action items recommendations for viewers who are seeing this story and want to support the Colorado River, or the farmers and those who are sor of making it their livelihoods?

Yeah, it's it's a tough one.

You know, I don't think you need to take a shorter shower, Elise, in Los Angeles to make individual can't solve this problem, right?

No, it's really about understanding, you know, the dynamics of farming and appreciating this culture.

You know, it's very easy to say, you know, why are you growing alfalfa and shipping it away?

But, you know, this is their living.

This is this is something they've been doing in a multi-generational fashion.

But there's there' got to be a way to support ways for farmers to maybe use less, just a little bit less, one way or another, that consumption of water by agriculture is going to have to diminish, whether that's reducin the amount of flood irrigation that occurs in places like the Imperial Valley, you know, putting in fancier drip irrigation systems, which has been pioneered in Israel, where water is really short supply.

The other thing, you know, frankly, water is cheap.

It's too cheap for what you know.

You know, if you think about it, you know, supply and demand, right?

This is a precious resource.

And yet a farmer in the Imperial Valley gets water for all intents and purposes, it's free.

So maybe there's got to be a way that it's a number is assigned to it, right?

Whether it's taxed or there's a cost that is put into it, which would incentivize a different kind of thinking about it, a different kind of conservation.

And maybe that tax, maybe that money goes into a pool that encourages more drip irrigation, more sophisticated approaches, which are very expensive.

It's very cheap to flood your field and use that as your irrigation system, but that's no the most efficient way to do it.

Miles, this was a heady one.

It's wonky, but fascinating as well.

Thank you so much Indulge in the walk every now and then.

Right every now and then we went there.

All right.

Thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien is a co-productio of Mobias Media and Arizona PBS.

You can watch the show at azpbs.org/resolvetosolve.

this podcast is a productio of Central Sound at Arizona PBS.

Our video editors are Matthew Anderson and Macie Logan.

We get audio support from Joe Miller and Daniel Bevc.

Our producer is Anna Williams.

Executive producers Alex Kosiorek, Carol Yancho, Sco Woelfel, and Miles O'Brien.

I'm your host Elise Hu.

Thanks for joining us.