Posted on 11/02/2025 8:22:17 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
The fight over the Colorado River’s dwindling resources is made for MAGA — but so far the Trump administration has been playing it straight.
President Donald Trump loves a good water war — and the biggest one yet is about to land in his lap.
A quarter century of climate change and drought has driven water levels along the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs to historic lows, threatening supplies that support 40 million people and economies from Phoenix to Denver to Los Angeles.
The seven states that share the West’s most important river are locked in battle over who must make sharp cuts in their water use to avoid a catastrophe that could hit as soon as next summer, in which federal dam managers would have to decide between cutting water deliveries to Arizona, California and Nevada or losing hydropower production that is critical to the stability of the region’s electrical grid and potentially damaging one of the nation’s largest dams.
The problem has all the trappings of temptation for Trump: The region is home to two political swing states and one of Trump’s favorite Democratic foes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom. There are flailing state and local officials, irate farmers and ranchers, dilapidated dams that were once the pride of American engineering, and an international treaty with Mexico.
But so far, the administration’s approach to the crisis has been anything but MAGA.
“This administration is pretty much like all the other ones I’ve worked with,” said Nevada’s long-time Colorado River negotiator, John Entsminger.
Trump hasn’t wrested control of the system of dams and canals that deliver water, as he did in California’s Central Valley just days after taking office, in the name of sending water to combat already-extinguished fires in Los Angeles. He hasn’t sent in...
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
California shouldn’t get an increased allotment of a single drop. They are emptying reservoirs and blowing up dams, and they are a communist supermajority state.
California shouldn’t get an increased allotment of a single drop. They are emptying reservoirs and blowing up dams, and they are a communist supermajority state.
Not so fast, Polutico. Per Wikipedia , not exactly a MAGA outlet….
An extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts divert almost its entire flow for agricultural irrigation and urban water supply. Its large flow and steep gradient are used to generate hydroelectricity, meeting peaking power demands in much of the Intermountain West. Intensive water consumption has dried up the lower 100 miles (160 km) of the river, which has rarely reached the sea since the 1960s… Since 2000, extended drought has conflicted with increasing demands for Colorado River water, and the level of human development and control of the river continues to generate controversy.
Don’t allow California ANY water from the Colorado, let them build desalination plants and use the Mighty Klamath and Russian Rivers...They have too many people, and need to make their own water. Maybe drill for oil, take the profits and build desalination plants.
CA can ease its water usage-waste very quickly...
Deport the 33% (13,170,279) of its population (39,500,500) that is in the U.S. illegally...
Then, NV, CO, NM, TX, and AZ could follow suit and get rid of about 10,000,000 migrant invaders...
Water problem significantly alleviated...
I’m with you on this one.
CA can build desalinization plants..they have ocean.
“Deport the 33% (13,170,279) of its population (39,500,500) that is in the U.S. illegally.”
.
You mean, Illegals use Water—AND Energy?
That is a very important factor: consumption of natural and man-made resources (i.e. housing, roads etc.) by illegal aliens (and legal ones, too).
That is a problem which is often overlooked in the debate about immigration, whether legal or not - or so it seems to me.
California grows alfalfa in the desert that uses 60” of water per acre per year that’s FIVE FEET of water for every square foot of grass which is then sold to international.interests Saudi Arabia being the largest customer, Arizona also does this for the same Saudis.
People always try to blame las Vegas it’s a straw man argument the whole state of NV gets 300,000 acre feet per year California gets 4.4 million so it’s futile to even talk about las Vegas. Who recycle 98% of every drop that hits a drain in the las Vegas Valley. It is a fear of water engineering not equaled anywhere else but Israel. Vegas gets credits for water returned to Lake Mead they have banked over ten years worth (3 million acre feet) no one but NV can touch that water ban. Vegas is so good at recycling and using water more than once they only take 200K is acre feet per year in consumptive use and nonreturns. NV also get to count all flows down the las Vegas wash from rain events and any flows into Lake Mead form Nevada’s Virgin River. The Supreme Court has ruled that all lower tributary states get any water from tributaries into the Colorado River within their state. The Virgin River flows 100K acre feet some years or more all that goes to Nevada’s bank.
Point is California takes a disproportionate amount and ships it out of the basin to never comeback in. NV and Arizona can use water nonconsumptive uses and return it to the watershed for reuse.
California also sits directly against the world ocean the largest source of water on a planet that is 75% surface area of water we are Oceanus not Terra. There largest population centers are also directly on that water body. They should be forced to desalinate and not take a single drop from the Colorado River system for urban use. The argument for food security in the imperial Valley can be made as a good use for water , but never for selling grass to Arabs across the planet away.
Urban residential water use in California is not even 5% of the total water usage, all urban use is 10% and that includes commercial and industrial uses. Agriculture is 80%, people citizens, legal immigrants, illegal are a rounding error compared to big agri. You want to save water you must reduce agricultural use it’s that simple.
I know it tempting to stamp your feet and scream illegals! But truth is agriculture is the problem.
Directly from the commission themselves who by federal law must keep track of every acre foot.
Nope urban residential use in California is less than 5% of total water use in the state it’s a rounding error compared to big agri. Open the PDF it shows it clearly.
Bkmk
Expel the illegals and I bet we’d have plenty of water for all.
Yes. It is so obvious even the writer can’t leave out the truth, almost. The huge increase in population is glossed over with the mild description “demand increase.”
“Prior droughts have been weathered thanks to the nation’s two biggest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. But demand has outstripped supply for so long now, water levels at the lakes are plunging towards precarious lows.”
Since your post is a reply to a prior post about water consumption by illegal aliens, I’m asking this: where do the illegals live in California? I thought a huge portion lived in rural areas to do farming (dem crops don’t pick demselves). Is that correct?
“But truth is agriculture is the problem.”
Yes.
Yes, it is.
CA keeps kicking the can. Imagine had they actually build desalination plants rather than a boondoggle hi-speed rail trackway. Blame everyone else. That’s dems alright.
They don’t want to solve the problem, and nor do they want to discuss what’s in the ground water. It’s not their problem: “It’s selfish humans for causing ‘climate change’.”
Frankly, I believe the public is mostly tone deaf to that mantra now, but still nothing changes.
They need to feel pain before rational thought kicks in.
The real question is how that pain is delivered and whether the CA electorate has enough collective brain cells remaining for a rational reaction.
(my $$ is “No.”)
If I remember my history, the Colorado River was illegally tapped for irrigation water, a flood washed out the irrigation gates flowing the Colorado river into the desert basin now called the Salton Sea. It was a major engineering feat to stop the flow.
Due to pesticides the Salton Sea is no longer usable for anything.
AI should allow desalination research to rapidly reduce the cost of desalination making it more cost effective and environmentally friendly to desalinate seawater than to pipe it in from the Colorado river
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