Steve Quayle News Alerts

Jan. 19, 2003
By Shaun McKinnon, The Arizona Republic

This may be the worst drought you never experienced.

By most reckoning, it's the deepest to sweep the West in more than a century, and some scientists now say it rivals the meanest dry spells of the past 1,400 years.

It has scratched lasting scars across the landscape. It has drained reservoirs, blistered forests and rangelands, inflicting wounds that may not heal for decades. Damage to crops has pushed past half a billion dollars, with several states, including Arizona, still surveying the losses.

So where are the local water police? And why are the golf courses still so green?

Despite its mounting toll elsewhere, the drought remains distant for most Valley residents. Phoenix is insulated from the desert's fickle climate by a carefully constructed system of cheap and abundant water sources that seems immune to even the driest years - and 2002 was the driest on record at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Although the region's largest water supplier began rationing Jan. 1, only farmers and urban irrigators will be affected. With a wet winter and spring, the lost water could be restored.

But a wet winter is no sure thing. Its chief fuel source, weathermaker El Niño, has taken an unexpected turn in recent months, drenching coastal areas but largely skipping over interior states. A report released last week by the Natural Resources Conservation Service said snowpack remains well below normal across the West, including the critical mountain areas that feed the Colorado River, already running at record low levels.

Climate experts say even a reasonably normal winter could ease the drought's effects, but a dry one, on top of all the other dry ones, would trigger new disasters: water shortages, mandatory conservation, ruined farms and ranches, despoiled forests and wildfires.

"It would take a pretty substantial year to end the drought, probably a year you wouldn't want," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno.

The last time one winter ended a prolonged dry spell, he noted, the bloated Salt River threatened to overflow Roosevelt Dam and flooded wide swaths through the Valley.

"If you take just what's missing out of (Lakes) Powell and Mead, you're talking over a year's worth of flow. To ask for a year-and-a-half worth of extra water . . . that's a tall order," he said.

Climatologists are still struggling to map the severity and scope of the drought, but many researchers believe it reaches back as far as the summer of 1995. If not for a wet El Niño-driven winter in 1997-98, this drought would displace the one at the turn of the last century as the worst on record.

New research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration goes beyond the record books. Using available climate data and studies from the University of Arizona's tree ring lab to chart rainfall patterns to A.D. 570, NOAA concluded that in some parts of the West, including northeastern Arizona, "the intensity of the current drought . . . is comparable to the worst droughts of the last 1,400 years."

Cities protected

Although Phoenix and Tucson remain largely protected by reservoirs and groundwater reserves, rural areas and cities such as Denver that lack backup water sources will suffer if the drought persists. And a prolonged dry spell would leave everyone vulnerable.

"My worry for the drought continuing is less hydrological and more moral and political," said Chips Barry, manager of Denver Water, which imposed some of the West's severest conservation measures last year. "Denver's reservoirs are 48 percent full right now. There's not an agricultural reservoir in this state that has a drop of water left. What happens next year when Denver has water and no one else does?"

By any measure, the drought has exacted a stiff toll, in Arizona and elsewhere:

• Water levels are well below capacity in every major reservoir system in the West, and many are at record lows. Some of the smallest have dried up, leaving farmers with no water at all. Cities across Colorado were forced to limit or, in some cases, ban outdoor water use. The situation is similar in Utah and Montana, and in Las Vegas last week, officials warned residents to expect strict use restrictions this summer.

Lake Tahoe in northern Nevada fell so low that it stopped feeding the Truckee River, a key source of water for Reno. Storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, which supply water and generate electricity for 17 million people, dropped by more than one year's worth. Reservoirs on the Salt River Project system in Arizona hold just 26 percent of capacity.

"We need the rain," said Charlie Ester, water resource operations manager for Salt River Project, which cut its water deliveries by one-third Jan. 1. "We have a lot of empty space in the reservoirs. We really need a big winter to fill them up again."

• Arizona recorded its driest water year (October 2001 through September 2002) in history, as did Colorado. Snowpack was nearly nonexistent in many parts of both states. The Colorado River, which draws snow from the high country in Colorado and Wyoming, flowed at barely one-fourth its historic average; the Salt River at one-sixth its average. Yuma, which went 30 months without a drop of rain, finally recorded 0.03 of an inch in late December.

New water supply forecasts see only slight improvement. Scientists say the Colorado may produce only about 72 percent of its normal runoff and most of the other river systems could finish the year below normal as well, according to a report released Jan. 10.

• Soil moisture levels barely registered by late fall, leaving acres of dead or dying trees and shrubs. Ponderosa and piñon pines across Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, weakened by the lack of water, are falling victim to an epic plague of bark beetles, which have killed more than 2 million trees in northern Arizona alone.

So dry is the soil, hydrologists fear much of the early runoff could simply soak into the ground, leaving less to flow into reservoirs.

• Agriculture took the hardest hit. Dry farmers, who rely solely on rainfall, abandoned thousands of acres across Utah and Colorado, and crops withered in areas of Arizona. The rangelands turned barren, forcing ranchers to sell cattle at huge losses. Hundreds of sheep and cattle on the Navajo and Tohono O'odham nations perished.

Nationwide, crop production fell sharply in 2002. Wheat output dropped 14 percent, the cotton harvest fell 11 percent, and corn and soybean production also fell. Federal officials estimate 90 percent of farmers in Nebraska face financial problems linked to the drought. Losses ranged from $14 million in Wyoming to $150 million in Montana and $311 million in South Dakota.

Disasters declared

For three months straight during the summer, half the country was experiencing moderate to extreme drought, the most since the arid 1930s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared drought disasters in part or all of 48 states in 2002. Along the eastern seaboard, cities and states imposed limits on water use, measures that for a while shut down New York City's famed fountains.

Meanwhile, dry conditions are deepening in the Northwest, which recorded its driest April through October in history. Though no water shortages have developed, inland farmers have begun to suffer the effects, and officials fear that the situation could grow worse. El Niño, an oceanic weather phenomenon, generally produces drier-than-normal winters across the nation's northern tier of states.

Fall and winter storms brought relief to the East, enough that New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Delaware and Pennsylvania lifted some or all of the water use restrictions.

"Certainly, things have been getting better back there, but the drought isn't over yet," said National Weather Service hydrologist Peter Jung.

In Colorado, after an encouraging start to the winter, snowpack has fallen below normal, and hydrologists have downgraded their forecasts for spring runoff. So far, winter has brought mixed results to Arizona. Accumulated snow in the mountains that feed the Salt and Verde rivers is actually near normal, though the early numbers could be deceptive because the most productive storms typically don't arrive until January and February.

"We need to have either a huge amount of snow on the watershed, 200 percent of normal, or rain that produces runoff into the reservoirs," SRP's Ester said. "I'd be more comfortable if it's rain. The ground might be pretty thirsty after so many dry years" and could soak up slowly melting snow.

Bringing the six reservoirs on the Salt and Verde rivers back to normal levels likely will take two or three healthy winters in a row, Ester said. A normal runoff season on the Salt River, for example, produces about 600,000 acre-feet; the river's reservoirs have room right now for a little more than 1.5 million acre-feet.

The X-factor in whether the drought breaks could be El Niño, which historically dumps extra rain and snow on the Southwest. Although overall precipitation totals during an El Niño winter increase, researchers say in a drought, the way rain and snow comes is as important as whether it comes at all.

Several large, wet storms would help SRP by producing waves of runoff that would fill reservoirs, said Gary Woodard, a University of Arizona hydrologist. That same pattern might not help soil moisture or rangelands.

On the other hand, Woodard said, a series of smaller storms might help drought conditions in the high country but send less runoff for the reservoirs.

Head-scratching

Climatologists are perplexed by El Niño's sudden split in the storm tracks that have left Arizona mostly dry. Forecasters are becoming increasingly uncertain about whether the extra rain and snow will ever make it here.

Adding to the volatile mix is the theory that parts of the West are entering a long-term dry cycle.

"That's scary," said Ron Doba, utilities director for Flagstaff, the state's only sizable city to impose conservation measures last year. "If that is indeed the case, we're going to have to change the way we're planning for water development. We pretty much used up all of our reserve supply in (Lake Mary) last summer."

Those wet-and-dry cycles already may have affected long-term water supplies: Most scientists acknowledge now that the Colorado River was flowing at unusually high levels when the seven states that use it divided it. That means if the regional climate takes a dry turn, the river may run short in its deliveries.

Redmond, the Desert Research Institute climatologist, said drought management is never easy and most states have little recent experience with a severe drought.

"What wasn't a drought 100 years ago may, in effect, be a drought now," he said. "Demand has changed. There are more people."

Government officials have been slow to react.

Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced the National Drought Preparedness Act in May, which would establish a national drought policy, improve federal drought programs, provide more money for forecasting and help local governments plan for drought response.

The bill stalled in committee.

Similarly, former Gov. Jane Hull's water commission recommended last year that Arizona craft a statewide drought response plan. That proposal died before reaching a committee.

Some water experts wonder whether the West's dry nature keeps people from taking drought seriously in earlier stages.

"A lot of times, in order to enact public policy, there has to be some real awareness of danger," said Philip Fradkin, author of A River No More, a study of the Colorado River. "In this case, there is no visual awareness. If this had been the Colorado River or Gila River of old, this time of year, they would be barely a trickle and people would be very worried.

"Now you go down to the canal and there's all that wonderful blue water . . .

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