AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Lake Powell and Lake Mead are, well, lakes. But they're also reservoirs created by dams on the Colorado River. In fact, they are the two largest reservoirs in the country. And as of this month, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have hit new record-low levels of water. Now, that's important because the Colorado River basically supplies the southwestern U.S. So what does that mean for the 35- to 40 million people who rely on this water? Well, we've got Jack Schmidt with us to help us answer that question. He's the senior research scientist at the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. Welcome.
JACK SCHMIDT: Great to be with you.
CHANG: Great to have you. OK. So if we could use a scale from 1 to 10, what roughly is the level of alarm here?
SCHMIDT: Well, we're at a critical 8 or 9 on the scale. We're certainly...
CHANG: Oh, wow.
SCHMIDT: ...At a five-alarm fire right now.
CHANG: OK. So we've been hearing a lot about record-low snowfall last winter in the West. Is that the main cause of all of this, of the low water levels here?
SCHMIDT: Well, as a friend of mine has said, this has been a crisis as if we're standing on a railroad track, and the train is coming right for us at 5 miles an hour, and we haven't had enough sense to get off the track.
CHANG: Oh, wow.
SCHMIDT: The reservoirs were completely full at the turn of the century in fall of 1999. And we had a string of very dry years in the first five years of the 21st century, and we essentially kept right on using water at the rate we had been using it in the past. And the other issue that makes all this of real concern is it's only August, and we have no idea whether it's going to snow this winter or not.
CHANG: How much of that low snowfall - at least recently - is because of, say, human-caused climate change versus regular fluctuations like El Nino?
SCHMIDT: Well, there's no question that there are strings of dry years. And in the 21st century, we have occasional singular wet years. In the 21st century, the average natural flow of the Colorado River is 16% less than was the natural stream flow between 1930 and 2000. So we can call that the long-term decline in runoff associated with a warming climate.
CHANG: Right. OK, how much of this record-low water right now do you attribute to growing demand? Like, you know, the Southwest, it's growing in population. Farms depend on this water. Data centers everywhere need cooling. How much is growing demand making this so much worse?
SCHMIDT: That's not the problem. The year of largest consumptive use in the basin was 2002, and the basin has been slowly and steadily making efforts to reduce its consumptive use. LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Vegas, - what have you - each of those cities today uses less water than they did 20 years ago, despite the fact that they've grown in population and...
CHANG: Interesting.
SCHMIDT: ...Economically. Seventy percent of all the water used in the basin...
CHANG: Yeah.
SCHMIDT: ...Is used for agriculture. The real focus going forward has to be on the efficiency of water use by agriculture in the basin. The cities have really done a great job.
CHANG: Well, is there anything, Jack, that can reverse this shortfall in the near future, I mean, other than hoping and praying for an extremely snowy winter and snowy winters to come?
SCHMIDT: The federal government has announced the sideboards of how it proposes to manage the system in the next decade. We are all awaiting the final announcement of the federal government as to exactly what the details of the operating plan is going to be for the next two years. There's absolutely no question that consumptive water use in the basin has to be significantly reduced. There's really no way to get us back from the edge of the cliff unless we consume less water.
CHANG: Jack Schmidt is a senior research scientist at the Center for Colorado River Studies. Thank you so much for your time today, Jack.
SCHMIDT: Thanks a lot for talking. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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