Lake Powell Pipeline pipedream is nothing more than a nightmare
Water wars are nothing new.
They have been going on forever, and as we continue to populate the planet and stubbornly refuse to implement practices to conserve it, we will surely have more.
Washington County officials have circled the wagons over the controversial issue of the Lake Powell Pipeline, a hair-brained scheme to siphon water from the lake and send it 140 miles through five pumping stations to serve the greed of developers whose only green values are the dollar bills they hope to stuff into their pockets as they contemplate the money they will make gearing up for a projected population of more than 500,000 by 2065, a prognostication that is as much fantasy as it is fact.
This has been a pet project of the legislature for quite awhile now, backed by suspicious actors including former Utah representative Mike Noel who served as executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District and owns 700 acres of land and water rights in Kane County’s Johnson Canyon. It is no coincidence that the proposed pipeline will deposit 3.5 million gallons of water a day into Johnson Canyon. Of course, that was never disclosed as a potential conflict of interest when Noel served in the legislature.
It’s no wonder, then, that he championed the project from the very beginning, even though the area he represented will only receive 5 percent of Lake Powell’s water.
The West’s water supply is dependent on the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Powell through Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada, as well as Mexico, are all fed by the river with California receiving 4.4 million acre-feet per year. Colorado’s allocation is 3.9 million acre-feet, Arizona 2.85, Utah 1.7, Wyoming 1, New Mexico 0.85, Nevada 0.3, and Mexico 1.5.
The problem, of course, is that because of global warming and drought, the river is flowing about 2 million acre-feet below the committed allocation, which means that the tap is running dry. However, none of those involved seem interested in renegotiating the deal.
St. George Mayor Jon Pike recently penned a piece for The Spectrum in which he adamantly defended the project. Pike, it must be noted, is also a member of the Washington County Water Conservancy Board of Trustees. His agenda and motivation are clear.
“The measure I look to is, who are the people electing?” he said during an interview with the High Country News. “And, they are electing people who are pro-Lake Powell Pipeline. Anti-pipeline people are not getting elected.” Of course, anybody with the slightest bit of progressive idealism is not getting elected in southern Utah.
Still, even the few who espouse a more moderate or even liberal political position also believe in a certain fiscal responsibility. This means not gambling with taxpayer money, which in the case of paying the tab for the pipeline will run between $1.1 and $1.8 billion, according to state officials. Others peg it at as much as $3 billion.
Pike and other supporters of the pipeline like to point out that water conservation practices here have resulted in a decline of 1 billion gallons of water used from 2010 to 2015. While that may seem like a lot, it is a weighted manipulation of the numbers. Per capita consumption here falls in the range of 289 to 325 gallons a day with about 70 percent of that water being used for lawns, golf courses, parks, and cemeteries. Other water-starved southwestern cities are averaging about 100 gallons a day usage per capita. The residents of Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, and Las Vegas are using less water per capita than the residents of Washington County. So as you can see, we still have a long way to go before we pat ourselves on the back for our conservation efforts. It is unlikely to change because of the region’s heavy-handed support of rapid development and lack of environmental principles.
The Colorado River is one of the most important bodies of water in the United States. It is also arguably the most threatened.
About 40 million people between Denver and Los Angeles depend on the Colorado River for their drinking water. Farmers irrigate 15 percent of the nation’s crops with water from the Colorado River. It supports vast riparian areas along its path, feeds grasslands that are integral to our environment, and preserves the wildlife in those areas to help maintain the flora and fauna that sustain human life.
But the impact on those elements so dependent on the river is alarming because the allocation numbers for its water are already higher than the annual flow rates. And as Dan Mayhew, conservation chairperson for the Sierra Club’s Utah Chapter, has said, climate change will further deplete that flow by as much as 30 percent by 2050, about the time the St. George metro area expects to blossom to a population of 500,000.
But damn it, let’s grab that water so that we can build more ugly boxes for people to hide in and more requisite Olive Gardens, Walmarts, and Costcos.
Let’s continue this $1.8 billion gamble, even though science tells us that there is a huge likelihood that the project will not be able to deliver the amount of water promised because of declining water levels at the lake.
Let’s dig in our heels and move forward with this huge risk, even though it would be far more frugal and prudent to go with native habitat landscaping, enforce existing water conservation measures, and stretch our water supply by installing gray-water systems not only for our golf courses, parks, and cemeteries but for our homes and businesses.
The Lake Powell Pipeline pipedream is far from a done deal.
A drought contingency act to protect Colorado River levels, which includes levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, has passed Congress. There are already lawsuits looming to stop the project. And if I had to put money on it, I would bet that California, which is no stranger to water wars and how to win them, will squash Utah like a bug in both the courts and Congress.
There are better ways to do this. There are better ways to plan for growth. There are better ways to ensure our water supply. There are better ways to spend our taxpayer money.
But this pipeline pipedream is nothing more than a nightmare for those truly concerned about our environment and the future of the planet.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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