Cool Discovery Channel Documentary

[BarryBobPosthole]

I can't tell if they'll re-air it or not, but its available on Discovery On Demand, but if you get a chance 'Killing the Colorado' is one of the best docs I've seen in a long time. Its about the water issues that are going on (and have been for a long time) in the American West. And the issues are many and very complicated. There ain't no bad guys, but there's been many bad decisions by all the players. Its worth a watch, because any water rich state on the edge of this western area is going to be a player. Why? Because that's where most of our food comes from!

Its nice to see Discovery air something that isn't a reality show about nekkid people. I've about given up on them. I only caught this channel surfing on Thursday.

BKB

[Big Muddy]

I watched the first part of it, but got distracted when wifey called me to the patio for ice cream and hot apple turnovers.

Gonna try to pull it back up on my Dish-By-Demand.


And, just what is wrong with watching nekkid wimmin, showing their bush, while pilfering around in the bush ???

[Thumper]

Dang! I meant to watch that and forgot all about it. I've spent a ton of time on the Colorado. A group of buddies and I would always haul a bunch of boats over to the Colorado and set up a weekend camp for our "season opener" every Memorial Day and we'd do the same thing for our "season closer" on Labor Day. I did that for 10 years straight before coming back to Florida. It was one of those annual traditions with friends.

[Captain]

I recorded it and watched it yesterday. It does make you think. It appears some efforts are being made to conserve by farmers. It also appears there was some deals made to cost share for the farmers in the conservation efforts by big cities and they (the cities) are backtracking on their commitment(s).
I knew it was coming on and meant to post something to Bwana and get his opinion on the matter. I think this issue plays right into his wheelhouse.

[BarryBobPosthole]

I spent quite a bit of time talking one time to an older state employee that worked on the White and Norfork Rivers in Arkansas. He was explaining why there were many more native born brown trout in those rivers and very few rainbows. It had to do with fluctuating river levels (both are tailrace waters below COE dams) and the fact that browns go up feeder creeks to spawn where water levels are more stable, and rainbows spawn in the main rivers where their roe gets stranded by low levels when they're not generating power through the dams.
They've been trying to get the SWPA (the gov entity that manages electric power generation) to maintain a minimum flow in the rivers for many years to help the fishery.
Then he explained how every bit of water, every foot of storage capacity behind those dams is set aside for various downstream and upsream entities, and to change it even a very little bit literally requires an act of Congress. They had finally gotten that act of congress passed and were looking forward to new minimum flows helping their fisheries there. This older gentleman I was talking to had been following the issues and supporting them for most of his life.

Water rights is one of those examples of gordian knots of government red tape bound around water rights laws that haven't been amended for a century or more. Its really pretty crazy.

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

One of the things we're looking at is intervening in these types of markets by acquiring water rights and using them for conservation purposes. It'll be pretty cool stuff if it can be accomplished at scale.

[BarryBobPosthole]

And that is one of the crazy things about this whole deal: the part about water rights becoming a commodity that can be bought and sold.

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

They're already a commodity in some places like Australia.

[BarryBobPosthole]

We have had some big water rights fights in our area. Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas are water rich states mainly due to a lot of spending by the Federal government, specifically the Corps of Engineers. Because taxpayers paid for developing those resources, states like Texas that regularly face water shortages feel entitled to 'their share' of that water. And with our state economic situation in Oklahoma, the state governmentwould love nothng more than to sell everything we've got to them. Enter indian tribes, upon whose sovereign lands these federally developed water resources reside. And then you have the municipalities that have made lots of peripheral revenues from those resources. And then you have Fish and Game interests that are backed by lots of lobby money from hunters and fishermen. So its been a huge clusterfuck here, to use the only word that accurately describes it.
One can only hope we don't frack our way into compromising those waters.

BKB

[airbud7]

Glad I live in the deep south/ Big rivers/lakes everywhere...

I think some states need to slow down population growth but trying to get people to stop having sex/kids ain't gonna happen.

[BarryBobPosthole]

That's one of the issues out west. You can either pipe the water to people for their consumption, or you can use it to grow the food that they eat. Its rapidly becoming a choice between the two and either answer won't work on its own.
BKB

[DeputyDog]

Kind of a dilemma but shouldn't be unexpected with the population growth in the west. When you have to divert water to grow food in an area where it won't grow without piping in he water island of like building a city below sea level. Eventually nature will make you pay for it.

[airbud7]

I often wondered if we could run a huge pipe from the ocean to death valley(282 feet below sea level) and start a siphon going and fix this?

[BarryBobPosthole]

An Oklahoma credit card!

BKB

[Captain]

That's one of the issues out west. You can either pipe the water to people for their consumption, or you can use it to grow the food that they eat. Its rapidly becoming a choice between the two and either answer won't work on its own. BKB

I'm sure it's all Bush's fault.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Why hell yeah. Why wouldn't it be?

BKB

[Bwana]

I've not seen the show but it sounds interesting.

Having worked in the field for 25 years now I can assure you what Mark Twain said is VERY true, "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting." This is especially true in the arid west where we use the Prior Appropriations Doctrine for water rights versus the Riparian Rights that the eastern states uses. Water rights have always been an interesting and contentious issue and it is only going to get to be moreso in the future.

[LJ3]

I'm certain I'm oversimplifying but if you moved where there's no water and you don't like that, move where there's water.