Drought in state triggers alarm

Warnings of a looming drought in the American Southwest came last week almost at the same time as world scientists in Brussels said beware of global warming due to greenhouse gases.

And, in a busy week for the environment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration saying his Environmental Protection Administration does have the authority to regulate greenhouse emission gases whether from cars or factories.

But that was a narrow, 5-4, decision.

U.S. Rep. Raœl Grijalva, D-Ariz., was somewhat ahead of the scientists in Brussels when he earlier scheduled a climate change roundtable in Tucson.

“Every community should be involved in efforts to mitigate global warming,” Grijalva said Friday, adding climate change will affect everyone, “and our world faces a true planetary emergency.”

He added: “This is our opportunity to be a part of the solution, explore renewable energies to help leave a planet worthy of our children.”

The Southwest has had droughts before, especially severe ones in the early-to-mid-19th century, when thousands of cattle died, scarring the landscape with rotting carcasses.

In the journal “Science,” scientists blamed the drought on a changing climate and warned it could be as bad as the dust-bowl days of the 1930s.

Lead author Richard Seager of Columbia University told the Associated Press that most of the Southwest’s water is already allocated. With less available, he said, there may need to be a reallocation.

Agriculture is the biggest user now, but there are more people here now than in the 1930s.

“In a case where this a reduced water supply, there will have to be some reallocations between the users.” he said.

“But it’s something that needs to be planned for,” he added.

Sharon Megdal, director of the Arizona Water Resources Research Center in Tucson, said water experts are already studying how best to use water.

“It’s something they do all the time,” she said in a short interview.

“People have been looking at long-term drought. People already recognize it’s here.”

But to say how severe a drought will be is a hard questions to answer.

“You don’t know how bad a drought is until you’re out of it,” she said.

Much of Arizona’s population is now nurtured from Colorado River water.

Seven western states in 1922 agreed to share the water.

Although Arizona was last to sign the Colorado River Compact, it is entitled to 2.8 million acre feet of river water a year.

An acre foot is about 326,000 gallons, what two urban families of four use in about a year.

The state takes 1.5 million acre feet for the Central Arizona Project and the other 1.3 million go to communities and irrigation districts along the river.

California receives 4.4 million acre feet.

Megdal said if CAP water diminishes, Arizona may have to rely more on its aquifers.

There are CAP allotments for the Green Valley area, but none is used here domestically. The end of the CAP pipeline is at Pima Mine Road north of Green Valley.

The Green Valley Domestic Water Improvement District has an allocation of 1,900-acre feet, and there are other local allocations, including Community Water Co. of Green Valley.

Community Water Co. president Art Gabaldon said in a Friday interview that the aquifer here is declining, and the CAP water, if it is brought here, could help sustain it.

Green Valley Community Coordinating Council president Dick Roberts warned, “We’ve got to get that CAP water before we lose it.”

The scientists in Brussels said Earth’s climate is changing because of exhaust from smokestacks and tail pipes.

The report said there’s a 90 percent certainty that humans are causing global warming.

Associated Press said that with each degree increase in the world’s temperatures animals become extinct, water levels rise and more people will starve or face water shortages.

AP said some scientists call the degree-by-degree projection “a highway to extinction.”

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