United States: a pipeline to water golf courses in the middle of the desert?
Audio 02:30
To keep the greens green, the grounds are watered even in the middle of the day.
© RFI / Marie Normand
By: Marie Normand Follow |
Julien boileau
11 mins
A pipeline project creates controversy in the American West.
By drawing water from Lake Powell, it would supply water to the city of Saint George, Utah, in the midst of a population boom.
But this artificial lake carved into the bed of the Colorado has already lost half of its capacity.
Publicity
From our special envoys to Saint George,
A pleasant climate, peaceful residences set along wide avenues lined with palm trees, and a splendid panorama: welcome to Saint George, a retirement paradise, nestled in the middle of the Mojave Desert, in southwest Utah.
“
It's fantastic living here,
” says Rick, 72, getting out of his golf cart.
“
The city is calm, the people friendly, and then… there is the golf course!
"
St. George has indeed ten golf courses surrounded by red rock cliffs.
To stay green, the greens are watered even in the middle of the day.
Saint George is the seat of the county of Washington, in full population explosion.
"
When I arrived here, there were about 70 000 inhabitants
"
,
notes Lisa Rutherford resident Ivins, a nearby town, and Councilor
Keeps Southwest Utah
.
Twenty years later, the county's total population is around 188,000.
"
Even from the beginning of the pandemic, building permits are on the rise
"
,
she assures.
Lisa Rutherford and Paul Van Dam live in Ivins, near Saint George, Utah.
They believe their county can continue to develop without a pipeline.
© RFI / Marie Normand
Washington County is also one of the largest consumers of water in the country.
More than 1,200 liters of water per day and per person.
Much more than in Las Vegas, for example.
“
Everyone wants to have a nice lawn.
But we are in the middle of the desert!
We will have to learn to use less water
"
,
laments Paul Van Dam, former Attorney General of Utah.
For local authorities, the little Virgin River is no longer enough to quench the city's thirst.
They are therefore asking for the construction of a 220 km pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell, one of the largest artificial lakes in the country, located on the border of Arizona and Utah.
The project divides, because the level of this fresh water reservoir, dug in the bed of the Colorado, has fallen dangerously.
The white lines on the rock testify to its drying out.
"This
pipeline project does not take into account at all what would make it possible to build a sustainable water supply for Utah
", regrets Zach Frankel, the head of
the NGO Utah Rivers Council
.
The environmental activist instead pleads in favor of recycling wastewater and exploiting other local water sources.
“
We don't need this pipeline.
We can rest on the water we already have
, ”says Lisa Rutherford.
It also ensures that this costly project will increase the taxpayer's bill.
Colorado water shared by obsolete treaty
For their part, proponents of the pipeline argue that Saint George has already reduced its water consumption.
"
There is no other good option,
" Zach Renstrom, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District, the county's water company, told local media in early March.
“
Our only plan B is to say, '
Stop.
You can no longer build houses here
”
”.
Zach Renstrom also points out that Utah is not yet pumping all of Colorado's water that it deserves.
Indeed, seven states of the American West (Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, California, Nevada and Arizona) and Mexico, at the end of the race, share the water of the river, according to the terms of a treaty signed in 1922, the
Colorado River Compact
.
The agreement was based on overly optimistic flow forecasts.
However, it has never been renegotiated since.
A new round of talks is set to begin soon between these different states in the Colorado Basin, after being postponed due to the health crisis.
It could define, for the first time, how the river system adapts to climate change.
Discussions focus on developing a post-2026 policy that incorporates the issue of impending water shortages in the Colorado Basin.
The river is entirely fed by accumulations of snow from the surrounding mountains.
Each year, they melt earlier.
Result: the water evaporates and does not supply the Colorado sufficiently.
The man-made lakes Powell and Mead, below, are expected to reach their lowest level this year since their construction.
Lake Mead, which notably supplies the megalopolises of Phoenix and Las Vegas, is already only a shadow of its past grandeur.
Created in 1935 thanks to the water retention of the Hoover Dam, it supplies Nevada, Arizona and California.
“In
my 14 years of working here, the water level has dropped about 30 meters,
” says Dale Larson, volunteer ranger at Lake Mead for the National Park Service (NPS).
“A
lot of Californians come to live here to escape taxes, to find bigger houses.
But soon they will run out of water.
Cities are growing without thinking about tomorrow
”.
After more than 20 years of drought, Lake Mead, the country's largest freshwater reservoir near Las Vegas, is only 39% full.
© RFI / Marie Normand
“
The tank
is only 39% full
.
We are in the 21st year of drought,
”confirms Patti Aaron, communications manager for the Lower Colorado Basin for the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees water resources management.
Difficult to produce electricity under these conditions.
Specific turbines have even been added to the Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas, to continue to provide hydroelectric production with a lower water level.
Along the Colorado, good and poorer students
On the attitude of Utah, which is considering this pipeline on Lake Powell, depends the supply of millions of inhabitants downstream, in particular those of Phoenix, in Arizona, or of Las Vegas, in Nevada, who made them. efforts to consume less water.
Impossible to water his garden on certain days, under penalty of fines.
Farmers are also subject to quotas.
“
We work closely with all of the lower Colorado Basin states and consumers.
With the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) in 2019, we agreed on water saving standards so that current levels stop falling,
”says Patti Aaron.
But no question of the federal state playing a coercive role.
"
We deliver water to the different states, but what they do with it depends on them
."
The white lines on the rock bear witness to the drying up of Lake Powell.
© RFI / Marie Normand
These "good guys" from the Lower Colorado Basin are now threatening to take legal action if the federal state approves the pipeline project without consulting them.
“
Residents of Arizona and Nevada are saving money to avoid drawing more water from Lake Mead.
This pipeline project will divert water from Lake Powell, on which Lake Mead depends.
It's an insult to their efforts in recent years,
”said Zach Frankel of Utah Rivers Council.
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