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The end of the Colorado river?

11K views 33 replies 25 participants last post by  zpodmore 
#1 ·
#5 ·
There is a good documentary that came out about a year ago on this same topic. Pretty sure it was part of last years Boulder's Adventure Film fest, can't remember the name for the life of me. At the end of the movie they were just wondering around in the desert.
 
#9 ·
I was down the low point (geographic) of AZ. and saw the Colorado turned into a few canals with meager flow and water so salty and loaded with pesticides and fertilizer that there was no way you'd want to drink it. The Colorado has not seen the ocean for a couple of decades.
 
#10 ·
I'm not trying to be a hater but why do we care if the Colorado River goes into the ocean? I'm sure there's no gradient for brown claw down there. Is it just about the fish and bird habitat in those final miles? I dislike all the dams and the problems associated with the "adjustments" made to the river but why not use the water before it enters the ocean? By the time it gets to Yuma shouldn't they take the rest of it for farming or water for San Diego? At that point who cares?



Either way, it looks like its the front rangers fault. Hot chicks and metrosexuals require alot of water.
 
#23 ·
Try reading "Wet Desert" by Gary Hansen, a mediocre novel but an OK story about the Colorado, dams, desert written by an engineer. Fiction, but interesting.
Mediocre? I loved this book. Great story about the plight of the Colorado River while having a great fictional story line that made it a page turner. Still trying to get through Cadilac Desert (yawn) but Wet Desert was great. Highly recommended.
 
#12 ·
The Denver Aquarium has had an interactive display about this for a long time. They follow the Colorado from source to sea showing the various ecosystems along the river. At the end, they have a large aquarium with the sea life from the Gulf of California, but the wall display shows how the river doesn't reach it anymore. It's a cool thing for the kids to see and understand. (There's also an awesome flash flood simulation room.)

cosurfgod- the dilemma is two fold- first, the purist view is that we want it to reach the ocean because it's supposed to. This means that yes, it's harming fish and wildlife habitats not only at the dried out point, but all the way up the river. Since certain fish swim upriver to spawn, they can't either procreate or provide food for their natural predators upstream.

2nd- the more that water is siphoned off to cities, the larger those cities will grow, necessitating the siphoning of more water, until, possible worse case scenario, there's no more Grand Canyon, or Westwater, or Gore Canyon.
 
#18 ·
Most of the water

Actually it's important to realize that most water is siphoned off to farmers. Most who get their water almost for free subsidized by people living in cities, farmers have no incentive to conserve water because they have never paid the true cost. It almost made sense when some of these giant reservoirs were built and many farms were family owned but now it's mostly large agribusiness corporations still getting price breaks on their water and massive farm subsidies.
Another good book is "Hijacking a River. A Political History of the Grand Canyon"


The Denver Aquarium has had an interactive display about this for a long time. They follow the Colorado from source to sea showing the various ecosystems along the river. At the end, they have a large aquarium with the sea life from the Gulf of California, but the wall display shows how the river doesn't reach it anymore. It's a cool thing for the kids to see and understand. (There's also an awesome flash flood simulation room.)

cosurfgod- the dilemma is two fold- first, the purist view is that we want it to reach the ocean because it's supposed to. This means that yes, it's harming fish and wildlife habitats not only at the dried out point, but all the way up the river. Since certain fish swim upriver to spawn, they can't either procreate or provide food for their natural predators upstream.

2nd- the more that water is siphoned off to cities, the larger those cities will grow, necessitating the siphoning of more water, until, possible worse case scenario, there's no more Grand Canyon, or Westwater, or Gore Canyon.
 
#28 ·
Really?

Who Cares? Really? The fact that the Colorado no longer reaches the ocean is an issue that should matter to everyone, unless of course you are so sickballer that you have no hope or vision for the future. I can appreciate sarcasm to the fullest and hope that some of these ignorant comments are a joke. The big picture issue on how we manage our rivers is that all the sediment carried by those rivers is now stored in reservoirs instead of deltas and oceans. The Sea of Cortez is the womb of the Pacific. The biodiversity of that place is in sharp decline. The MASSIVE sediment load that once nourished those waters are unlikely to return in our lifetimes. What we will continue to see in our lifetimes however is the continued extinction of native plants and animals. Everything IS connected and I am hopeful that members of the boating community will continue to fight for clean water and free flowing rivers.
 
#29 ·
I agree with jmacn....It's a sytematic problem that we have with the way we treat our water in the west. Look at the old pics of what the confluence with the Sea of Cortez once looked like , and what it now. The attitudes of bens a bitch and spag ho, while hopefully pure sarcasm, seem to be the new the norm in young paddlers. Put your Claw back in where it gets browner....See ya in the Ditch yall
 
#32 ·
Not sure if B-L-A-B brownclaw was just trying to get a rise or what. For anyone out there who considers themselves a boater and loves water, being informed about the health of their local watershed is really important. We do live in a progressive country where decisions are made by elected officials. The more you can learn about the policies of the past and the related benefits/consequences, the more able you will be in the future to weigh in on important decisions that still need to be made. Hydro power has a lot of pros and cons. The rate at which dams are being built around the world today exceeds our own dam building hay day. When major continental drainages are impounded and developed for agriculture and growing cities, the ocean is affected in a big way. The health of our oceans has not been addressed yet because of the many other global problems. It is a major issue however and I would love to be on the side of people choosing future policy makers that will support clean water and healthy ecosystems (even if they happen to be in mexico). A source to sea mission anywhere is badass, stouts or not.
 
#33 ·
I am glad that Ben Luck's good name is defended. He is 50% gentleman, 50% scholar, and 100% gnarly dude. Folks, that adds up to 200% of a human right there. But it would be great if the off topic posts about Ben's worth as a human could be deleted or stopped somehow so that we can get back to the Colorado River Basin.

On that note, here are a few great articles about the ongoing drought:

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20121206/NEWS/121209901/1078&ParentProfile=1055

http://www.gjfreepress.com/article/20121130/COMMUNITY_NEWS/121129956/1062&parentprofile=1062

It's a real a dilemma. Continue activities like snow making that represent substantial tourist $$$ for the area or allow the fish/riparian zone to "thrive?"
 
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