By John C. Schmidt, Charles B. Yackulic, Eric Kuhn
The Colorado River water-supply crisis is real and ongoing. Although the root cause of the problem is declining runoff in a warming climate, the proximate cause is society’s inability to adaptively respond to declining runoff that has been occurring for more than 20 years. There is no longer an opportunity to sustain overconsumption by drawing down reservoir storage, because the reservoirs are nearly empty, and large runoff in 2023 will not eliminate shortage conditions. If Basin-wide long-term average water consumption is reduced by 13%-20%, reservoir storage could be maintained and potentially increased, providing the buffer against interannual variability in water supply that has supported economic and population growth in the Basin.
Read full report at: The Colorado River water crisis: Its origin and the future – Schmidt – WIREs Water – Wiley Online Library
