The drying out of the American west is a slow motion disaster. In this case, governments have seen it coming for quite a while and have actually planned for it. And at this point they have no choice but to take the extreme measure of…planning to schedule a monthly conference call. But seriously, this is a big deal. This has happened before and the result was the end of civilization, as the Anasazi can attest. Luckily civilization is a bit more spread out and connected these days, and technology has advanced somewhat. But there are a lot more of us, we use a lot more resources and produce a lot more waste.

As exceptional drought conditions expanded to more than 65% of the watershed’s total land area in 2020, operational forecasts for the Colorado River have worsened dramatically. Between Oct. and Nov. 2020, Bureau of Reclamation models projected a possible one million acre-foot drop in Lake Powell’s water storage due to lagging snowpack totals and record-setting soil moisture deficits.

“That was the first glimmer we could be looking at this way earlier than we expected,” said Amy Haas, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

KUNC, which is a radio station somewhere in northern Colorado