Drought Settles In, Lake Shrinks and West's Worries Grow

[donsutherland1]

<b>May 2, 2004

Drought Settles In, Lake Shrinks and West's Worries Grow

By KIRK JOHNSON and DEAN E. MURPHY</b>

PAGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip.

Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm.

Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the West during the 20th century was a fluke. In other words, scientists who study tree rings and ocean temperatures say, the development of the modern urbanized West — one of the biggest growth spurts in the nation's history — may have been based on a colossal miscalculation.

That shift is shaking many assumptions about how the West is run. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the states that depend on the Colorado River, are preparing for the possibility of water shortages for the first time since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930's to control the river's flow. The top water official of the Bush administration, Bennett W. Raley, said recently that the federal government might step in if the states could not decide among themselves how to cope with dwindling supplies, a threat that riled local officials but underscored the growing urgency.

"Before this drought, we had 20 years of a wet cycle and 20 years of the most growth ever," said John R. D'Antonio, the New Mexico State engineer, who is scrambling to find new water supplies for the suburbs of Albuquerque that did not exist a generation ago.

The latest blow was paltry snowfall during March in the Rocky Mountains, pushing down runoff projections for the Colorado River this year to 55 percent of average. Snowmelt is the lifeblood of the river, which provides municipal water from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. The period since 1999 is now officially the driest in the 98 years of recorded history of the Colorado River, according to the United States Geological Survey.

"March was a huge wake-up call as to the need to move at an accelerated pace," said Mr. Raley, assistant secretary of the interior for water and science.

<b>For the complete story:</b>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/national/02DROU.html