The Colorado River explained in under 3 minutes Chapter 1: The Geography The river starts off in the idyllic Rocky Mountains National Park in the US state of Colorado. Since the source is just a few kilometers west of the continental divide, the Colorado river makes its journey to the Pacific Ocean, passing through 5 US states as well as the Mexican States of Baja California and Sonora before finishing its 1450 miles or 2300-kilometer-long journey into the Gulf of California. When examining the course of the Colorado river on a map, there are several oddly shaped bodies of water standing out, whose shapes look nothing like how you would usually imagine a lake to look like.
That’s because Lake Powell, Lake Mead or Lake Mohave are not natural but instead the product of some of the largest dams of the US. The first two, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are the 2 largest man-made lakes in the US, with each of them drowning an area 11 times larger than Manhattan. Between the 2 lakes, the river has unremittingly carved a deep path into the bedrock, creating, among dozens of other natural wonders, the Grand Canyon, which is one out of 11 National Parks in its drainage basin.
The area around the Colorado River is a dream destination for nature lovers. Countless Canyons, Buttes and Mesas make the area one of the most iconic landscapes of the planet, but unsustainable human interference also turned the Colorado river into a scene of one of the largest man-made environmental disasters in the world. Chapter 2: The Law of the River Looking at the reservoirs of Lake Mead and Lake Powell in recent years unravels a shocking image.
After a 20 year drought starting in the year 2000, the reservoirs are only holding a quarter of their intended capacity, and they keep shrinking year over year. To uncover what happened here, we need to go back over 100 years. In the early 20th century, the 7 states surrounding the Colorado river were in dispute about who can exploit the rivers water.
To settle this, a plan was drawn up, which separates the contending states into an upper and lower basin, allocating 7. 5-million-acre feet, or around 300 m3/s to each basin, with Mexico receiving an additional 60. This water was then further split between the states, resulting in the following allocations, but this agreement was set up for failure from the beginning.
The agreement was made during an exceptionally wet period, and now barely a third of the water-flow can be found in the river, resulting a yearly deficit of millions of liters which drains the reservoirs. Stresses caused by climate change have further reduced the inflow from the melting rocky mountain snow and exploding populations over the last 100 years with severely increased water needs for irrigation have given the river and the reservoirs the final blow. The last 100 miles of the river have run completely dry in the past years, and the Biden administration has been forced to ration the water for the 7 states even more in recent years.
For how long the 40 million people in the Colorado Basin can still depend on the river is unclear. Increased snowfall in the winter of 2022 have pushed back the direst predictions, but it is clear that water usage of the Colorado River can not continue the same way. Thanks for watching, cheers.
