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Drought 1
Thu Sep 16, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. The Colorado River has been called
he "American Nile." But a severe drought and a radical weather miscalculation may
downgrade estimates of the amount of water it may be able to provide. Jeff Rice
reports:
Competition for Colorado River water is about to get a lot more intense. Back in 1922,
scientists estimated the river's flow, and the government divided the water up among
seven thirsty states, based on the premise that there would always be plenty of water.
RW: We're eventually going to come up against a problem, especially in light of
drought.
Robert Webb is a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a specialist in the
Colorado River region. He says the 1922 report was way too optimistic.
RW: They thought that they had about 17 million acre feet per year of water in the
Colorado River. It turns out the long term average from tree rings and the instrumental
record is about 13.5 million acre feet.
They were off by more than 20%. Webb says the 1922 calculations were so radically
wrong because of a fluke of weather.
RW: It just so happens that, right before the decision was made to allocate the water,
that we had a very abnormal, above average period of precipitation.
The wettest period in as many as "a thousand years!" Now for the past five years, the
west has been experiencing a serious drought. Reservoirs are quickly drying up,
rationing is starting to take hold in some cities and if the past is any indication, the
future doesn't look promising.
RW: The wet conditions are way more unusual than the drought periods.
If the rains don't come, Webb says the western states will have to brace for some
tough decisions.
More with Jeff Rice tomorrow. The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru and the
National Science Foundation.
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