The Colorado River: Running Near Empty
"Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In this Yale Environment 360 video, he follows the natural course of the Colorado by raft, on foot, and overhead in a small plane, telling the story of a river whose water is siphoned off at every turn, leaving it high and dry 80 miles from the sea.
In the video, McBride, a Colorado native, documents how increasing water demands have transformed the river that is the lifeblood for an arid Southwest."
Where to begin. It was sad to watch this as you see the marked decline of the American Nile as it turns to desert. A once vibrant river, dying. All of the water falls over the Western mountains, yet the people live on the Eastern plains...the desert, which was not considered as being a hub of population growth when the Colorado Water Pact of 1922 was signed. Neither were the effects of climate change considered, nor the two decades of drought the Southwestern U.S. has been dealing with, nor the declining rainfall or snowpack in an area where population continues to rise as then does water usage. And neither was the proliferation of dams and diversion schemes (and golf courses) that were undertaken to satiate the increasing thirst and needs of those who live there and continue to move there.
This is exactly what I was referring to in my entry, Water Changes Everything. Human activities in and of themselves working in harmony with nature without harming the whole are fine. However, we as a species seem to be lacking in this potential on a collective scale.
Click on double bar near the timer to stop it.
We must save the Colorado
Report raises Concerns About Colorado River Basin Dam Impacts To National Parks
As we look back upon the history of this river, its majesty, its power and the concerted efforts of humans to tame it, divert it, strip it, dam it and partition it for their own use one can only wonder as we enter the world we are making by exacerbating climate change where it will end.
How much is enough?