Entering the sixth year of a record dry spell in much of the West is bad enough. But what really worries the head of the federal agency that delivers water to more than 30 million people and 10 million acres of farmland is what happens when the region's precipitation returns to normal.
BOISE, Idaho — Entering the sixth year of a record dry spell in much of the West is bad enough. But what really worries the head of the federal agency that delivers water to more than 30 million people and 10 million acres of farmland is what happens when the region's precipitation returns to normal.
"The biggest fear we have is that when this drought breaks and leaves, we are still short of water," John Keys, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said Tuesday at the opening of a two-day forum on the outlook for Western water supplies.
Increases in population and requirements to protect endangered species will make it difficult to balance demands for water in the West this summer, Keys said.
"Nobody knows whether this is just a normal, typical drought or whether climate change is rearing its head here and we're looking at some sort of major long-term change," said John Leshy, who teaches property law at the University of California.
Because of the drought, rent payments and livestock numbers have been reduced on many of the farms and ranches owned by Farm Management Co., the real estate subsidiary of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the West's largest private agricultural landowners.
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"The thing we are worried about is the consecutive nature of these droughts and when it's going to stop," FMC President John Creer said.
Yet, the effects of the El Nino pattern of warm currents in the Pacific Ocean this season mean water managers in parts of the Southwest and Southern California are bracing for the potential of large-scale flooding after a winter of record-setting snowfall and precipitation.
"There seems to be a north-south line, and depending on which side of that line you're on, you hear horror stories about the drought continuing or horror stories about potential flooding," said Norm Semanko, president of the National Water Resources Association.
Karl Dreher, director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, said the drought in the upper Snake River Valley has reached epic proportions. "We just never have experienced anything quite like it," he said.
But Dreher said Westerners sweating out the drought of 2005 should recognize this split-personality season demonstrates how quickly conditions can change, and not always for the better.
"This drought will end someday, hopefully soon, and then there will be floods," he said. "Extreme events happen."
Dreher said conservation is "not the panacea to addressing all our water shortages." Over-irrigation by farmers in the Lemhi Valley recharges the aquifer that keeps the Lemhi River flowing during months it normally would be dry, and if conservation were ordered, "we wouldn't have the salmon we've got there now," he said.
Kay Brothers, deputy general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, urged a cultural change in the way Westerners treat water. Her agency is spending millions of dollars paying homeowners to replace lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping.
Source: Associated Press
