MINE FIELD: The Dome Plateau area has attracted oil, gas and uranium mining interest. This photo was taken within America’s Red Rock Wilderness, in an area the Bureau of Land Management has also acknowledged as wilderness quality.
Image: © Scott Braden/SUWA
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble.
The river's water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico's border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans.
Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.
The region could contain more oil than Alaska's National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It has the richest natural gas fields in the country. And nuclear energy, viewed as a key solution to the nation's dependence on foreign energy, could use the uranium deposits held there.
But getting those resources would suck up vast quantities of the river's water and could pollute what is left. That's why those most concerned are water managers in places like Los Angeles and San Diego. They have the most to lose.
The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation's "most endangered" waterway. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warn the river's reservoirs could dry up in 13 years.
The industrial push has already begun.
In the eight years George W. Bush has been in office, the Colorado River watershed has seen more oil and gas drilling than at any time in the past 25 years. Uranium claims have reached a 10-year high. Last week the departing administration auctioned off an additional 148,598 acres of federal land for gas drilling projects outside Moab, Utah.
As still more land is leased for drilling and a last-minute change in federal rules has paved the way for water-intensive oil shale mining, politicians and water managers are now being forced to ask which is more valuable: energy or water.
"The decisions we are making today will be dictating how we will be living the rest of our lives," said Jim Pokrandt, a spokesman with the Colorado River Conservation District, a state-run policy agency. "We may have reached mutually exclusive demands on our water supply."
Some experts and officials say the economic and ecological importance of the Colorado is just as vital to American security as the natural resources that can be extracted from around it.
"Without (the Colorado), there is no Western United States," said Jim Baca, who directed the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in the Clinton administration and says the agency's current policy is narrow-sighted. "If it becomes unusable, you move the entire Western United States out of any sort of economic position for growth."
Balancing that risk with the need for energy is complicated, because scientific understanding of the Colorado is limited and no single agency manages the river as a national resource.
The Interior Department, which includes the BLM, oversees where the water goes, but not how it is kept clean. The EPA is charged with maintaining water quality, but it can't control who uses it and doesn't conduct its own research. Furthermore, the EPA delegates much of its authority to the states that the river runs through, and the federal, state and local authorities in charge of separate aspects of the river don't always coordinate or cooperate.
"I don't know that there is, quite honestly, anyone that looks at an entire overview impact statement of the Colorado River," said Robert Walsh, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which governs the allocation and flow of the southern part of the waterway.
Oil and natural gas drilling in Colorado already require so much water that if its annual demand were satisfied all at once, it would be the equivalent of shutting off most of Southern California's water for five days. If Colorado's oil shale is mined, it would turn off the spigot for 79 days.
See what we're tweeting about
11 Comments
Add CommentWhy the sudden last minute grants? Is profit being promised to certain individuals in return? What we in the US do not understand, is that potable (drinkable) water is one of the rarest commodities on the planet. Instead of jeopardizing such a needed and valuable resource, shouldn't we be exploring ways to reduce or eliminate the need for polluting fossil fuels?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting (and very discouraging) when "Scientific" American starts publishing opinions in the forum of neutral science. For example, the USGS has already published more than enough observational science (all available online) about the geochemistry of Colorado River water to clearly show, to someone who takes the time and effort to look at it, that ongoing uranium mineral exploration in the Grand Canyon region in no way threatens the water quality of the river, yet this exploration work is summarily and carelessly characterized as "threatening" the river. It is not enough to fear -- fear should instead drive an examination of observations to determine if there are any real reasons to dwell in this fear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven this weakness in reporting in the Grand Canyon region case with which I am familiar, I can only suspect the rest of the article.
This article completely ignores the fact that the colorado river also originally supplied mexico too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving traveled down the river many times from Needles to Lake Havasu, drinking its water and enjoying it beauty I, too, wish to see it protected. But slanted reporting such as this inhibits responsible development in the area surrounding the river. Even if man never drilled or mined here, the river would still carry tons of metals, including uranium, downstream every day. Natural erosion is a fact - have you seen the depth of the canyon? Duh? To not capture these materials is also a waste. In addition, the author recklessly uses the word "contaminated" throughout the article, without reference to actual levels or concentrations. The river does not carry 18 megaohm water and never did. The uranium deposits alone could potentially free us from the need to go after the gas or shale. Let's get it out, do it now and do it cleanly. Think people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLdflipper,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Colorado river is already polluted from previous uranium mining. A uranium tailing pile along the river near Moab has been polluting the river for decades!
Ldflipper,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Colorado river is already polluted as the result of previous uranium mining. A uranium tailings pile near Moab has been leaking into the river for decades.
At the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River carries about 4.7 parts per billion uranium year round (slightly higher when the annual sand bar-flushing water releases through the Canyon take place), according to several USGS reports that can be accessed through http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/. This very safe level of uranium is NORMAL for rivers passing through semi-arid regions like the Colorado River and the Rio Grande do (see p. 578 of "Geochemistry of Mineral Exploration" by Rose et al., 1979, for these published values) . The slight elevation in uranium content of the Colorado River and the Rio Grande in comparison to rivers like the Mississippi and Columbia -- which drain much more humid country -- is primarily a function of evaporative concentration of the arid region river water, and is NOT materially caused by purported leakage of uranium from places like the Moab mill reclamation site. The EPA maximum contamination level threshold for uranium in drinking water is 30 ppb uranium. The Colorado River naturally carries about 118,000 pounds of dissolved uranium downstream each year (and most of this is eventually deposited in sediment at the bottom of Lake Mead) -- another 650,000 pounds or so of uranium would have to be annually added to this natural dissolved uranium content of the River to bring the concentration of uranium up to the problematic level of 30 ppb. The only way this could happen is if the climate becomes MUCH more humid, causing strongly increased leaching of the uranium in the region's rocks and soils. In this event, however, surface and ground water discharge into the River would be MUCH higher and would dilute the added uranium content. Point being, the Colorado River is not at risk from man or nature as far as potential 'uranium contamination' is concerned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLdflipper
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for a very informative, and good blog. I always like the facts.
It just occurred to me that the biggest opponents to clean natural gas are also the largest users of gasoline California and New York! LOL
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey SA after reading the comments on this story ya'll kinda got beat up "huh"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is really ironic that at a time when we are coming up with all kinds of expensive ideas to slow the flow of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the coal, natural gas, and oil industry are devising ways to pollute the earth & atmosphere even faster. Uranium mining leaves waist that will be dangerous for thousands of years. They cannot wait to dig up every last molecule of coal, ounce of uranium, or drop of oil. No one has yet realized that the safest place for all that carbon and uranium is in the ground. Already there is not enough water in the Colorado to supply all its allocated uses. Mexico has not received its fair share in many years. Yet we keep granting more uses for this scarce resource. This madness will only end when the US is totally unfit for human habitation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this