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A blog post from Alexandra Cousteau:
This past June, my team and I kicked off a 138-day exploration of water issues across North America called Expedition Blue Planet. We're zig-zagging across the continent making films that tell the story of our water planet, like our first film here.
We’ve just arrived on the Gulf coast of Louisiana after spending a month examining water issues along the entire length of the Colorado from its source in the Rockies down to the sea in Mexico. Here are the top five water issues that we’ve experienced so far.
1. When you destroy water, you destroy community
Practically speaking polluted water is the same as having no water at all. We’ve spend the past week based out of Cut Off, Louisiana where we’ve been exploring the bayous and bays of this region with the help of our Cajun friends from the communities of Lafourche and Grand Isle. We first met many of these people during last year’s expedition while filming “dead zone” issues in the Gulf caused by polluted runoff from the Mississippi River.
We never dreamed that one of the worst environmental disasters in American history--BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill--would be our reason for returning to the region. But here we are again: happy to be among friends but absolutely heartbroken to see the devastation of this colorful and storied region.
There is a strength in the these people and in the communities they’ve built that can only come from gathering to rebuild after a hurricane, gambling against weather and all odds to earn a living from the sea, and holding on to a pride runs as deep as the waters that forged it. Down here it really is all about the water. And seeing that water destroyed has pulled a new rug out from under communities that have built their story from scrambling to stay afloat.
(See our guest blogger Tasha Eichenseher’s article on Shrimp and Grit at the End of the World.)
Maybe it's the fun we have trying to swap conversation with my French and their Cajun. Maybe it’s profound respect I have for people who live life with such vigor. Or…maybe it’s the great food, but I feel like I have family down here and it breaks my heart to see in their eyes what they’re too proud to put into words: “how do you rebuild when the very stuff you define your life by gets taken away?”
2. Climate change pushes the limits of the Colorado River
We started our exploration of the Colorado River in its headwaters high in the Rockies, where the pristine peaks are marred by a film of red dust that turns snow packs pink.
This dust originates from agricultural lands and developments in states like Arizona and Utah along the Colorado Plateau and makes it way to mountaintops by dust storms, which are on the rise as the climate warms. The red dust attracts more heat and makes the snow melt earlier in the year and more rapidly, two factors that upset the river’s annual rhythm of flow.
It’s hard to imagine that the consumption of fossil fuels in order to feed our energy hungry society could change our climate and impact these pristine mountains – and the river that’s born there - but that’s exactly what’s happening. Climate models predict that climate change will reduce water runoff in this region by 10-30%.
But the truth is, climate change is already impacting the Colorado, from its birth place in the Rockies, all the way to the cities and fields downstream where water deliveries might be jeopardized as early as 2021.
3. The Colorado flows through all our lives and yet we’re trading it for things we could probably do without
Today nearly one out of every ten Americans are supported by the Colorado River and its waters irrigate 3.5 million acres of farmland. It really is true that its waters flow through all of our lives.
We felt this most keenly when we swam in the Colorado’s waters in Canyonlands National Park while rafting more than 102 miles of rapids to explore the river with Jonathan Waterman, river advocate and author of the book "Running Dry".
I realized that that even though we were living out under the stars and far out of cell phone range this wild water was the same stuff that winds up in people’s homes. For all of the wilderness we try to capture in our minds and imagination, the truth is a significant number of Americans bring the Colorado River home every day through their taps, garden hoses and on dinner plates.
Water is a zero sum game that demands we choose how to use it carefully. We’ve heard so many people, like Pat Mulroy, General Manager of the South Nevada Water Authority who is buying out Las Vegas residents’ lawns for $1.50 per square foot or Patty Limerick from the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, ask: is that a reasonable use of this endangered resource? One NASA study found that America’s largest irrigated crop isn't alfalfa or corn, it's lawns. Tiled together this nation's lawns would very nearly carpet the whole of Washington state. We water them with 19 trillion gallons of water each year.
4. Rivers must reach the sea
I grew up knowing that a river needed to reach the sea but it wasn’t until we followed the barren scar of the Colorado’s empty riverbed in Mexico, where its estuary once thrived, that I really understood this fact.
The Colorado River delta that fed into the upper Gulf of California once hosted over two million acres of riparian and wetland areas. As soon as the Hoover and Glen Canyon dam were erected, the river shrank and the final blow came when Mexico’s Morelos dam diverted its entire allocation of the Colorado River to human use. Our colleagues with Pronatura Noroeste, Mexico’s largest environmental organization led us down a path of ecological and cultural loss that follows the riverbed like a mournful wake.
(See related: Dispatches from a parched Mexico: Elders share stories of once-lush Colorado River Delta)
The zone where freshwater meets saltwater is one of nature’s most productive environments. More than two thirds of commercially caught fish and shellfish in the US are estuarine species[3]. And that figure rises to eight out of ten for recreational fish and shellfish catch.
So when a river’s flow to the sea is interrupted--as is the case of the Colorado’s flow to its delta in Mexico--that estuary zone collapses and a key nursery is lost. And with that collapse comes an end for the livelihoods of those that work, recreate, and survive off the water’s wealth.
5. We must build adaptive management systems for our rivers
As Taylor Hawes of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told me during one of our first visits to the headwater region of the Colorado River: "We are using 19th century rules and 20th century technologies to manage 21st century demands."
Our practice of damming rivers from their sources to their exhaustion and then managing those pools, trickles and surges around our calendar of needs ignores almost everything we know about what it takes to keep valuable ecosystems in anything close to balance.
It's not at all about whether or not storing water for agricultural and urban uses, producing energy from hydropower, benefiting from recreational spaces, and other uses are justifiable--we've woven our rivers so intricately into the fabric of our daily lives that it would seem returning many of them to being truly "free flowing" rivers is practically impossible. But we can build more adaptive systems and give scientific standards greater weight over demand standards when it comes to managing things. The ecosystem services provided by rivers, deltas and wetlands easily offset the "losses" of energy sales and other revenues tied to increasing the volume and shifting the timing of flows. We can build systems that keep silt and other nutrients moving downstream. And, we can alter our demands and practices both through consumer engagement and through market systems that put the true cost of water into the equation for crop and product choice in river-dependent regions.
I've seen some truly tragic and frankly, dumb river damming projects in my travels--several of those right along the Colorado. But, I'm not someone who looks at every single dam and says they all have to go. I am someone who gets more frustrated each day by how much scientific, economic and practical knowledge gets dismissed from the discussion. In too many cases, we are trading away the wealth of our children for cheap kilowatt hours, discount lettuce and urban sprawl. We can do better than that and we have to realize it's at least unethical if not criminal to cash in now knowing the mess we'll leave behind for future generations.
We’ve documented all these stories further at our website, and you can follow us further on my facebook fan page.
Come see if we’re stopping by your community. Please come out and say hi, online or in person.
Don't miss video coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill from Alexandra and Philippe Cousteau.
More On Water Issues From Planet Green
Don’t miss other favorites like Blue Planet, Operation Wild and more.
And here on Planet Green, you'll find daily articles that explore, educate, and excite. Navigate through Making A Difference to learn about impactful actions, Explore the Oceans to check out the cutest critters and strangest features of the deep, Sustainable Seafood to find out about fishing techniques and how you can eat eco-smart, videos that educate and introduce you to amazing eco-activists, and interactives where you can take quizzes to test your water smarts, see slideshows of stunning photography.
