As someone who grew up in Phoenix and just bought a house here, I've been trying to responsibly educate myself in terms of how big of a crisis this might be. But I've found that a lot of comments, headlines, and judgment calls on this topic are just hilarious. Mainly because it's one of the simplest topics with which to find appropriate historical context and data. I'll show two examples.
Picking apart this particular headline, perhaps a few of us are wondering how close the Colorado River is from drying up? My subjective measurement is that a river drying up would constitute 5% of its average discharge, or even less. The USGS tracks multiple key indicators on the Colorado River, including discharge at certain gauges along the river. From 1952 to 2022, the average is about 5,900 cubic feet per second. The worst year in the history of tracking the Colorado was 21 years ago, 2,417 cubic feet per second, or 40% of average discharge. That's 8 times what I would personally qualify as a dried up river. Compare that to the mighty Mississippi, which averages 208,833 cubic feet per second each year. Now their worst year was 1956, 93,990 cubic feet per second, or 45% of their average discharge. So the Mississippi is statistically fairly as variable in its discharge as the Colorado river, albeit with much more water. And anyway, that's only 9 times my personal qualification. I know these aren't universal measurements, but I hope this allows me to prove a point. The Mississippi River and the Colorado River aren't all that different in variability, and neither of them are even close to drying up. But it's the cities that are closer to the Mississippi River that are actually having water problems -- not Arizona (e.g. Jackson, MS had a water crisis where the National Guard was mobilized to help 150k residents with drinking water just last year). [1]
In the last two decades, the SW has been experiencing extreme drought, and all the while it's one of the fastest growing regions in the US. For example, since the 1950s, Arizona has grown from 700,000 to over 7,000,000, all while using less water. Yep, it's true. Remember that when people point to more neighborhoods, golf courses, and "cities in the desert" as the reason for this 'crisis'. [2]
With all that being said, my personal judgment is that there's a very real drought that is just about to conclude, as seen from recent projections of El Nińo, heavy snowpack and rainfall this winter in the region, and water conservation technology improving at an exponential scale. The Southwest will continue growing, especially due to immigration from South America and Mexico and recent onshoring due to the China/Russia crisis into the next few decades. And the water situation is going to be fine the whole way.
Picking apart this particular headline, perhaps a few of us are wondering how close the Colorado River is from drying up? My subjective measurement is that a river drying up would constitute 5% of its average discharge, or even less. The USGS tracks multiple key indicators on the Colorado River, including discharge at certain gauges along the river. From 1952 to 2022, the average is about 5,900 cubic feet per second. The worst year in the history of tracking the Colorado was 21 years ago, 2,417 cubic feet per second, or 40% of average discharge. That's 8 times what I would personally qualify as a dried up river. Compare that to the mighty Mississippi, which averages 208,833 cubic feet per second each year. Now their worst year was 1956, 93,990 cubic feet per second, or 45% of their average discharge. So the Mississippi is statistically fairly as variable in its discharge as the Colorado river, albeit with much more water. And anyway, that's only 9 times my personal qualification. I know these aren't universal measurements, but I hope this allows me to prove a point. The Mississippi River and the Colorado River aren't all that different in variability, and neither of them are even close to drying up. But it's the cities that are closer to the Mississippi River that are actually having water problems -- not Arizona (e.g. Jackson, MS had a water crisis where the National Guard was mobilized to help 150k residents with drinking water just last year). [1]
In the last two decades, the SW has been experiencing extreme drought, and all the while it's one of the fastest growing regions in the US. For example, since the 1950s, Arizona has grown from 700,000 to over 7,000,000, all while using less water. Yep, it's true. Remember that when people point to more neighborhoods, golf courses, and "cities in the desert" as the reason for this 'crisis'. [2]
With all that being said, my personal judgment is that there's a very real drought that is just about to conclude, as seen from recent projections of El Nińo, heavy snowpack and rainfall this winter in the region, and water conservation technology improving at an exponential scale. The Southwest will continue growing, especially due to immigration from South America and Mexico and recent onshoring due to the China/Russia crisis into the next few decades. And the water situation is going to be fine the whole way.
[1] - https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/annual/?referred_module=sw&a... [2] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme...