As The Colorado River Basin Dries, Can An Accidental Oasis Survive?

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS midday edition. I'm mark Sauer. Speaker 2: 00:03 I'm Maureen Cavanagh. The Colorado River Delta is shaped by geographical and political boundaries. It lies on the u s Mexico border and it's famous controlled by people on both sides. Nowhere is that more apparent than at the site of an accidental wetland. Reporter Luke Runyon continues his series on the last 100 miles of the Colorado River Speaker 1: 00:30 one butone Mendez navigates a small metal motorboat through amaze of tall reeds did the CN Aiga de Santa Clara in the Mexican state of Sonora. It's nearing sunset and the sky is turning shades of light blue and purple. It smells like wet earth, an unfamiliar sent in the desert, but American Alito Mendez lives nearby and works for the conservation group pro, not Tura. Norwest Day. He cuts the motor and we sit quietly on the shallow water and watch as species of coastal birds land here for the night. There are American Koons with their white bills and dark gray feathers followed by broad winged yellow beaked Pelicans. Mendez has explored this wetland since its creation in the 1970s he's been called the patron saint of the Sienna Guy, and can we get our water started to flow to this place in the 1970s I would walk around here without having to worry about getting wet. Speaker 1: 01:30 The wetland is fed by a concrete canal that removes salty runoff from American farms across the border. It's a perfect stopover for migratory birds on their journey along the coast. The Oakland loving lucky. When I come here, as soon as I arrive, it's like, uh, uh, happiness. It's a pleasure, but there's a problem as the Colorado River basin heats up and dries out, Mendez is concerned. People will stop thinking of this sienegas water as waste. Find a way to use it and in turn harm this oasis. I mean, that's the biggest threat that has me thinking at times, although you won't believe it. I'm thinking that one day when we least expect it, the United States will say no more water for the wetlands of Santa Clara and [inaudible] Speaker 3: 02:21 Declan. His concern is valid. A way to treat the agricultural runoff already exists in Yuma, Arizona. Mike Norris manages the human to salting plant for the U S Bureau of reclamation. This is the largest brackish water facility in the country and the second largest in the world finished in the 1990s the plant could treat this salty wastewater and send it to Mexico for use on farms and cities to meet treaty obligations, but it's never been fully operational. You want me to assaults and plan is nothing but a tool in the toolbox. It's a costly tool to operate during prolonged dry spells. Though those costs become more reasonable. If the u s did decide to dust off the cobwebs, it would allow for more water conservation, but it would be bad news for this Sienna Senega, which would then only receive briny waste with little water making it in hospitable to wildlife. If we continue in a drought situation as like me drops that plant could be considered as as one of the tools to take it out of the toolbox to, you know, to help conserve water and Lake Bay. Speaker 1: 03:27 But because it sat idle for so long, it would need millions of dollars in improvements before it could be used and that funding isn't secure. It's hard to imagine what the Colorado River Delta looked like when the river's still float here. The [inaudible] is bordered by miles and miles of crusty salt flat, Speaker 1: 03:51 but sitting on a boat inside the wetland. You can picture the delta in a past life. The wetlands, patron saint wand booed tron Mendez says the fate of the area is uncertain. Go with that. If have a the two countries, we're neighbors, right? If the United States and Mexico, we need to have an agreement between the two countries, right? That that that won't happen because it would be a disaster. I mean the South Bay, the country's relationship has been put to the test because of ongoing threats from President Donald Trump and other outside pressures like climate change and growing populations could make it that much harder to keep this wetland from disappearing. I'm Luke Runyon in Sonora, Mexico. Joining me is reporter Luke Runyon with Public Radio Station, K U N C in Colorado. Look, welcome. Hi. Now, what led you to do a series of reports on the last 100 miles of the Colorado river? Speaker 1: 04:51 This series came out of a visit that I had to the Delta back in February of 2018 and I was on this tour of journalists down in the lower reaches of the Colorado River and we had made a few quick stops in the Colorado River Delta in Mexico, but they were pretty short stops. And so I knew that at some point I wanted to head back and do some reporting on the rivers last a hundred miles. Um, and so I ended up going back there late last year and I think it was really drawn to the stories there because I think we all have this expectation that rivers empty into something like most rivers in the u s eventually run to the ocean. That's just kind of how rivers work. But the Colorado river is different and it's because we use so much of it that it doesn't do what we think most rivers do. Speaker 1: 05:40 And so I wanted to explore that reach of the river where it disappears to see what it looks like, um, where you have a river without water in it. Remind us how long it's been since the river naturally flowed through the Delta into the sea of Cortez. Most people pinpoint it to the early sixties, which is when Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah, Arizona border was closed and that created Lake Powell. Since then, the river hasn't regularly reached the Pacific Ocean. It has an a few really wet years. But, uh, in terms of it flowing regularly to the delta, um, it hasn't done that since the early 1960s did the fate of the delta ever factor into the historic water deals that diverted so much of the Colorado River to Erica culture and urban water supplies? Not really. And that's how it ended up the way that it is today. Uh, one of the sources in one of my stories said nobody intentionally dried up the Colorado river delta, but it ended up happening anyway. Speaker 1: 06:42 No one meant for this to happen. But the southwest is so incredibly reliant on the Colorado River that the delta over the course of many decades became the collateral damage in some of these water diversions that supply major metropolitan areas in the southwest, like Phoenix and Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, all these places take water from the Colorado River. And that means that it doesn't end up in it's delta. How similar would you say this disregard for the delta as to they overload claims of imperial valley in the most recent Colorado river deal, the drought emergency plan that just went through imperial wanted more money for salt and sea restoration and that didn't happen. Yeah, the delta is a little bit different just in the fact that it's in another country. Um, our relationship with Mexico determines what happens with the Colorado River Delta. And one of the things that we've seen over the past few decades is maybe within the last two decades is this recognition between the two countries, between the US and Mexico. Speaker 1: 07:49 Um, coming to the table and saying, yes, we agree that we created this problem and now we're going to try and put some resources towards fixing it. Um, and so it's really this binational cooperation that makes the Delta, uh, a trickier issue than some of the others within the entire Colorado River watershed besides losing the habitat and wildlife that used to flourish in the area. What's been the economic and social costs in Mexico of losing the delta? It's immense. Uh, you have people who used to be fishermen along the Colorado River, uh, in Mexico who can no longer do that because it's completely dried up. I haven't seen a dollar figure of the economic loss, but I think the cultural loss is huge. And when you talk to people in the main city along the historic channel in Mexico, San Luis, Rio, Colorado, the name of the river is in the name of the city. Speaker 1: 08:44 And so it's a really powerful symbol, I think for that city. And you talk to people there who, who really want to see water back in that river, who when there was a pulse flow of water in 2014 we're going out and it was almost this religious experience seeing water coming back to parts of the river that I haven't seen it in a really long time. Um, so I, I don't know how easy it is to measure it, but if you talk to people there, they'd say it's incredibly important that the Colorado River has water in it. Again, what do we hear about tomorrow? In the third and final installment? We're talking about areas where there is intense restoration efforts going on within the Colorado River Delta. Um, some of those agreements between the U S and Mexico have put funding and water resources towards restoring parts of the Colorado River Delta. So we're going to visit a couple sites where nonprofit environmental groups are doing work on the ground to restore the delta to some semblance of, it's a historic self. I've been speaking with a reporter, a loop Runyon with public radio station KUSC in Colorado. Look, thanks for taking the time. Thank you.