The Colorado River is in crisis, and it’s getting worse every day

An unprecedented shortage on the Colorado River brought significant cuts this year to Arizona’s water supply, about one-third of which courses through the canal. That’s because the state agreed decades ago to junior rights to the river in exchange for federal funding for the Central Arizona Project, known as the CAP.

Within the CAP system, the farmers and ranchers who work central Arizona fields have lower priority. They have lost about two-thirds of their supply, and the state’s Farm Bureau says many will have to let their land go dry.

The canal looks the same with less water, but it now flows a bit more slowly, said DeEtte Person, a spokeswoman at the project’s headquarters in Phoenix, where a quartet of water control operators sit before stacks of computer monitors in a dim room, tracking and directing the water through gates and turnouts across the state.

With more cuts expected in coming years, Person said, the CAP is already envisioning moving non-Colorado River water through the canal, perhaps groundwater. Water recycling is also being discussed, she said. It’s all part of what she called “long-term disaster planning.”

The canal cuts down the middle of Wong’s farm north of Tucson, and all the farm’s water comes from it. But Wong and the cotton and alfalfa farmers to whom he leases much of his land won’t face cuts — not yet.

Wong, whose great-grandfather started the family farm business after immigrating from China in the late 19th century, will be spared, thanks to the sort of water sharing and trading deals common along a river whose every drop is coveted.

Source: WP