A number of reports have identified the Colorado River basin as one of the areas most vulnerable to climate change, second only perhaps to Alaska, with its receding coastlines. The basin remains in a multi-year drought that began in 1999 and is only likely to become hotter and more arid as the impacts of climate change take hold. Already, the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are only 45 and 50 percent full, respectively. Unless current levels of consumption change soon, there is a 50 percent chance that their water levels could drop below the outlet pipes that as early as 15 years from now—effectively rendering the reservoirs dry.

But the convergence of unsustainable consumption and climate change just might push the water situation in western states around the proverbial bend. And a look at research from recent years underscores the stern warning in the U.S. Global Change Research Program report released by the Obama administration last week that, “Climate change has already altered, and will continue to alter, the water cycle, affecting where, when, and how much water is available for all uses.”

According to a 2007 report by the National Research Council, the basin has grown hotter than any other region in the country over the last three decades. Recent global climate model estimates now project temperature increases of 2 to 4°C by mid-century. The warming has cut into the river’s main input, the snow that falls in the mountains of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado during the winter and is naturally stored in the form of snowpacks. Reports of below-average snowpack sizes have become more and more common over the last decade, with 2006 marking the advent of record or near-record lows in New Mexico, southern Colorado, and Arizona. Over 90 percent of reporting stations in Arizona were snow-free on January 1—easily the highest figure in the past 40 years. The basin’s snow has also begun to melt earlier in the spring, depriving users, particularly farmers, of the water when they need it most.

In a study detailed last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tim P. Barnett and David W. Pierce of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, predicted that climate change could eventually reduce the flow of the river by 10 to 30 percent. Such a significant reduction would result in scheduled water deliveries that go missing 60 to 90 percent of the time by mid-century, potentially creating shortfalls that reach upwards of 1 billion cubic meters per year. That’s about four times the residential water use of the citizens of Denver in 2006.

Though the numbers seem large, Barnett and Pierce believe these delivery shortfalls can mostly be managed through conservation, reuse, transfers, and other measures. Population growth and natural climate variability could complicate these efforts, however, and they caution that the water budget model used by the United States Bureau of Reclamation to plan future deliveries could, by overestimating current river flows, give planners a false sense of complacency.

While the scientists have spoken clearly, it remains to be seen whether western policymakers will react in time and make the crucial reforms needed to avert disaster. Many of the thorniest issues—how to divide water use between municipal and agricultural users, for instance, or how to balance environmental concerns with industry needs—are unresolved, and current initiatives seem either too timid or too risky to succeed.

In California, proponents of desalination are aggressively pushing the process as a potential solution to the state’s worsening water deficits, with plans already in place to build up to 20 new plants. The proposed facilities have encountered stiff resistance from a range of environmental groups, which have assailed them as being too expensive, energy-inefficient, and dangerous to marine life. More cost-effective and practical measures, such as water reuse, water protection and conservation, should take precedence, they argue.

California’s dilapidated water delivery system recently received a $260 million boost from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as part of the federal stimulus package. The money will primarily be used to build a screened pumping plant, which will protect fish at a dam located on the Sacramento River and increase the amount of water it can dispense to about 150,000 acres of farmland, and to provide relief for the drought-wracked Central Valley.

Several cities have also been experimenting with water rationing and modified water pricing schedules. Los Angeles, which is entering its third year of drought, has just increased prices in an effort to coax residents into reducing their consumption by 15 percent. The city’s Department of Water and Power will also offer residents who replace their grass lawns with drought-resistant plants, mulch, or water-permeable hardscapes a small cash incentive: $1 per square foot. San Diego, for its part, will only allow its residents to water their lawns three days a week and only for ten minutes at a time.

Though promising, especially if planners can implement them on a larger scale, these measures will likely lack the oomph necessary to make a significant dent in the West’s water crisis. More promising is a major water protection initiative for the Colorado River recently proposed by Lake Havasu City Mayor Mark Nexsen at a House Natural Resources Subcommittee hearing. Nexsen called for a comprehensive, coordinated approach to water quality management that would bring together the relevant local and federal agencies that oversee the Lower Colorado River to tackle the threats posed by invasive species, nonpoint source pollution, pharmaceuticals, and wastewater discharge. With appropriate funding, the program would improve the Lower Colorado River’s ecology and increasing the amount of water available to be used.

Other proposed measures could involve the transfer of water between wet areas and dry ones. A study published last month in the Journal of Climate found that, while many of the nation’s rivers would see greatly reduced flows in the coming decades, some, particularly in the Midwest, would see increased flows, thanks to greater precipitation.

Ultimately, we will simply have to make do with less water. As we’re learning to manage our carbon footprints, we will also have to learn how to manage our water footprints, by consuming less and more intelligently.

Jeremy Jacquot is a graduate student in marine environmental biology at the University of Southern California and is a contributing writer for Discover, Popular Mechanics, and DeSmogBlog.

Rising temperatures “will interact with many social and environmental stresses” the report says. In fact, temperature increases already inflict water challenges on the United States, especially in the West and Southwest regions. More frequent droughts, floods, and water quality problems limit the country’s water supply and distress the agriculture sector. The report predicts that “large reductions in spring precipitation” in the Southwest will increase competition for water supplies since the region is at the forefront of the nation’s population growth. In addition, Sarah Bates describes in her column this week how “climate change knits energy and water policy together” as western rivers and reservoirs diminish and various power generation methods consume considerable amounts of water.

Decreased precipitation is imminent in the Southwest whether the United States has low or high emissions, the report projects, but a higher emissions scenario will subject parts of the country to up to 40 percent reductions in precipitation in 2080-2099 compared to the period from 1961-1979. Damage to crop yields and quality are expected to increase along with droughts, according to CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy, who explains the daunting future climate change poses for American farmers. Moreover, worldwide productivity losses attributed to climate change cost farmers $4.8 billion in 2002 alone.

Furthermore, heavy downpours and floods accompany less frequent precipitation. Intense rains “delay spring planting while flooding fields during the growing season,” Kenworthy writes. In the spring of 2008, such downpours caused agricultural losses of up to $8 billion. These losses trended upward by 27 percent in the Midwest over the last 50 years, according to the new USGCRP report.

It is clear the agriculture industry is at risk for great losses if we don’t address climate change immediately, but Chris Mooney points out that the report’s release demonstrates that farmers have an ally in the current administration, which supports reducing emissions and moving the country to a clean energy economy: “This latest study tells us a lot about climate science—but the bigger story is that we have a government that’s finally managing that science on behalf of its citizens.“

Consider a couple of high-profile western water conflicts in which the Bureau is entangled:

• The Bureau of Reclamation serves as the water manager for the Colorado River Basin, which has the improbable capacity to store four times the river’s annual flow in Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and other storage facilities. Drought conditions over the past decade have dropped the two main reservoirs to about 50 percent of capacity, with annual river flows averaging about 66 percent of the normal levels, and recent studies project that such shortages will become the normal conditions as a result of climate change. Water scarcity combined with population growth have stressed the entire water delivery system and required the federal government to mediate shortage-sharing agreements among seven basin states (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming). Water providers in Southern Nevada are in the process of building additional, deeper intake pipes to draw water from the shrinking Lake Mead.
• California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where the Bureau operates the enormous Central Valley Project to move water from the wet north part of the state to southern residents, has suffered catastrophic declines of native fish. Combined with low snowmelt in recent winters and accelerating demands for water exports, Delta water supplies have proven inadequate to meet all economic and environmental demands. In a report released earlier this year, an independent review panel concluded that federal water managers have consistently favored farmers over the needs of salmon in failing to implement the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992, a law intended to overhaul the state’s water delivery system and improve the environment. The panel concluded that the Bureau has failed to embrace its mandate for water management (including recovery of anadromous fish) “with equal zeal to its core mission of water supply.” A Biological Opinion issued this month declared that water operations must be dramatically altered to protect the imperiled fish and the Delta ecosystem from imminent collapse.

The Bureau of Reclamation is one of the key water management agencies in the United States, created in 1902 to complete the vision of Manifest Destiny through water storage and delivery projects in the arid 17 states of the western United States. In the past century, the agency constructed more than 600 dams and reservoirs, including the iconic Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, as well as 58 hydroelectric powerplants associated with these projects. The Bureau is the largest wholesaler of water in the country and the second largest provider of hydroelectric power.

After decades focused on moving earth and pouring concrete, the ground shifted under the Bureau of Reclamation in the late 20^th Century. Mounting environmental concerns brought down some projects, while others foundered on more rigorous cost-benefit analyses. By the mid-1980s, the Bureau announced its new mission as a “water management agency” rather than the nation’s dam-builder.

As I described in a previous Science Progress column, former Bureau of Reclamation Area Manager (and Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science) Elizabeth Rieke said this about the changing mandate for federal water projects: “We can build them, operate them, modify them, re-operate them, we can make them safe and secure, and we can take them down.” Indeed, the Bureau has most recently spent a great deal of time studying and implementing dam removal and reoperation practices, reflecting broad public concerns for living rivers reflected in federal legal mandates such as the Endangered Species Act and associated litigation.

Into this imbroglio steps Michael Connor, who most recently served as Counsel for the U.S. Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. In that position, he negotiated legislation to finalize Native American water settlements, provide incentives for energy and water efficiency, and support research into climate change impacts on water resources.

At his first public speech after being sworn in as Commissioner, Connor told an audience at the annual Natural Resources Law Center conference in Boulder, Colorado that the agency must take a lead role in climate adaptation, facing up to the dramatic challenges of reduced snowpack, earlier runoffs, and increased evaporation in a system largely dependent on large dams and reservoirs in arid western landscapes.

“Our water supply is going to be changing. The way that water comes to us is going to be changing. That’s absolutely one of the key challenges that we need to be preparing for,” Connor state, in a quote published in the Durango (Colo.) Herald on June 5, 2009.

Prior to his confirmation, Connor participated in a discussion of the interaction between federal policy and western water management, convened by the Carpe Diem Project in March, 2009. He emphasized the need to integrate energy and water, citing several efforts with which he was involved in the Senate. Connor repeated this theme in his Boulder speech, noting the enormous amount of energy consumed by pumping, moving, and treating water and the large water consumption of many electrical energy production practices. This relationship between water and energy use-nearly invisible to both policy makers and the public for decades of development-has finally started to receive the attention it deserves, thanks to recent publications by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Western Resource Advocates.

It would be a laughable understatement to say that Commissioner Connor has his work cut out for him. A friend responded to my initial summary of Connor’s Boulder speech with the observation that, “I would be puckered in that position.” Connor’s reputation as a calm but persistent problem-solver, his experience with complex federal water disputes, and his ever-present sense of humor will serve him well as he assumes the reins of an agency beset by the sorts of “wicked” problems that call for solutions shaped around uncertain future conditions and require cooperation of parties bearing scars of historical battles.

Sarah Bates, Senior Fellow at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana, previously served as Deputy Director for Policy and Outreach at Western Progress. Bates has written extensively on western water law and policy, and serves on the project team of the Carpe Diem Project on western water and climate change.

Climate change is likely to alter physical and biological processes in the Chesapeake Bay in ways that undermine important assumptions about resource management and restoration. And as the Bay Foundation’s recent lawsuit underscores, public agencies involved in Bay protection and restoration do not need to wait for new authorities to address these issues. In fact, their existing responsibilities to restore the Bay require them to consider the implications of climate change and, when necessary, take action to ensure success under changing climatic conditions. This simple but profound reality has implications far beyond the Bay, as resource managers recognize that the effects of climate change are relevant to a wide range of decisions and that they are empowered and required to act under their existing authorities.

These are just a few of the implications of a new report on the impact of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay from the Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. The STAC is an independent body that provides impartial advice and guidance to the Bay Program, a regional partnership that has worked since 1983 to restore the watershed. The report concludes that climate change is more than a future threat to the Bay—it is an issue with immediate consequences for today’s restoration and protection decisions. Climate change alters historical trends in information upon which agencies base management decisions and transforms the environmental conditions for which existing restoration projects were designed.

The scientific literature clearly suggests that climate change is likely to bring warmer air and water temperatures to the region, accelerate sea level rise, and potentially change precipitation patterns. These changes are likely to exacerbate current stresses on the Bay ecosystem and complicate restoration efforts. For example, a changing climate is likely to:

• Alter the flow of pollutants into the Bay and their impact on water quality and living resources, including exacerbating the duration and severity of dangerous low oxygen conditions
• Create new requirements for environmental monitoring programs tracking the health of the Bay, including the ability to attribute changes in conditions between regional climate change and local management action
• Alter the effectiveness of critical restoration strategies, such as large-scale planting of submerged aquatic vegetation or the performance of water quality best management practices
• Undermine assumptions used in watershed modeling, such as the historical meteorological time series used to develop pollutant allocations for Total Maximum Daily Load regulations

The STAC study clearly indicates that these are not speculative connections. Rather, these are reasonably foreseeable outcomes based on a substantial foundation of scientific research, and they should be considered in decision making. The information compiled in the report makes it clear that the Bay Program and its state and local partners can and should take action to anticipate and adapt to changing conditions.

Figure 1. Observed changes in Chesapeake Bay surface water temperature from 1935 through 2007. The sampling points include the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Laboratory (CLB Pier) and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS Pier). See the full report, Climate Change and the Chesapeake Bay: State-of-the-Science Review and Recommendations, for more information.

It is essential to recognize that the need to respond effectively to changing conditions is not a new requirement—it is an existing responsibility based on the Bay Program’s mandates and authorities. This may seem premature to those who perceive climate change as a slow-moving, chronic problem. However, climate change has a variety of immediate implications.

Many, if not most, watershed management decisions are primarily based on historic climatic information, and changing conditions can undermine projects premised on past data. For example, the ability of surface waters to dilute pollutants is typically based on a distribution of flow rates—low flows are able to handle lower inputs of pollution before they are degraded below acceptable levels. The frequency and severity of low flow conditions is essential to setting acceptable pollutant discharge levels, such as those required to issue permits under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System or Total Maximum Daily Load regulations. Changes in temperature and precipitation regimes will mean that load allocations based on observations over the last century may not meet regulatory standards under future conditions. The scientific literature is clear that a continuation of past climatic trends is one of the least likely outcomes, and, consequently, it is not acceptable to use this information as the primary basis for important management decisions.

Moreover, watershed managers plan many restoration measures for multi-decadal performance periods—they must function long into the period when climatic conditions are expected to be significantly different from those used in their design. For example, restoration strategies such as shoreline management or the design of urban stormwater systems are often literally “set in stone” (or concrete) and clearly intended to perform far into the next century. In fact, these strategies will need to perform for decades under conditions that are likely to be significantly different from those experienced in the recent past. For these long-term investments, climate change is an issue of immediate concern. Given the weight of scientific information about plausible future conditions, the failure to design and build projects without consideration for the types of conditions reasonably anticipated over a project’s design lifetime is unacceptable. It should also lead one to question what kind of design represents a reasonable professional standard of care. Just how much information do we need before consideration for rising sea levels becomes standard practice for coastal projects?

Climate change also has immediate implications beyond brick and mortar decisions. It is also immediately relevant to those monitoring the success (or failure) of Bay-wide restoration efforts. Today’s Bay monitoring system is nominally designed to detect trends in a wide variety of water quality and living resource metrics. Climate change creates a new requirement for the existing monitoring system: it must allow managers to differentiate between climate and non-climate-driven changes. It is essential that managers can understand the causes of future changes in the health of the Bay. The lack of this kind of information can allow scofflaws to argue that further degradation is due to climate change. Alternatively, it can allow for overly optimistic assessments of restoration efforts if climate change contributes to improved conditions. Either way, the scientific community can and should help create a monitoring system that has sufficient statistical power to differentiate between climatic and non-climatic drivers of change through the selection of indicators and the spatial and temporal selection of sampling sites.

EPA’s Chesapeake Bay program must catalyze many of these necessary changes, and the STAC report concluded with specific recommendations:

• Create a high-level climate change champion charged with identifying opportunities to address climate change within existing authorities and existing resources
• Develop and deploy new strategies to accelerate consideration of climate change in public and private sector decision making
• Prioritize and aggressively pursue targeted research and development to address specific implementation issues and strengthen the foundation of knowledge about the impact of climate change on the Bay

In other words, it is essential for climate change to be someone’s job. This is not a job for an intern or a fellow. Rather, it is a permanent position for a skilled and experienced professional who is empowered to use existing authorities and resources to anticipate and prepare for changing climatic conditions. Creating and staffing this position with a capable individual is a key indicator that the Bay Program and its partners are beginning to take this issue seriously. With this person in place, the Bay Program can begin to work with the STAC and stakeholders to prioritize the development of strategies to help protect and restore the Bay under changing conditions. At times, this will require focused research and development, and the Bay Program should help ensure that needs are clearly communicated and that resources are made available to support the work that needs to be done.

The challenges of climate change for the Chesapeake Bay are important and, in some cases, urgent. However, they are not unique, and they provide important lessons for any natural resource program guided by responsibilities under the federal Clean Water Act or other environmental legislation. Fundamentally, these policies create the responsibility to protect and restore natural resources. Given current scientific understandings, carrying out these existing responsibilities requires considering the consequences of changing climatic conditions. It is not acceptable to continue policies and programs based on assumptions that future conditions will mirror those of the past. It is necessary—not optional, not negotiable—for policymakers, regulators, and managers to use the best available information to anticipate and prepare for future conditions. Attention to these assumptions will help motivate the development of new strategies and approaches for addressing future conditions. This will ultimately help fulfill existing commitments to protect, and when necessary, restore air, water, and biological resources.

Dr. Christopher R. Pyke is the Director of Climate Change Services for CTG Energetics, Inc., a research fellow at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee for the U.S. EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program.

Water shortages are all measured in relation to the choices we make about how we use this resource.

Granted, we are periodically reminded that water is a limited resource. In recent years, residents of Georgia learned that their water supplies might not be up to the challenge of meeting projected growth demands. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger recently declared a statewide drought emergency. And, although this year’s snowpack has relieved the Colorado River system’s most immediate shortages, thirsty cities such as Las Vegas continue their quest for distant and increasingly expensive water supplies.

Last May, the House Science and Technology Committee held a hearing on “Water Supply Challenges for the 21st Century,” which included thoughtful testimony from one of the lead authors of last year’s influential report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Drought is not a purely physical phenomenon,” remarked Dr. Roger Pulwarty, “but is an interplay between water availability and the needs of humans and the environment.”

In other words, water shortages are all measured in relation to the choices we make about how we use this resource. And, as with all value-laden public policy choices, science and technology will not tell us how to make our decisions. But improved scientific understanding and a broader array of technology tools can help us sort through the challenges of water management and allocation.

In response to these and other observations about water supply challenges, Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah introduced H.R. 3957, which would establish a research, development, and demonstration program within the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development aimed at encouraging water conservation and efficiency improvements. The bill passed the House and was referred to the Senate at the end of July.

The EPA recently concluded a public comment period on its National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change. In comments submitted to the agency and outlined in a previous Science Progress column, Western Progress praised the report’s acknowledgment of the important role that water conservation will play in both mitigating the production of greenhouse gases and in adapting to the changes already underway as a result of climate change. Thus, it is encouraging to see congressional movement to give a boost to the agency’s work on this subject.

Another piece of legislation, currently in discussion draft, would attempt to coordinate federal water research efforts through establishment of an interagency committee charged with implementing a “National Water Research and Development Initiative.” Introduced by Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, the bill would provide additional support for increasing water supplies through greater efficiency and conservation.

Calls for conservation and efficiency improvements are not new, but the pressures to stretch our limited water resources are becoming more intense as we face the dual challenges of population growth and climate change. The private sector is responding with innovative new technologies to reclaim wastewater and treat brackish groundwater for domestic uses. It only makes sense that the federal government steps up to encourage and, in some cases, mandate improvements that meet growing human needs while protecting the important values of water in our environment.

Sarah Bates is the deputy director for policy and outreach at Western Progress, a nonpartisan regional policy institute dedicated to advancing progressive policy solutions for the Rocky Mountain West. She has written extensively on western water and natural resources law and policy, and was a contributing writer to the congressionally chartered Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission.

This year, after a late snowpack and cooler temperatures that delayed the annual melt, Rocky Mountain rivers are flowing a little higher and cooler than last year, so perhaps the trout are a little more cheerful. But anyone following the growing scientific consensus on climate change impacts on western rivers has to be concerned that the long-term trends are not good for western trout and the coldwater rivers that sustain them. (See the sidebar for a summary of projected impacts.)

Two reports released last week highlight significant changes already underway in this region. The first, “Low Flows, Hot Trout,” focuses on the Clark Fork River basin, of which the Blackfoot is an important tributary. Produced by the Missoula-based Clark Fork Coalition in partnership with National Wildlife Federation, this report features compelling stories from individuals living and working in the river basin, describing how changes in snowpack, runoff, and stream temperatures will limit their economic, recreational, and other opportunities. “Low Flows, Hot Trout” was featured in a recent column in the Rocky Mountain West’s leading online news source, Headwaters News.

The second report, “Trout in Trouble,” emerged from a partnership between the Natural Resources Defense Council and Montana Trout Unlimited. It describes similar impacts throughout the interior West, and suggests both policy reform and specific steps anglers can take to reduce their impacts on coldwater fish.

These publications are significant for their approach as well as for their important messages. Most commonly, conservation groups present the threats of climate change with a wide angle of reference. We often hear how difficult it is to project impacts on the finer scales necessary to know the specific changes coming in any given river basin. Unfortunately, when the impacts come across as global or continental in scale, individuals may have trouble relating to what it means for them or the lands and waters they know and enjoy. It is easy to be paralyzed by inaction when the problem seems too big to tackle, or when one’s own role in responding appears insignificant.

For the past year or so I’ve been participating in a collaborative group called Carpe Diem: Western Water and Climate Change, which has explored both policy options and messaging opportunities to bridge scientific knowledge and political responses. In our regional gatherings in Seattle and Albuquerque, we were impressed with the value of local knowledge, the power of storytelling, and the need to combine both to compel effective action.

These two new reports address this need, in complementary and mutually reinforcing ways. “Low Flows, Hot Trout” introduces us to the people who live in one western watershed and illustrates their connection to high-quality, living rivers. While acknowledging the uncertainties of regional climate change science, it makes a strong case for acting now on what we do know and what we can observe. Similarly, “Trout in Trouble” takes the compelling message about climate change impacts and western water presented in last year’s “In Hot Water” and applies it to specific western rivers, looking at innovative measures to save and restore trout habitats in a warming, drying region.

In short, this is the kind of information we need—straightforward, factual, and identified with known people and places—in order to build a constituency for action on climate change.

But, although reports such as these are critical steps in sparking citizens to demand policy change, we also need to be talking with our political leaders about the necessary next steps. Thus, it is encouraging that advocates and policy makers will gather this fall at a results-oriented workshop on water and climate change in the northern Rockies states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. The Headwaters Summit, which will take place in Missoula, Mont. on Sept. 15-17, will address opportunities for outreach, incentives, and policy change. Participants will share strategies, resources, and discuss possible partnerships to deal with shared challenges.

Even if all the recommended mitigation measures are implemented immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the changes already underway will continue to impact water-challenged western states. So, while taking every possible step to reverse climate change, the time is ripe to look at changes in water and land use policies and management practices to deal with both the impacts that will come and those already underway. We owe it to the frowning trout in the Blackfoot River, and we owe it to future generations who deserve healthy, flowing rivers for centuries to come.

Sarah Bates is the deputy director for policy and outreach at Western Progress, a nonpartisan regional policy institute dedicated to advancing progressive policy solutions for the Rocky Mountain West. She also serves on the board of the Clark Fork Coalition. Western Progress, Clark Fork Coalition, and National Wildlife Federation are jointly organizing the Headwaters Summit referenced here.

The national glove box is already crammed full of road maps for our waterways.

Among the proposals already in the hopper is a congressional bill that would create a new national water commission or, more precisely, the “21st Century Water Commission.” Introduced by Rep. John Linder (R-GA), H.B. 135 moved out of House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Water and Environment in May, and has the support of Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), who introduced companion legislation in that chamber.

Linder’s bill would establish a nine-person commission with a $9 million budget and a three-year deadline to assess the nation’s water availability and demands, with a focus on the pressure points of the country in which fast-growing populations are encountering drought and other supply constraints. The legislation explicitly would not create new national water policy, but would provide data, financial incentives, and strategies for stronger and farther-looking state policies. Comparing the initiative to the interstate highway system of the last century, Rep. Linder proclaimed this bill a first step toward “a roadmap that states can use to form their water policy.”

The national glove box is already crammed full of road maps for our waterways. As Steve Malloch of the National Wildlife Federation remarked at a water policy meeting in New Mexico in May, “We’re long on good policy; we’re short on good politics.” What we need is movement on key state and federal policy reforms (see sidebar) to combat the most important factors affecting our nation’s water resources—rapid growth in dry regions and global warming.

Since the last National Water Commission completed its work, culminating in a well-researched and prescient report published in 1973, “Water Policies for the Future,” subsequent gatherings of experts—many focused on the arid West—have produced library shelves full of reports and white papers reaching remarkably consistent conclusions. For a summary of these policy recommendations and an analysis of the most promising areas for reform today, see the Western Progress report, “A New Western Water Agenda.”

Many of the most urgently needed reforms in water policy will take place in state legislatures or at the local (county, municipality) level. But federal policies can encourage improvements through a combination of incentives and regulation.

At a hearing last November, for example, water experts such as the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick and National Wildlife Federation’s David Conrad testified in favor of convening a new national water commission to address a wider array of concerns than is currently captured in mandates of H.B. 135. Responding to these suggestions, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) offered an amendment to H.B. 135 that would increase the size and budget for the commission, and (most importantly) charge it with analysis of the effects of climate change on our water resources.

In a May 12 blog for the American Water Resources Association, Michael “Aquadoc” Campana, praised these amendments as improvements to the commission proposed by H.B. 135. The director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University and master of the informative and entertaining Waterwired web site, Campana called the bill a “long overdue start” at achieving a national water strategy.

These are all important issues that deserve attention. But the question remains. Do we need a new commission to revisit these questions? Or do we need to look more seriously at how we might mobilize the political will to implement the remarkably consistent menu of ideas that has already emerged from such gatherings of water experts over the past several decades?

At a Natural Resources Law Center conference in Boulder, CO last month, Lewis & Clark Law Professor Jan Neuman reviewed this body of work and concluded that the arsenal of ideas for water policy reform is virtually complete. Rather than pour money and time into a new federal commission, she suggested—with tongue only partly in cheek—that Congress should re-issue the 1973 National Water Commission report with a new chapter on climate change—and then focus its energies on implementation rather than further study.

As a contributing writer to the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission’s report (and a participant in a few other smaller initiatives along these lines), I can attest that these processes are cumbersome, political, and cumulative. I find Neuman’s arguments compelling and provocative.

While a new national water commission could undoubtedly shed new light on old water problems—particularly the effects of climate change on limited water resources—progressives must step up early and remain engaged throughout the process to make sure this investment pays off in positive policy reform rather than more shelf art.

Whatever the outcome of this November’s election, it is clear that voters are interested in real change and practical solutions. Let’s start with some movement on water policy—not more talk, but long-overdue reforms to move us toward a national goal of sustainability.

Sarah Bates is the deputy director for policy and outreach at Western Progress, a nonpartisan regional policy institute dedicated to advancing progressive policy solutions for the Rocky Mountain West. She has written extensively on natural resources law and policy.

This question vexes more than water managers. It may seem absurd to approve development without reliable water supplies, but that is exactly what has happened in many communities—leaving homeowners and other taxpayers holding the bill when extravagant measures become necessary to gain access to water.

Just as homeowners demand, and building codes require, safe wiring and solid foundations for their dwellings, they also deserve to know that their drinking water taps will deliver clean, reliable water for decades to come. Moreover, states are currently reckoning with the question of what happens when there is little water left to manage—two weeks ago, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought.

The failure to connect land-use and water planning may have far-reaching and increasingly unacceptable consequences.

Historically, land-use decisions and water planning have been treated as entirely separate issues. Water is allocated by state agencies, and land-use planning falls under the authority of local officials. Water resource managers juggle many competing demands within a watershed, and they tend to focus on facilitating economic development. In turn, local land-use authorities have safely assumed that water would be available to satisfy continued growth.

Increasingly, however, local land-use decisions run headlong into water supply concerns. Planning for growth is important in all communities, and planning for sustainable water supplies to support that growth should be an integral part of that planning process. Although water itself seldom provides a hard barrier to growth, the failure to connect land-use and water planning may have far-reaching and increasingly unacceptable consequences.

In some cases, existing uses are depleting finite water supplies, raising questions about their future reliability. For example, in some fast-growing rural areas of Arizona, recently constructed houses draw water from wells that the state engineer’s office has certified as “not reliable” due to insufficient underground supplies. Some new homeowners did not realize the tenuous nature of their water supplies and have been forced to deepen their wells or construct cisterns and pay for trucked-in water.

Elsewhere, officials are beginning to face the high social, environmental, and economic costs of obtaining water to meet rising urban demands. Urban growth around Phoenix, Denver, and Boise has been fueled by voluntary, market-based reallocation of water from farms to cities. But public outcry over Las Vegas’ long reach into rural Nevada may indicate renewed concerns over the impacts of large-scale water transfers, both on the rural communities from which the water is taken and on the pocketbooks of the consumers receiving it.

With the recently enacted H.B. 1141, the Colorado General Assembly took an important first step in ensuring such reliable water supplies for new development. This law creates a new tool for local governments to determine whether development projects can demonstrate that the proposed water supply is adequate to meet the project’s water supply demands. It gives local governments the authority to deny developments without adequate water supplies, but the local governments retain discretion to decide whether to authorize development.

In addition to the steps prescribed by the Colorado legislature, a number of other policy levers could be employed to provide a better handle for water-conscious land use decisions. The Colorado bill does not, for example, assign any time horizon to the supply requirement, but simply looks at the possible peak daily, monthly and yearly demands at projected build-out levels of development. Other states, including Arizona and California, require such “assured supplies” for 50- to 100-year planning horizons, although each state has significant exceptions built into the requirements.

What would an ideal assured-supply law look like? According to Utah law professor Lincoln Davies, such a law would be: (1) mandatory; (2) stringent; (3) statewide; (4) broadly applicable, applying to more than just large projects; and (5) interconnected with broader planning mechanisms for land, water, and environmental protection. Thus far, no state statute meets all these criteria, though the legislation enacted in California in 2001 comes closest.

Acting under the mandate of the 2001 laws, last year the California Supreme Court halted a mixed-use development in the Sacramento area on the grounds that the decision was not based on enough information about the plan for long-term water supplies to serve the development. A more recent Riverside County Superior Court decision in January followed that line of thinking and denied a large development based on a failure to demonstrate adequate water supplies.

A recent New York Times story about growth in persistently drought-stricken California quoted local and state water managers and Governor Schwarzenegger, all of whom remarked that unreliable water supplies are delaying new development and thus destabilizing the state’s powerful economy. The San Diego civil grand jury went further in a report issued in February with the attention-grabbing title “Sober Up, San Diego. The Water Party is Over,” concluding that permanent, mandatory conservation measures would be necessary to accommodate the realities of squeezing lots of people into an arid landscape.

Such strong public statements remain the exception rather than the rule, but the trend is clearly toward taking a harder look at water supplies before approving new development. Western expansion has long relied on the promise of abundant and cheap water—a myth that is already shattered in many communities and is sure to be exposed as false in many more in the decades to come.

The solution to our dilemma goes beyond linking water and land-use planning, but we can no longer be indifferent to the environmental and other costs of developing water to meet projected needs. In taking the first step and thinking more deliberately about water demands of growth, assured-supply laws represent an important step toward living sustainably in this spectacular—and fundamentally dry—western landscape.

Sarah Bates is the deputy director for policy and outreach at Western Progress, a nonpartisan regional policy institute dedicated to advancing progressive policy solutions for the Rocky Mountain West. She has written extensively on the legal and policy options for linking land use and water planning in western states.

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Restoring the Waters, by Sarah Bates

The rivers are rising as spring arrives in the Rocky Mountain West. In the annual pattern that sustains the environment and much of the economy of this region, water generated from melting snow feeds the streams, soaks the soil, and is diverted into ditches and reservoirs to serve millions of people and water their landscape. Here at the crown of the continent, the snowcapped peaks are far more than a pretty picture—they are an interest-bearing savings account we draw on throughout the year.

Unfortunately, the principal of this account is being depleted by the increasingly obvious impacts of global climate change. Even this winter’s abundant snowfall fails to overcome decades-long trends of increased temperatures and altered patterns of precipitation and spring runoff. The latest documentation of these impacts is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change.

The EPA, which is seeking public comment on the report by June 10, 2008*, provides an overview of the effects of observed and projected climate change on national water resources, with a focus on water quality and aquatic species. The draft National Water Program Strategy offers a whopping 46 “key actions” that the federal agency proposes to implement in response, ranging from water and energy conservation incentives to new and modified water quality regulatory programs. The proposed national actions are organized into four major goals:

• Use water programs to contribute to greenhouse gas mitigation
• Work with states and tribes to adapt water programs to projected new conditions due to climate change
• Strengthen the link between water programs and research activities
• Educate water professionals and stakeholders about projected climate change impacts on water resources.

Like many reports on water issues from Washington, however, the EPA’s National Water Program Strategy offers precious little detail about the projected conditions and appropriate policy responses to those projected conditions for the arid West. In part, this is explained by the frustrating lack of regional- or local-scaled modeling to project more accurately the effects of climate change on our western river basins and watersheds. The EPA proposes further work to better define projected conditions and responsive policies in particular regions of the country, including special attention to issues of drought and water supply in the West.

The world’s leading climate change research consortium, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is working to produce the finer-scaled regional models that will inform the EPA in this follow-up work. In the meantime, the IPCC’s 2007 report documented substantial changes already underway in the western United States, among them:

• Earlier runoff of snowmelt, stressing some reservoir systems
• Decreased spring and summer snow cover
• Increased annual precipitation falling as rain rather than snow
• Threats to reliable supply complicated by high population growth rates in western states where many water resources are at or approaching full utilization
• Increased wildfire potential
• Lowered levels of streamflow, which has already decreased by about 2 percent per decade in the central Rocky Mountain region over the last century
• Additional stress from decreased recharge to heavily utilized groundwater-based systems in the Southwest

Given these significant changes, the most pertinent sections of the EPA’s National Water Program Strategy propose actions that would stretch our limited water resources further through federal and state policies to encourage or require water conservation, re-use, and efficiency improvements. It is particularly encouraging to see the EPA emphasize the link between water and energy use—a notable sign of progress since the Natural Resources Defense Council exposed the astounding amount of energy consumed by water infrastructure in its 2004 report, Energy Down the Drain.

The EPA’s National Water Program Strategy characterizes water conservation both as a mitigation measure for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and as an important adaptation to drier conditions in the future. And the EPA is not the only federal agency that recognizes the important link between water and energy. In a report just released by the U.S. Department of Energy that analyzed a scenario in which 20 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated from wind power by the year 2030, the DOE noted that such a shift would reduce water use by approximately 8 percent. That’s a significant savings, roughly equal to the average share of western water withdrawals claimed by urban users.

The EPA’s National Water Program Strategy also acknowledges an important new way of thinking about our water and the rest of our environment in the face of what appear to be permanently shifting baseline conditions. The increasingly common droughts and extreme weather conditions will inevitably redefine what is “normal” as climate conditions continue to change. The EPA refers to this as a shifting “natural reference,” by which it means emerging dynamic conditions today challenge all of our assumptions about what to expect in terms of stream flows, seasonal temperature patterns, and just about every other reference point that has until now been based on conditions in the past.

This is an important point, similar to the message in a short but pointed essay published in the February 1, 2008 issue of Science, “Stationarity is Dead: Whither Water Management?” The authors caution policymakers against making “grand investments” in new water infrastructure without acknowledging the realities of “an uncertain and changing environment.” Their caution is well advised.

The annual onset of the Rocky Mountain snowmelt will continue to nurture welcome growth and renewal, but the seasonal changes may look very different to our children and grandchildren. It is encouraging to see the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledge the explicit effects of climate change on our precious water resources. It is essential to hold the agency accountable for implementing the action items outlined in its National Water Program Strategy, and to provide sufficient financial resources to support the additional regulatory, education, and research initiatives called for in this report.

Sarah Bates has written extensively on western water law and policy. She currently serves as deputy director for policy and outreach at Western Progress, a regional policy institute with offices in Missoula, Mont., Denver, Colo. and Phoenix, Ariz.

Western Progress seeks to establish sustainable water policies for the Rocky Mountain West that reflect the capacity of our water supply in the face of growth and climate change. Current projects focus on improving state in-stream flow protection programs, integrating land-use and water planning, and encouraging urban water conservation and re-use.

Update: The original end date for the comment period was March 27. It has now been extended to June 10.