Time.news – The vein of America is drying up. The Colorado River, with its more than two thousand kilometers that until recently bathed in abundance six states, from Utah to Colorado, from Arizona to Nevada, from New Mexico to Baja California, is retreating. Sand and foam, rivulets and lizards, the sun now touches the stone of the seabed.
The drought emergency is upsetting the nature of the West Coast of the United States and sowed panic in more than forty million people who counted on that water every day. Lake Mead has shrunk by two-thirds, Lake Powell is turning into a wilderness of waterelectricity is at risk for more than four million people.
Lago Powell
The climate change and the drought emergency that has been affecting this area of America for more than a year have been grafted into a structural deficiency that makes Death Valley much more than a limited area between California and Nevada: it is the desert condition of the old western frontier, where once nuggets were sought and now a vital rivulet of water.
There are calls from various quarters to start a great plan to save The River, among the most mythological of American culture due to its color, red, and the immensity of the water bed. You are born river and you die torrent, this is what we are. The federal government must protect the reservoirs, but meanwhile new cuts in water services have already been announced and an imminent sense of disaster is spreading.
Colorado, one of the most important rivers in the world
Colorado, as anyone who has traveled the entire trekking path in the Grand Canyon knows, was once an imposing river, overwhelming, colored red due to the presence of red sandstone on the seabed, as cold as marble. Now, in some places, it has withdrawn, leaving room for the seabed. It goes from forty centimeters in some sections to one and a half meters, levels never seen before for a river that has an average depth of six meters, with peaks of two hundred and fifty.
A river that has become a symbol
Colorado, which has become familiar for generations of Tex comic readers, is the fifth longest river in the United States, the 47th in the world, the most controlled and monitored on the planet, to the point of having put all the laws governing its use of water in a collective sacred text called the Law of the River.
It is born in the Rocky Mountains at a height of over three thousand meters and, at its peak, pumps 20 cubic kilometers of water a year into the Gulf of California. it was Colorado that made Lake Mead the largest continental reserve in the United States, and hosted, between rivers and streams, forty-nine species of fish and fed more than 1,600 types of plants, from beech to cactus to Joshua tree or Yucca Palm. But this whole paradise of nature is at risk.
Colorado River
A crisis for the whole “West”
The situation became dramatic in a ruthless and frighteningly fast way. All within a year. In 2021 the first water emergency was declared, yesterday the water resources managers of the states crossed by the river they raised the guard level and ordered the rationing of water.
It means less energy, less water to consume at home, factories forced to work at a reduced pace, large crops at risk. The level of the river, over the years, has decreased by twenty% and is currently well below the minimum required to support the basin. In some places the seabed is dry like an old mule track. In encyclopedias, under ‘desert’ they could put a photo of Colorado.
Colorado River
The rains and the melting of high-altitude ice can help The River during the spring season, but then summer comes inexorably and the level of reserves ends up being in constant decline. If the reservoirs are unable to overcome this crisis, the situation will only get worse. If you think that 80% of Colorado’s water is destined for agriculture, the threat of an unprecedented famine arises. The states concerned, meanwhile, are unable to agree on how to intervene.
The threat of federal sanctions, if water consumption is not drastically reduced, seems only a palliative. The emergency is collective, but everyone will try to survive in their own way, as did the old pioneers in search of gold. Meanwhile, time passes, and the thriving existence of one of America’s largest water resources can no longer be taken for granted.