Drought Contingency

[Martinjmpr]

Map of all the tunnels in Colorado moving water from west to east..



Map of water produced:

Interesting. So, according to this chart, historically, at least, the western slope gets more than 5x the water that the Eastern slope does.

[00tec]

Shouldn't be growing corn in Colorado either.. the world isn't short on it and it's one of the most water intensive crops out there.

Then where would we get our inefficient biofuels?

[Martinjmpr]

Map of all the tunnels in Colorado moving water from west to east..

Did anybody else add all that up? Since I'm bored, I did. It came up to about 560,000 AF of water diverted from the Western slope. Compared to the 8.6 million AF that flows out of the Western slope that comes to about 6% of water diverted.

[Martinjmpr]

ETA2:
]When you think about it, a lot of the eastern slope (esp. Denver) is far more unsustainable than even Phoenix.

Phoenix also depends on massive amounts of electrical power (as does Las Vegas.) You think those cities would be as big as they are if air conditioning wasn't a thing? There's a reason that both Phoenix and LV were tiny before WWII - nobody in their right mind would live there in Summer.

[Eric P]

Interesting. So, according to this chart, historically, at least, the western slope gets more than 5x the water that the Eastern slope does.

Rain shadow effect. The moisture from the West is precipitated as it is elevated and cooled over the mountains. As the air drops from the mountains, it is warmed and sucks moisture from the environment.

[Martinjmpr]

Rain shadow effect. The moisture from the West is precipitated as it is elevated and cooled over the mountains. As the air drops from the mountains, it is warmed and sucks moisture from the environment.

Sure, I knew about that but I didn't realize until I saw that chart just how massive the discrepancy was.

[Martinjmpr]

ETA: Obviously, the Colorado government, Colorado Supreme Court, etc. - all based in Denver, mind you, justified these projects/reasoning and will always do so. That doesn't mean Denver is not stealing water from the driest basin in the country with an entirely doomed outlook.

Considering that most of the taxpayers in Colorado live on the Eastern slope, and that the tax revenues collected benefit the entire state - to include the Western slope - it's more accurate to say that Denver and the eastern slope BOUGHT the 6% of the Western slope's water that they are diverting.

Put another way, if you crunched the numbers I'll bet most Western Slope residents would be more than happy to trade the 6% of water (560,000 AF according to the chart posted above) that is diverted East in exchange for the tens or hundreds of millions of $$ they get in tax revenues from those of us on the Eastern slope.

ETA: In your imaginary situation where CO is divided into two states at the Continental Divide, what would happen? Well, the East would not be entitled to any water from the West but the West would not be entitled to any $$ from the East. So the East would be Water-poor and money-rich, and the West would be water-rich and money-poor. How long do you think that situation would last before the West decided to sell the one resource they have that the East needs? Either way you'd have a situation where money flows East to West and water flows West to East, which is the situation we have now.

ETA 2: And I haven't even touched on the impact of tourism from the Eastern slope to the Western. Millions - probably at least tens of millions if not hundreds - of $$ are earned by people on the Eastern slope and then spent on the Western slope. That's a direct benefit to the Western slope of people who live East of the divide.

[Gman]

Sure, I knew about that but I didn't realize until I saw that chart just how massive the discrepancy was.

The moist air from the west is being forced up a mountain which cools the air as it rises in elevation and squeezes the moisture from the air (colder air has less holding capacity for water vapor). Then the air falls down the eastern slope which increases in temperature as it falls and the relative humidity drops. If you really want to see an example of this, compare the western and eastern slopes of Oregon and Washington divided by the Cascades. Lush rain forest on the west side, dry brown grassland on the east side.

[spqrzilla]

I've learned a lot in this thread .... but mostly whose yard I'm not going to walk barefoot

[Irving]

I've learned a lot in this thread .... but mostly whose yard I'm not going to walk barefoot

I probably don't have to tell you not to climb the fence barefoot either.