Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought
The power generated enables a modern wonder. It drives a set of pumps 325 miles down the Colorado River that heave trillions of gallons of water out of the river and send it shooting over mountains and through canals. That water — lifted 3,000 vertical feet and carried 336 miles — has enabled the cities of Phoenix and Tucson to rapidly expand.
.. In a series of reports, ProPublica has examined how the West’s water crisis is as much a product of human error and hubris as it is of nature.
.. But in pushing for dramatic changes at the Navajo plant, the EPA underestimated how intertwined the plant had become with every aspect of life in the region — from providing its power to moving its water to buttressing the tribal economy
.. The West is full of people like him. Indeed, as the region gets more crowded, drier and hotter, there is talk not of living within the current constraints but of engineering new ways to gather additional supplies of water. The West must continue to grow, Kyl says, or it will begin slipping backward. He thinks it will be necessary to shoot silver iodide into the clouds in an effort to make it rain or to build plants to desalt ocean water.
.. Wockner and others say the elaborate projects built along the river amount to expensive distractions. The more permanent solution: Put the Colorado’s limited water to the best purpose, by planting more efficient crops, irrigating with modern equipment, writing laws that incentivize conservation, and reducing energy spent moving water over large distances.