Analysis of Water Management Issues in the Colorado River Region

This report addresses the critical water management issues of the Colorado River, focusing on challenges such as population growth in California, decreased precipitation, and reduced conveyance capacity. The report explores how various factors, including factories, entertainment amenities, and urban sprawl, contribute to water wastage. Additionally, it highlights the significant water consumption associated with raising animals for food, particularly beef and pork production, and discusses the impact of these practices on water availability. The report references multiple sources to analyze the issues and propose solutions for water conservation and sustainable management of the Colorado River's resources. The report emphasizes the need for effective strategies to mitigate water scarcity and promote responsible water usage in the region.

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QUESTION ONE
The management of Colorado River water argues about many issues like how the locals should deal with
wastage of water. The Colorado River is illustrated in the following diagram;
Fig 1 : Showing the Colorado river (
https://elementalreports.com/water/2018/11/16/colorado-river-compact-flawed
-negotiations-to-fix/
).

The problems of Colorado River are illustrated below;
Problems with the Colorado River Compact:
 1. An increase in population in California predicted that the water may not be available at one point in
time (Mulroy, 2017).
 As seen in the above diagram, the amount of water is not sufficient to provide water for the higher
population of 39.51 million as per the year 2019.
 Since water is very essential for survival it is highly important to have a sufficient amount of water to
supply to the locals.

 With the higher anticipated population of California, it is suspected that at one point the water in this River
will get used up and expose the locals in water shortages.
 It will thus be necessary for the locals to seek an alternative means of ensuring that the locals get an
adequate amount of water, especially during dry seasons (National Research Council, 2011).

2. A decrease in precipitation levels created problems between the states for sharing water.
 The higher reduction of the amount of rainfall in the state possesses a danger of scarcity of water in
California.
 The locals need to plant many trees to ensure that the amount of rainfall is increased to act as a supplement
of the water obtained from the River.
 With the increase in the amount of rainfall the locals will get more water from rains and also the level of the
River will be higher thus providing water to the locals.

3. River Colorado had a reduced Conveyance Capacity.
 Conveyance capacity is the amount of water a river can carry.
 In simple terms, conveyance capacity is the rate at which a connecting channel will carry water. There is
always a flood in the River Gila which deposits a large amount of sediment to River Colorado (Fleck, 2016).
 These deposited sediments will reduce the conveyance capacity of River Colorado.
 With more sediment in River Colorado, the estimated amount of water flowing will highly reduce thus
reducing the amount of water which the local can easily fetch.

How it encourages wasting water:
 1. Establishment of factories and entertainment amenities which utilize more water.
 The more factories established in Colorado imply that more water will be employed in the
company to do many things like cooling of engines among other parts in the factory.
 The water will also be used in cleaning most things in the company including cleaning raw
materials and also parts of the engine.
 Therefore the more the factory in the area the more the amount of water demanded to be used.
The water from the factory will be highly polluted and cannot be used elsewhere.
 The pollution of water here can be thermal pollution or chemical pollution.
 2. Failure to monitor the settlement of population and its control, the establishment of urban
sprawl created concentrated population growth over the areas. With the higher number of people
in the area without being controlled, there will be a higher amount of water used. The more
people residing in a given area the more water required and used in the same area.

Question two
 In Colorado, there are several amenities which can highly wastewater in the area, some of these
amenities are discussed below;
The three amenities that waste most water:
1. Entertainment buildings
 A building which serves a purpose for entertainment will use a lot of water for example in swimming
pools, water for bathing, water used in the washroom among other things.
 Thus to reduce such water wastage, it highly advisable to reduce the number of such buildings in the
state.

2. Factories like automobiles
 Factories use a lot of water in doing several things like cleaning of automobile parts and cooling of the
engine and other parts of the factory (Agency, 2017).
 Water is highly wasted while cleaning the vehicles and also while cooling parts that get hot during
welding and assembling of automobile parts.
3. Processing plants, hospitals.
 Just like in the automobile factory, in processing industries a lot of water will be used in the cleaning of
raw materials, cooling the engine and also in the cleaning of other parts of the factory (Agency, 2012).
 In the hospital, a lot of water is used in the cleaning of the hospital tools, beddings and also in cleaning
the morgue.

Question three
Raising animals for food is the largest consumer of water in California:
 California produces the largest amount of animal meat. It produces pork, beef and other forms of meat.
 This means that California will use a lot of water in cattle, pork, and sheep as drinking water (Dufour,
2012).
 For growing these animals and the production of meat it takes a lot of water to consume. For example, 1
pound of pork takes 576 gallons of water and 1 pound of beef takes 1799 gallons of water.

 For growing these animals and the production of meat it takes a lot of water to consume. For example, 1
pound of pork takes 576 gallons of water and 1 pound of beef takes 1799 gallons of water.
 Raising animals and plants are now filtered by a lot of countries because these countries started measuring
their economies by water availability.
 For example, France, when they realized that it takes 55 liters of water to produce one orange fruit, they
stopped growing oranges and started importing them (Mateo-Sagasta, 2017).
 Likewise, the government of California and Nevada are working towards water conservation methods rather
than increasing the share of water from the Colorado River.

References
Agency, n. S. E. P., 2012. Las Cruces Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Environmental Impact Statement. 2nd
ed. New York: Northwestern University.
Agency, U. S. E. P., 2017. Draft Denver Regional Environmental Impact Statement for Wastewater Facilities
and the Clean Water Plan. 1st ed. Hawaii: Environmental Protection Agency.
Dufour, J. B., 2012. Animal Waste, Water Quality and Human Health. 1st ed. Hawaii: IWA Publishing.
Fleck, J., 2016. Water is for Fighting Over: And Other Myths about Water in the West. 3rd ed. California:
Island Press.
Mateo-Sagasta, J. Z., 2017. Water pollution from agriculture: a global review. Executive summary. 2nd ed.
Hawaii: Springer.
Mulroy, P., 2017. The Water Problem: Climate Change and Water Policy in the United States. 2nd ed.
Califonia: Brookings Institution Press.
National Research Council, D. o. E. a. L. S. W. S. a. T. B. C. o. t. S. B. o. C. R. B. W. M., 2011. Colorado River
Basin Water Management: Evaluating and Adjusting to Hydroclimatic Variability. 1st ed. Colorado: National
Academies Press.