"In every western state, 80% of the water goes to agriculture and ranching. In no state, even California, do those activities generate 5% of the state economy. Agriculture and ranching in California in 2005 generated a gross of about $21 billion. The gross domestic product of the state the same year was $1.55 trillion. 80% of the water goes to produce 1.3% of the fifth-largest economy in the world. It doesn't make sense."
I replied as follows:
the government has put a price on the waters of the CO. and it's cheap.
so the message to people is: "play golf, water your lawn, etc... we got plenty of water. Sure, give away water to grow alfalfa in the frakkin desert so we can eat lots of beef cows." (i believe water for irrigation is the lion's share of water wasted in the intermountain west.)
if we want water in the CO river, we need to price water appropriately.
i recommend reading
http://www.newwest.net/mai
quote:
"In every western state, 80% of the water goes to agriculture and ranching. In no state, even California, do those activities generate 5% of the state economy. Agriculture and ranching in California in 2005 generated a gross of about $21 billion. The gross domestic product of the state the same year was $1.55 trillion. 80% of the water goes to produce 1.3% of the fifth-largest economy in the world. It doesn't make sense."
Also, i think the USA figures "hell, if we don't use it, it'll just go down to Mexico and that'd be a waste." So we burn it however we can. Maybe we should consider letting some of the CO River water flow to Mexico. We could call it foreign aid.
Posts
2 comments:
True, growing crops and cattle in the desert doesn't make a lot of sense. But I do need some hay for my horses!
eric and to whom may care:
a Gordian Knot which i will try to briefly unravel from my perspective living in the west for 15 years.
firstly, no body loves wild backcountry any more than i do as my family already knows. i hate to see a human footprint on my hikes or a trout that has ever seen a dry fly.
i wish we could recover our rivers to health using a system of diversion that rivers could tolerate but it would be expensive and some users would lose their land and livelihood unless compensated more money than americans want to spend.
personally, i'd like to see it happen.
damns gone, free flow of water and fish, et al, diversion of only what a river could stand, return of wetlands to normal.
for what it is worth, alfalfa farmers/ranchers around here need about 20 to 30 years of good crops to break even on land, time and equipment. they are just getting by on cheap water, blm and forest service land as it is.
a "share of water" to irrigate an acre of alfalfa pasture costs about $4,000.00 dollars.
might get 3 to 5 tons of hay/acre/in 3 cuttings, bringing $500 to $750 dollars.
after paying for land w water + irrigation system, equipment, time, fertilizer it is of minimal profit and done mainly by cattlemen for winter feed.
the story begins about a century ago in 1922 with the "colorado river compact" between the 7 irrigating states.
at that time there was enormous excess water and a massive desert which could be made productive for those states.
in 1922 apparently few understood the impact on the river system or realized the idea of homeostasis of "ecosystems", a word not coined until 1933.
i wish the colorado were free flowing but the water is now owned x the users who got it before anyone else cared.
try taking away land or water?
out west it is said, "whiskey is for drinking, water if for killing"
water diversion went way to far resulting in destruction of much riparian habitat and river species and over grazing of land which at this point is not getting worse nor better.
few people have seen a hi desert ecosystem in an entirely natural and undisturbed state like me and eric have in a back water drainage called Salt Creek, Canyonlands NP.
the Lamar Valley, Y Stone NP is another.
it is spectacular for grass, forbs and abscence of invasive species.
this degredation of western land and rivers was both pernicious and insidious due to ignorance of ecosystems and overpopulation past the carrying capacity of the land.
eric, reminds me of the story of the beaver, the wolf and the aspen.
finally, i agree that the current state of affairs is illogical and in need of repair but overpopulation and money stand in the way no matter my wishes to see it look like when Lewis and Clark traveled through 200 yrs ago.
what a paradise to behold but we have a few tiny fragments preserved to some degree to help us imagine what was here before our time. like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and a few remote places that me and my family have strugled to find and reach for a little taste of what once was.
we should try to recover what we can and never let what little is preserved get away.
i like the Kenyan aphorisim, "we are only borrowing the land from our grandchildren"
i suggest getting a nose on the ground and in books studying nature and lobbying congress for relief.
sorry for the length of this note, with more time i could have kept it shorter.
steve
p.s. the west is slowly returning to desert as water becomes too expensive to irrigate, just not healthy hi desert
Post a Comment