A new article by an Arizona State University water expert argues that existing conservation measures are a step in the right direction, but may not be effective enough in the face of climate change.
Dave White, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, says city leaders around the Colorado River basin need to think bigger to plan for a future in which the river has less water to go around.
“We have to think about a reset, a recalibration,” White told KJZZ, “to have an economy and a lifestyle in the southwest that lives within the means of the new normal of water availability in the Colorado River.”
White, alongside The Pennsylvania State University’s Renee Obringer, wrote that cities such as Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas have made major strides in saving water among homes and businesses. In Phoenix, conservation programs led to a 20% reduction in water use over 20 years, while the population grew by about 40%.
Even under aggressive conservation measures, though, the new report explains that demand management practices “won’t be able to keep up” with the kind of hot, dry conditions that fueled the current 26-year megadrought and will likely continue for years in the future.
“Conservation is a public good,” White said. “It's important. We need to do more of it, but our research indicates that it will not be enough to address the water security challenges that we see over the coming years in the basin.”
New technologies will likely be a big part of cities’ drought response going forward. White pointed to the need for water reuse programs, desalination facilities and reductions to the amount of water consumed for electricity generation.
While Central Arizona cities are already looking to some of those technologies, White said changes may be needed sooner than they can be deployed.
“The biggest concern is over the short to intermediate term,” he said. “the next three to five years. Advanced water purification in the Phoenix metropolitan region and other areas of Arizona will not really come online until 2028, 2030 but we need strategies that are going to address that shortage that we're facing and the looming crisis in the Colorado River between 2027 and 2030.”
The Colorado River is on the heels of a meager winter that could go down as its driest ever, and policymakers are at an impasse in negotiations about how to divide its water going forward.
