Ep. 951: Will The Colorado River Run Dry?

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Dr. Melanie Thornton, and she is the Senior Director of Western Water at TRCP, but what we're going to talk about is if you're anything like not you, I'm saying to the listeners. If the listeners are anything like me, they have spent their entire life reading headlines if not the whole articles about the plight of the Colorado River, that the Colorado River is going dry, that the calamity is coming, or that like the Rio Grande, your Rio Grande or Rio Grande, that the Rio Grande doesn't even flow in some places, like it's sometimes the year the Rio Grande is dirt, it's mud, it doesn't even flow out to the ocean, right? I've been hearing this for so long, and I feel like now I'm hearing it more, and I just I want to talk to you to understand what is up with these rivers. What is causing this, what is using all the water, what happens when the water runs out. Before we started the interview, you and I were discussing, we did some rough math, 10% of Americans draw their drinking water from a river that some from a watershed that some people prophesizable like go away or is going away, okay, this is all just set up. I'd have to understand this better, so that's why you're here, you're here to explain this to us all, like why have we been hearing about this for so many decades, but I think my first actual question to you is can you lay out sort of the scope of what we're talking about when you see things about the Colorado River watershed, like what is this, what states, how big is this, how does this, how was this 10% of Americans water? Sure, I think the Colorado River basin is, it's a big river, and when I think, when most people are, if you're picturing the Colorado River for the first time, you think of it as just one river, but really it's an interconnected system, it's big, there's lots of rivers, creeks, streams, tributaries, lakes that eventually feed into the Colorado River. So the Colorado River starts in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. It flows roughly 1400 miles all the way through the desert southwest to historically the Gulf of California, and when we're thinking about how big it is, I'm a scientist, I'll talk a little bit about the numbers, it's roughly 246,000 square miles, what does that mean? I did some quick map of where we got here too, that's roughly, you take the size of Rhode Island, it's roughly 150 of them, it's a big basin. Rhode Island always gets like, Rhode Island is the handiest state. It's the smallest one. When it comes to making something seem big, you can always turn to Rhode Island. And so it's a river that flows through seven states, it starts in Colorado, you've got Wyoming, you've got Utah, New Mexico, and then it goes down through the deserts southwest through Arizona, Nevada, and California. It links 30, federally recognized tribes, and it doesn't just support drinking water for 40 million people throughout the basin. It provides water for our farms and our ranches, it provides water for our tribal communities, and of course it provides water for fish and wildlife habitat. So what is happening, or let me ask this, if you go back in time, because like I said, I feel like I've read this story for a, I'm a half century years old, I feel like I've read this story since I learned how to read, or some dire prediction on this. Can you go back in time to, when was the first time that someone, or some entity, something, put together like, if human populations do this, the river will do this, right? And we will someday feel the effect of it. When was this, when did this become apparent to somebody? I mean, I think if we're traveling back in time, and I think it's helpful to sort of understand that the rules and the frameworks and the laws that govern the system were built around a time when people just thought the river was going to produce a lot more water than it does today. Okay. And so the Colorado River, and let's travel back 100 years. Okay. Let's look. We're talking about the 1920s. The American West was expanding, right? If we're starting to have cities to get developed, agriculture was expanding. And the states, the seven states in the Colorado River were like, wait a minute, wait a minute, how are we going to figure out how to share this river? We need to figure out a game plan. And so in 1922 is a key year in the Colorado River, because that's when representatives from the seven states, they all gathered at Bishop's Lodge outside of Santa Fe. And they negotiated to try to figure out how are we going to share this river among our seven states. And eventually what came out of that was the Colorado River Compact. And then you let's be back up into time now, you know, Congress has weighed in. Congress has passed laws related to the Colorado River. Dams and reservoirs have been built. The courts weighed in. Tribal communities are negotiating their water rights with the federal government. And so all that layered on together is what folks call the law of the river. I don't know if you've heard about that term or seen that term. No, not familiar. So that's sort of what governs the river. But then you fast forward to even what, let's take a look in the late 2000's, hydrology and snowpack and flows in the river was starting to change. It was starting to get, you know, we were starting to see, you know, early onset of drought. You know, our big lakes are lake meaning like powers of the two major lakes on the river, that store water that states and folks can use during dry years. Those lake levels were starting to decline. And the states were like, wait a minute, we are, there's less water in the river and we're using more. And there's a fundamentally at the end of the day, there is a mismatch between how much water people use and how much water the river provides. So the water, like besides, there's more and more use on the water. The amount of water has like objectively declined. Correct. There's less going into the system. Correct. I mean, I'll ask you, what do you see out in the field, then there's snowpacks, what happens when there's warmer temperatures that changes how water on the landscape? Yeah. Well, here outside of the Colorado River watershed, last year I went and got my snowmobiles all ready to go and never started them last winter. I'm particular about where I go. Like there's a certain type of thing I'm trying to do and it's like more low elevation. Never ran my snowmobiles. Why? Well, there's no snow. It was, it was a non-snow year. A dirt trap for coyotes till through February, open ground, bare ground. Yeah. I mean, I think people, I mean, if you spend any time outdoors, whether you hunt or fish, or you recreate, you're, you probably notice these things. So snow, then there's snow. Yeah. Rivers are peaking at a different times. Yeah. So, when these folks got together in the 20s and they, and they came up with this water pack, tell me about a couple of the foundational principles that they're drawing on because, and within that answer, the thing I'm curious about is, you'd look and it'd be like, you mentioned Wyoming, right? People at the headwaters, I know just in general water law and water rules. It can't be that the, the farthest up person says, I'm just going to take it all and I'm going to build a giant dam at my state line and I'm going to take all the water and all the waters for me. Yeah. Because I'm here and it's mine. Even in the 20s, they must have had things sorted out where that that Wasn't permissible somehow right you couldn't like you couldn't hoard water So I think and I'm not a water lawyer. I'm a scientist, but I Spend the last decade in DC around water policy. So I know enough to be dangerous in the West Water law is is prior appropriation if you were there first. You were senior on the system And so at a really you know indigenous communities were there first But if you're looking at the states from a state perspective California has some of the California and Southern Arizona have some of the most senior claims on the river And I think what the compact did and what they try to do at the time was try to figure out how can we equitably share The river and so they split up that basically in the negotiations. They split up the river You have the upper basins. You've got the head water states the Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and In Colorado and then you've got the lower basin states. I was on in Nevada in California and they split it up based on acre feet And okay, so not percentage Well, there's a nuance there, but we just really at a really high level. There's seven and a half million acre feet That the upper basin got and seven and a half million acre feet the lower basin got and of course there's Mexico There's they they in the framework we negotiated a treaty with Mexico and there's 1.5 million acre feet for and a acre feet is And acre feet is you know, you think about this as two to three households of water use a year or Take a football field Pilot high with water about a foot deep. That's a acre foot All right, so football field covered 12 inches of water right is about what two households will use in a year roughly God seems like a lot man. It's a lot of water. Yeah And at the time and you know, I think it's important, you know, at least in me as a scientist There's a book called science be damped. It's written by Eric Coon and John flood And what they did was they lifted the hood When in terms of what data and what numbers were these negotiators using back in the 20s? Yeah And there are some discrepancies between Do you use a longer period of data that shows like over a longer period of time the averages or Are you gonna or should we you know use a shorter period of of wet data where it looks like the river? Or the river is a little bit provides more water than it does and I think Anyone who's having to make a tough decision especially around water It's so much easier to split a bigger pie than it is a smaller one And so at the time There's politics involved and ultimately the the folks that were negotiating that decided to use a period of of wetter data And so they split the river. I mean, we're talking averages here, so you think it was intentional I mean, it's easier. I don't think it was intentional But that was a number all the seven states agreed to but say 15 or don't 15 was put it in half But now if you look at how much water is on the Colorado River now or it's closer to that 12 13 million acre foot Okay, and so it's it's less. Got it. Got it. You know what's what's kind of funny about this is the thing I think about off when I think about water Availability is um Human memories are so short That when When I was kind of in high school early college age Even before that We would hunt we would trap muskrats a lot and hunt a lot of ducks in standing dead timber Which was all over the place. I mean treat you know 10 inch 12 inch trees Stone dead in marshes And it never like it just did not occur to me All that time to think wait a minute. This must have been dry For all the years it took for these trees to grow and I just assumed that I was living like as everyone does That I was living during normal times. Right Right, and we were shooting wood ducks and mallards out and and just dead timber all over the place all over And now that stuff is the woods your grass and That water's not there Yeah, I mean, but in my head it was just like that's what life is like, you know I was your experience even when you're leaning against the evidence that that's not normal This tree grew here, you know I think that's big questions. What's normal? Yeah. Yeah, so I can see at that time trying to like at that time trying to figure out how much water you got Um unless it unless it was just settled as a percentage, but they're talking about real numbers Yeah, and there's some nuance with the upper basin and percentages, but for the most part at a really high level It splits up the basin since and to do yeah So explain how you since since the 20s or whatever explain like how is use increased so much Is it just a function of there's more people or like who's using up the water? So I think you know when You we have to talk a little bit about the lakes right the lake made in in like pal sure Those are the two big storage reservoirs on the cloud river system And they were designed to store water and basically To store water during what years to be used during dry years And store for how long potentially I mean They're there to store the water until until we need it and so Those those reservoirs we could go back to the acre foot example if they're at they're full Days can store 50 million acre feet of water combined. Oh, oh today those reservoirs And I'm sure you've probably seen the pictures of the bathtub rings at you know, Hoover. Yeah, and like dead dudes coming out of there You know, there's been some of those stories too. Sure. Yeah, you don't believe those stories. I mean Well, I mean the people are discovering things at much lower levels in the lake And so I think today they're roughly 20 25 percent at capacity. They're really low and because of 20 to 25 percent capacity Okay, depending on the diving on the lake. And so I think over time Again back to my back to we have a mismatch between supply and demand how much people are using versus how much water is available Is that right to linkage because there is that shrinkage So tell me how many acre feet they hold 50 million Okay And they're at 20 percent capacity now so to shrinking. Yeah, but that's not them shrinking because people are sucking it out It's a they're shrinking because it's not falling is snow and rain correct is both it's both it is both okay Yeah, it's the use plus coupled with the The changes in our snow and our river flows okay And so I think if you just take the pie and we'll talk really high level right in think about who's using the water You know add uses about 70 80 percent That's used to grow food production in our country If you if you look at your dinner plate in the middle of the winter and you Whether it's broccoli cauliflower your leafy greens or what it says your spinach. There's a there's a good chance That was grown using Colorado River water in places like Yuma, Arizona or California's Imperial Valley Cities also use the water, you know roughly 10 10 10 10-ish percent Um, we talked about this earlier 40 million people drinking water is is from the Colorado River and that's and that supports cities in Albuquerque and Denver and Phoenix Las Vegas and Los Angeles and there's you know some cities are doing a really good job about trying to how we could stretch our very limited water supplies Las Vegas is a great example And if you just take their indoor water use the water that people use in their homes Las Vegas recycles about 99 percent of it They they've made those investments in water recycling and reuse technologies Because it's a it's a city in the middle of the desert and they are grappling with how can we Make our water go further, but it's not just agon cities. You've got industries that are that rely on the water businesses Towns, you know scattered throughout the West as well as fish and wildlife habitat. I mean, I think and for your listeners Steve when I think about water and how does that what does that mean to the two hunters and anglers water is Habitat a gigantic scale Yeah, and so you know, that's an also very important component of of who relies and depends on this river Whether it whether it's you know, are we talking about migration corridors for elk and mule deer You know trout we got cut throat trout and the headwaters Water is the thread that connects all of it when with agricultural increase Our agriculture production are there people that draw From the Colorado River Basin Other cities that aren't in that basin where you're where that water is piped over to somebody else. Sure How did it ever be that they get How do they have a chance at that water? Sure. I mean, I'll take I'll take we'll talk about Colorado, New Mexico and New Mexico because of my my experience and In New Mexico their Colorado River use is actually There's a 26 mile pipe that moves water from the Colorado River Basin to the Rio Grand Basin And that supports drinking water for Santa Fe and New Mexico Um in Colorado there's a trans mountain the big Thompson project is a trans mountain water pipeline that goes underneath the mountains That moves water from the Colorado River to support cities on the front range Denver But like what is their argument to have it that this day hasn't this day has water right. Oh, I see. Because because some portion of the state touches the watershed, they have the right and they can opt. The state can opt to pipe it out of the watershed. That's correct. Yeah. Do you ever see that? Are you familiar with, you know, John Wesley Powell? I am. Yeah. So like, loss is arm in the Civil War and kind of did the, you know, map the grand canyon had all kind of crazy adventures doing that. Have you ever seen those maps he made where he had this proposal? And I don't know if he conceptualized it or if he just popularized the concept, he thought we drew the state lines all wrong. Powell said the western states, and I've seen maps that apply this concept all throughout the country. Powell said the western states should follow water shed lines. So if you imagine, like if you're looking at a map of, you know, a lot of these states are square. Sure. Right. You look at like Wyoming, Colorado, three of mine portions of Montana's border. You get these like geometric shapes. Right. But then if you imagine Montana's western border, which is a jaggedy ass line running all crooked across the map. It's a river. Yeah. It's a drainage. It's a drainage divide. And Powell came up with the idea that that all the borders would look like very jaggedy crooked meandering lines because they should all follow watersheds. And that that way a state would sort of be more, you know, beholden to its environment. Right. Rather than doing like what you're talking about and moving water over mountains. I mean, as a hydrologist, I sure think it would be a lot easier to manage water at a watershed level. I mean, even think about fish and wildlife. And our state wildlife management agencies, the amount of coordination that's required among states. I mean, fish and wildlife don't know a state line. Yeah. Right. And but we still have to figure out ways that we can make investments in their habitat to ensure that they're there. Mm-hmm. When, so with these states having the right to move that stuff over mountains, that's because they're like their chunk. And then when it comes to the the disputes between states, who is the currently, who is the governing, what is the governing body for disputes? Not so much within. I'm sure there's fighting within Colorado about who's getting what water. But who currently makes the rule for who draws what water out of the river? Sure. I think his just backing up really quickly. I think historically there are every state governor appoints a water commissioner to represent their states to negotiate on behalf of their state. Mm-hmm. And historically the seven basin states have always come to an agreement about how we're going to manage, how we're going to manage the system. And that happened in 2007. The states negotiated what was called interim guidelines, basically because they were seeing the conditions on on the ground change. In 2007. Yeah. That's when the guidelines were finalized. And so and so basically what happened is they were like, okay, there's less water. How are we going to, we need some, some rules. And we need to have some certainty about if the lake level was at ex elevation, this is how much water we're going to, we're going to see in a cut for our state. So that was it, those guidelines were temporary. It was a 20 year framework. And it was supposed to just buy time for the states to figure out sort of like what's going to be our long-term game plan. Like how are we going to be able to use within the means of this river? Yeah. And so we're here in 2026. Those guidelines have since expired. But the federal government, the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, they have they own and have a responsibility of operating the dams like meeting Lake Powell. So Lake Powell, that dam, that's the lake behind Glen, Glen Canyon Dam. And Lake Mead is the lake behind Hoover Dam. And so today the seven states are don't have a deal about what's going to happen in the future. They're still at the table negotiating about how we're going to use less water fundamentally. And so the federal government earlier this year because they still have to operate these dams, they'd sort of develop a framework to say, hey, once by some time, we still have to operate these systems. And we want to be able to give states some more time to figure out to make the really tough decisions because it's it's hard. I think at the end of the day, everybody, all seven states are going to have to have, are going to have to have shared sacrifice and they're going to have to compromise. It's not going to be everybody's going to be happy. I think ultimately to get to that deal, people are going to be unhappy because it's hard to cut, you know, to reduce your water use for when you've been relying on that at a higher, at a higher volume over over decades. Whether your season's already open or you're still counting down the days, the meat eater store has what you need to get ready. 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I'd have to go back and look at what were the flows and lake levels doing versus how much water was being used. But I mean, just from 1920s to now, our water use looks different. Our cities are bigger. They're certainly using more water. Ag at the time, I'm going to guess they were using less water in the 1920s and they're using today. And so there's a lot that has changed. And so even though you have what we call paper water rights, like you're entitled to that 7.5 million acre foot figure, ultimately, you know, we have to do the hard thing and look at the data and look at what the river is providing today and make some tough decisions. And it's not painless. Within the seven states, we can talk about the seven states. And there's tribal influence. Who is the voice of wildlife? Who's the voice of fish and wildlife? Adam meeting about who gets water and what we do with the water. Sure. I think you said it well. Fish and wildlife don't have a seat at the table unless somebody brings them there. And so that's why organizations like TRCP, where theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, bring the impacts to fish and wildlife to the table. And I think if if we're thinking about, you know, because and I think and I do think about this, right? We're humans where people, everyone seems to be centered and centric around what's going to happen to our farms and ranches water use. What's going to happen to our cities? What's going to happen to our tribal communities? But, you know, TRCP does a really good job about ensuring that hunters and anglers have a seat at the table and the decisions that impact fish and wildlife, which wildlife habitat are access to be able to hunt and fish are part of that conversation. And and yeah, and that's what that's what I'll say there. But but why would they why does anyone have to listen to that consideration? Because I'm guessing if you go back to the 1920s, there was no wildlife person in the room. Probably not. I know. And at some point, someone had to inject like inject that into the question, like, what about docs? What about fish? Yeah. Why would anybody need to listen to them? Sure. I mean, I think the the federal government in the States are managing lots of different competing uses on the river. So there's some of that there. But that's why, you know, I think conservation and sporting organizations are, you know, make a difference because they do bring those issues to the decision makers. But they have to bring them in at a state level. State and federal level. Okay. You know, and I think, you know, because I think and oftentimes there's such a big focus on all the built infrastructure, right? But having a functioning river, you can't you know, if we don't make investments in our forest health and the headwaters, we do those restoration projects as habitat improvement projects. And there's, you know, a lot of our partners, whether it's trout unlimited, up in the price river in Utah or the nature conservancy and the headwaters, the car whatever, making those wetland restoration investments to ensure that water will say, you know, hang out on the landscape longer, slow the flow of the river. So when we do have big snow years, it's not just melting off quick and moving it all the way down, right? Like functioning rivers that we've got to have functioning rivers that's got to be coupled with all of our built infrastructure. When a state sits and when the different states come together and they start doing what you were saying about making like they're going to have to make sacrifices or make compromises. What are the levers that a state, what levers do they pull when they decide they're going to reduce water usage? Sure. So I think a lot of every state is different because every state has different water rights and how they sort of how their state engineer manages that. And so some of it, some of it is voluntary water conservation, some of it is compensated. There is an infusion of federal funding from the inflation reduction act. The Bureau of Reclamation sort of infused funds to figure out how can we temporarily pay people to use less water most of that happened on farms. Explain that to me. How do you pay someone to use less water? What do you mean? So the Bureau of Reclamation would negotiate with irrigation districts or with farmers to say, hey, we're going to compensate you to whether they, and they would, it's involved. It wasn't being forced, you know, I think that's the key piece here. It was voluntary, you know, and there, there are California made a lot of, you know, California was a key player here, right? They use a lot of water in the Imperial Valley and they entered into agreements with Bureau of Reclamation to use less water. They said, you know, we're not going to take our full allocation, our full delivery on the river. We want that to stay in Lake Mead, the reservoir there to store their water. So that, those are temporary measures. Those are sort of in my mind, bandaid fixes, you know, sort of figure out because it's an adjustment. You know, I think communities are facing that real reality of like, how am I going to be continuing to farm and ranch like I have historically done? But, but, man, I'll not put my question right. Let's say you're, let's say you're an agricultural producer in Imperial Valley in California. Sure. And you're, you're managing, thought whatever thousands of acres of, of like food crops. And you historically had access to enough water to do whatever, whatever acreage, whatever crops like those you wanted to do. And all of a sudden now it's like, there's not as much snow, rain is falling in different patterns. There's not as much water. I can see that someone, on one hand, I can see that someone from the government goes in them and says, like, tough titty, this is not as much water, right? But you're talking about compensating them like, what is the argument, what is the compensation argument? You're, you're saying to them, you can't have as much water. So here's money to make up for the money you would have made selling produce. Like, like, what form does it come? It's complicated. And I don't have, I don't necessarily have a good answer for you. So, so part of it. We just look at the lower basin, the states between California, Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead is that reservoir there at the Nevada, Arizona border. And so the, the beer reclamation is looking at lake levels. I think all water users are looking at lake levels. And then there's a decision made. And oftentimes the three states will sort of agree, like, how much water is going to get released? And then the beer vacuumation will release it. And so that stuff happens in real time. And I think the complicated factor here is that the water rights, what you have on paper, like, how do you rectify the difference about what you're entitled to versus what's actually the difference? For sure. What's actually in the river? And so I think in the, in the 2022, 2023 timeframe, there is a real, you know, sort of crisis on the river where we, where at least, you know, in the lower basin, there is hard conversations about we just don't have enough water that we traditionally did. And so what came we figure out about like how much, you know, what is Arizona's water reduction going to look like? What's California's water reduction going to look like? What's Nevada's water reduction going to look like? And those three states came to the agreement to, to, to share that shortage. And so it's, it's ultimately, we come back to this collaboration piece like where the hard decisions are made by working together so that there's, and so, and a lot of that too will depend on, and it's complicated. And I'm, you know, I'm not an expert on all of the nuance here. But so at the state level, they'll sort of make those decisions and then that will have real impacts on, on the farm. And I think farmers will have to make decisions based on sort of what their allocation is going to look like that year. What, can you remind me what percentage of the water coming out of the rivers being used for agriculture? About 70, 80 percent. And can you remind me there are pieces of the pie? Minus the cities about 10 percent. And then of course, you've got a factor in evaporation and system loss, just, you know, rivers are leaky. Yeah. So the fact that there's evaporation and the fact that rivers are leaky is no one's going to do anything about that. You know, I could put like SRAN wrap over Lake Mead or something, you know what I mean? So how was the, like, I'm familiar with this conversation when I really, when I set up, like I've, I've always read articles and headlines about this issue. I'm familiar with it being addressed as an urban problem. And I feel like, and I want to talk about Las Vegas, the recycling program. But I'm more accustomed with it being that more and more people want to move to these places. These places are exploding in population. There's all these new cities. But in hearing from you, I feel like I've been slightly misled because how is it not just more like, why is it not more, more strictly a conversation about agriculture? That's part of it. But it's, it's all the part. I mean, but it's 70% or just say 80 or 70% 70, 80, okay. Like it's an egg thing and I'm not even blaming eggs. I get it. Like we have to eat. Like I'm a big, like I'm just generally a big farm ranch supporter, cows, not condos, kind of guy. I look at farmland as wildlife habitat at ranch land as wildlife habitat. Love to see it. Like I want that community to thrive. But not but and it just feels to me like that, that talking about human population is kind of a, almost a distraction. I mean, am I wrong? I don't, I don't think so, but I think I think one of the major misconceptions of western water is these dichotomies, right? It's fish versus farm. It's urban versus rural. That's why I feel the whole way. Everything versus everything. That's my one view. Ag versus conservation. But I think really when we're looking at trying to figure out how we're going to manage our system and live within our means and try to figure out what those solutions are, we know, we have some of those tools and we know that partnerships partnering with our farmers and ranchers is better than going around them. Right. We've got to figure out tools and solutions that work for everybody. We know that voluntary conservation works. And we know that modernizing irrigation infrastructure works and I'm talking about there's a lot of, and if you're looking out west on, from an irrigation perspective, a lot of these canals are, are, are earthen canals. They're not lined. And so right, they're leaky. And so like, where, you know, where does it make sense to make those investments to line the canals to be more efficient? Where does it make sense to put a, put a automation on a gate so that you're, when you're opening that gate to be more precise about actually delivering the amount of water that needs to be, instead of running that sucker all summer. Right. And, you know, and I, I think one of the things that surprised me and, you know, I, I recently just over the spring went on a tour of, of various locations in the lower Colorado River. And I think what's surprising to me is I think there's this misconception that, um, everything is modernized and automated. And it's just not, it's expensive. And it, it takes time and investment to, you know, whether it's to get a grant from the federal government to help, to help modernize and improve irrigation efficiency. Yeah. Um, it's trying to figure out, you know, can we be creative about conservation organizations working with farmers and ranchers? Like, can they make small adjustments on farm that can have a water efficiency benefit, but also efficient wildlife habitat benefit? There's lots of tools in our toolbox. It's just the challenges doing them over the long term and at scale and in a meaningful way. Most stuff comes down to cost, expensive, uh, I want to talk about that, but I realized, I want, I want to back up for a minute on like very basic hydrology, because I was having this argument with my kid, I explained to you earlier when we were talking, I had this argument on my 16 year old, the other day. Maybe I was wrong. I was telling him water is, like, like, basically water isn't created or destroyed. That's right. It's like, there's a finite, sat amount of water on planet earth. It could be in clouds. It could be in the ocean, it could be in glaciers. It could be in glaciers, aquifers, but there's like a, there's an amount of water and it's just there. So when we talk, can you explain when they got a very basic level and you can stick it to the Colorado River as much as possible, when we, even the fact that we're saying using water, since you're not, since you're not using it up, what do we mean? What do, like, I kind of know what I mean, but I've never articulated it. What, like, what do I mean when I say you're using the water? So I think for people, that's water coming out of your tap, drinking it, using it to wash dishes, using it to water your lawn, for farmers, that's, that is, you know, oftentimes you have diversion off of a river, that then we'll put water into a canal, and then they will use to water crops to grow food for our country or to grow hay and alfalfa to feed our livestock. And And you know this better than I do on fish and wildlife habitat, like how do they use water and they need water to survive? Sure, but what is happening to it within, like if you imagine within the base, like, I imagine if I'm where I live, my, uh, there's a creek, bridge or creek would be my most immediate drainage, okay? If I'm running my faucet, you know, my water's not pulled from there, but well, I also have, we have a well. So if I'm running my faucet and you'd say, like, I'd yell it because like, you're wasting the water. How is the water? How is it not just that you're just diverting the water? I mean, you are diverting some of it. And I think a lot of, if there's a lot of variation in cities, right? We talked about Las Vegas, basically all the water that goes into your drain after you shower, you know, goes into pipes that go to treatment facilities that treat that recycle and treat that water that can go back into the pipes and back to your home, right? They are, they're a system that's very efficient, but there are other towns and communities that don't have, that don't have, that don't use that technology. And so walk me through where the, what, like, the where that used water is going. So some of it gets discharged back into, to rivers. Okay. So it's raising the river back up. Sure. And some of it, I mean, there's, there's examples where, depending on it, a lot of it's, there's complications, there's new ones here, we used to recharge groundwater. They might apply some of that water in targeted ways to recharge groundwater. Everyone's water use is different, right? Not everybody is, is water that comes out of their tap comes from a river. Some of it comes from the ground. And so there's very, there's a lot of variation there. And I think it really depends on where you live. I want to bring up an extreme form of, of diversion. Okay. It would be like, but, you know, you know, you know, do you have little kids? I have two kids. Okay. A big part of having kids yelling at them about playing with the garden hose. We're just entering that area. I'm just standing there for hours on them, just running the garden hose. We always laugh because we have a shack in Alaska. And we just pump water out of our, there's a creek that flows out under the corner of our shack. It's on pilings, right? We pump water, we draw water out of the creek. And basically use, watch it flow back into the creek, right? So it's the one place where kids can go and just stand there. Eight hours a day playing, playing with a hose. And you can't, you realize they're, they're not way. It's, it's, you can literally watch it flow back into the creek. Yeah. So it's, it's, the water has detained for a minute. It's diverted, but it's not gone. So on a very, like I'm trying to get at, is that on a very basic hydrology level? How, how is, how is egg, like, how is egg using the water in a way that we talk about it as though it's gone? Sure, because they're, because from that point on, it's not accessible. Right. Is, is that the issue in some ways too, right? I mean, I think you think about runoff from it from the water running off of a field, right? And so depending on where you are, some of some of that's captured and then reused, right? Can come all the way down a system. Some of it, the water quality might not be good to grow crops in, you know, because nutrients and fertilizers are applied on farm, depending on the crop that they're growing. And so it depends. Some of that is just, it's water that might, the water quality piece is, is a component. Yeah. And so I think as rain falls to snow in our mountains, right? And that, that snow map, that snow melt, that snow melts, it filters into the ground. And it eventually might, it eventually goes into a river until it flows down. There's, you know, diversions off the river. There's the lakes that store the water and then they release the water that could be used to sort of move that water to cities or to, to, uh, farms. There's pipes that move that water across mountains to cities like Denver, yeah. And cities like in New Mexico. And so it, it depends. And I'm not an expert on in terms of like, where does all the water go after it gets applied on farm? Yeah. That's not my area of expertise. Yeah. But it somehow winds up back in the system somewhere. It can. Yeah. Can you, can you touch on a thing we discussed earlier that, that jump over to a different system that at times the Rio Grande is just not flowing. Correct. When did that, when did that begin to happen? So I think it's important to know for the Rio Grande, the Rio Grande is just, has the baseline is getting drier. And again, similar to the Colorado River, there's, yeah, outside of use, outside of use. Yeah, I mean, use coupled with the baseline getting drier. And so you just have a lot less water to start with. And so, I mean, I, you know, I pulled data from the US Geological Stream Gages at, you know, on the Rio and in Albuquerque in New Mexico. And I want to say it was 80 plus days of just no flow to summer. This summer, this summer, 80 days, where if you look up the flow, it's zero. Zero's dry. And there's a, a late zero CFS zero CFS. There is a monsoon and September. They really just say that just as zero or whatever. Yeah. And she's like, huh? And so I mean, that's the reality. I mean, that's just, that's what's happening today. And so, you know, that has real impacts on people that rely on that river. And with that water, you know, no one's farmed with that water. That water would be, it just would be the, maybe it's just not like that reality would be fixed. Just because like, like, like, not even, that's not even entirely, that river is not even entirely a victim of human use. It's a victim of climate as both both. Yeah. So even out, like, like outside of agriculture, that would, could potentially still be happening. Yeah. I mean, if I had a crystal ball, I'd love to know the answer to that. But I mean, a lot of it's, it's over. It's water use coupled with drier conditions, just period. So are there people on that Rio Grande question? Remember when I'm talking about, you have this paper, you have this legal document that says, like, hey, I'm entitled to blank water, right? You have a water right. And this is a legally has traditionally been a legally binding document. But then you get a new situation where it's like, body, the water is not there. Like, I don't know what to tell you. It's, it's not that I'm keeping it from you. It's just that it's not there, right? So if you have a water right, let's say you're below where the Rio Grande is zero CFS and you have a water right. Do you have a complaint? I mean, you have a complaint, but do you, do you, I mean, like, what comes of you? Or do you go talk to the person up river and say, hey, you need to let more through? Because I'm not able to draw what I'm legally entitled to entitled to. Yeah, it's, it's complicated. I'm not a lawyer, but, but, but these decisions are sort of later, the, the compacts. Like the Rio Grande also has a compact too. It's a compact between New Mexico, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. That sort of governs how much Colorado was on the hook to deliver to New Mexico. New Mexico is on the hook to deliver to Texas. And there's some flexibility in there about what's going to happen during shortages. But, but still ultimately, folks have to figure out how to use less water. And so, and I'll say on litigation, I think litigation is costly and doesn't always necessarily land the solution that works for communities. Yeah. I think ultimately it's getting all those water users at the table to figure out. You know, there's factoring in water rights, because that's, that's a real legal framework. But that, but that legal framework isn't going to produce water. Yeah. You know, and so they have to, these are hard conversations that are happening in the Rio that are happening in the Colorado River basin and across other Western rivers. And I think in my mind, the best solutions are actually done locally. How can we look at our rivers and bring people together? Our conservation organizations, our tribes, our local and state decision makers, our water users, our farms and ranches. How can we all come up with a, with a plan to figure out how, how we can use our water? And one example, you know, and, and, and I got exposed to this when I was at Washington State University, my PhD advisor was working on a project in the Yakama River basin. This is in the state of Washington, it's center of the state. And they were having a challenge with their, with water supply. And I think ultimately the water users sort of had a, had a reckoning. They were like, okay, we need to figure out a game plan. What's our long-term game plan to figure out our water supply? It was tribes. It was, it was local and state decision makers. It was the farmers and ranches in that region. And it was conservation organizations. And they developed a long-term strategy about what investments needed to be made on, you know, upgrading, aging infrastructure, the irrigation, moderizing irrigation infrastructure. What investments need to be made in the headwater? So, ensure there's, there's a water for trout. And how can we ensure that tribes can effectively use their water? I think there's a, there's a sort of an, you know, for tribes, they were their first. And they are truly the most senior in the system. Yeah. And they might have, they might have an entitlement to that water, but can they benefit from it? Do they actually have the funding and infrastructure needed to, to use that water in their homes or in their communities? And so they came up with what's called the Accoma Basin Integrated Plan. And, you know, the, all those water users together, and they're working, you know, a project by project. They're working on trying to get funding to support it and to figure out, you know, how are we going to make investments in the forest? How can we line canals to improve irrigation and efficiency? And so those, those are real success stories. Because it starts local. What would it, if you go to, if you go to the Colorado in the Rio Grande, before we get into like, So before we get into reality about how this problem will get remedied or stop being so severe, before we go to reality, let's play like fantasy for a minute. Okay. What would it, I guess the question, is it out of the question that just weather is going to save us, meaning like rain and snow, it just like rain and snow ain't come into the rescue. I think it sure doesn't seem like that. I think that's right. It sort of goes back to like my questions, what's our new normal? You know, I think, you know, if you spend time outdoors, you're looking at the landscape and even if you spend time looking at data, like I do, you're looking at our snow is not as thick as it used to be. Our drier soils are sucking that water up and they aren't making it to the rivers and lakes like they used to be. And so I don't think that, you know, we can pray for rain, but I think we have to have that realistic conversation about living within our means and finding a solution that works for everybody. Most lamos in the world get their meat at the grocery store, but we prefer to pack ours out of the field. That's why we made the meat eater grocery bags ultra lightweight, breathable nylon game bags that cool your meat fast and keep it clean from the field to the cooler with reflective print and features to help you find your game bags in the dark, meaning like reflective stuff, so your flashlight shines off it, even when you got to hang them way up in a tree. We have two sets, okay? We got sets for whether you're packing out a deer or whether you're packing out an elk or moose. And they're reusable season after season. I've had some of mine for many years. I just, I give them a good rinse, run them through my wash machine, hang them up to dry. These are your grocery bags. These are thinking man's grocery bags. Get over to the meateaterstore.com and get yourself a brand new set of excellent game bags for this common season. I kind of mentioned this to you before we started recording where I was like the one scenario that I can't picture happening. I can't picture a scenario happening where a state says, hey, no more people can move to this town. Right. Phoenix is done. Right. Right. Whatever, whatever. It's done that the population is capped. I can't, I sort of can't picture that there would be farms where the farmer is like, I'm out of business. I'm done. There is no water. Am I wrong that we could get to a point where you really see sort of like that there's, that the demographics of the country have to shift according to water loss and water use. I mean, if I had a crystal ball, I'd love to answer that question. I don't know the answer to that, but I do, you know, I sort of, I view it in some ways too that, yeah, I mean, I sort of have the same philosophy as you, but I don't know. I don't have a good answer there. Like, you feel that something will happen, but it won't be that. It won't be that they can't rule. I mean, I think, I mean, I don't know, maybe, maybe. But I do think that maybe our cities will, their water and for structure will look differently. They'll have more Las Vegas pepper, Las Vegas is peppered through the West in terms of the water recycling infrastructure. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately, I mean, water out West is cheap, so to speak. And so I think a lot of these, the solutions that we know about, then we know that work sometimes are expensive. And so that's a, it's a real factor. And, you know, we want to make sure that people can afford their drinking water and not make it so costly that we're pricing people out of the cities that they grew up in. So it's a real factor of what are, what are your managers are grappling with every day? Yeah. The cost thing is interesting that, that you do, there's some things that are inexpensive enough that you just sort of, you use what you want, right? Like at home, you know, I don't know, it takes something like, like, like, not many parents yell at, would yell at their kids about using too much flour, right? Right. And some things, you know, I don't know, it's just his flour, right? Or like too much, you're using up too much white rice, you know, but you might, you might go bust your balls about butter or orange juice or something. You know, I'm saying like, there's like a perception of use and cost where you admonish people for wasting things of high value. And right now with like gas and diesel at these historically high prices, people are honest to God, changing behaviors. 100%. When they make these predictions about how much fourth of July traffic, there will be how much memorial day traffic, there will be on highways. They factor in the cost of gas because the cost of gas is going to dictate how people, how far people are willing to drive, meaning you're making like day to day logistical adjustments because the resource is so expensive. When you consider this puzzle of water use, how do people factor in like, well, maybe water should be, I don't know how you put a price, like how do you probably know how you price enough? Maybe water should be two bucks a gallon. Yeah. Like what would that do to water use? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's easier to do with cities, right? So you could sort of tear the, like, and I'm not, this is not my area of expertise, but I've certainly looked at the data of like, you have a water utility that provides drinking water to the community and you pay X amount of, of you pay X amount at a rate for your gallons per day. Then if you use more, you pay more. So there's, I mean, there's people studying this, I thought, I'm, this is not my area of expertise about like, how can the change in water price, you know, have a, have an impact on behavior. But it's a factor, right? I mean, it's a thing people look at 100% and I am, Melanie's personal opinion. I do feel like water is too cheap out West. And they get some point, maybe that, maybe that is a factor in trying to figure out, like, do we look at the cost of things? I don't know. Where is, where is water, um, not cheap? If water's cheap in the American West, where is it not cheap? Um, you know, I, I spent the last decade in Washington, D.C. and I'll, I'll say my water bill is pretty high there. Okay. Um, but I don't know. I don't, I don't have a good answer to there. I think in a lot of it depends on where, where the source is coming from. Yeah. Is it scarce? Yeah. But like, what are the, what are the adjustments if, if you crystal ball it, right? And that the weather doesn't save us. What are the adjustments and deals that will get made in the Colorado Basin, right? Like, let's, let's say you were, let's just say you were had some kind of authority where you're like, in the end, like, I'll do it. I'll make the decisions. Here's what's going to happen. Like, what is going to be different about life? Everybody's at, that's in the field of water management, which is they had that. But I think, fundamentally, I think there is no magical solution or silver bullet that's going to get us out of the situation that we're in now. But we, we have tools and we have solutions that work. We know that voluntary water conservation on farms and ranches works. We know what, tell me more of what that means. Water conservation. I'm going to say voluntary water conservation. People not being forced to, right, where I'm not going to come in and say that you're forced to have your water cuts, right? And so it's allowing farmers and ranchers to make decisions that work for them in terms of what they're going to apply on the field. But you mean like, like, literally it would be someone goes to a producer, an agricultural producer, or they're just aware that there's water problems. And someone says, please, out of the, out of the goodness of your heart, can you do x, y, and z, and like, we have money to help make these changes. Like, this is a thing that's happening out on the landscape. Yeah. And I'll say it's a little complicated. There's agreements that are in place, right? So like in the upper basin, in the lower upper basin, there's our, like, water contribution programs where they're trying to, you know, work with agricultural producers to say who would like to volunteer to use less water. And they'll, well, there'll be variations. So some, you know, a farmer in Colorado might just decide, you know what? I'm going to use less water to irrigate my crops this year. It's called deficit irrigation, or maybe I'm going to take some x amount of acres out of production this year and follow my fields. And then they'll get compensated for that. So there's, there's programs that exist there. And I'm not a total expert on this. I know enough to be dangerous. So that's, that's voluntary water conservation. I mean, we talked about water recycling and reuse and, you know, desalination technologies where, where it makes sense, like, you know, can cities make those investments. It's expensive, just straight up, it's expensive. We know that habitat and restoration projects work, you know, they to move water out onto the landscape, to store it there, to get rivers functioning and behaving like rivers historically have been doing during a important component to, to, to rivers and water should health in our, in our water supply. And I think it's, it's making sure our communities are prepared and have the tools necessary to be able to manage what the flexibility they need to adapt. And I think, you know, I was, you know, I was in prepping for this podcast. I was, you know, trying to think of, you know, what were some tangible examples or things that we could think about. I think, you know, when we're talking about wildlife managers, and if you're managing an elk herd, you don't wait for it to crash and hope things work out, right? You, you monitor the conditions, you know, as a manager, you adapt and you plan ahead. Pay attention to trends. Exactly. And understand there's nuance there. What are, what our management needs to take some lessons from wildlife managers? Mhm. Um, with the, I don't know if you're familiar with this. You see a lot now, you can talk about like rivers. behaving like they like they ought to behave. Are you familiar with the argument you see it more and more now? But they argue about like the importance of beavers on the landscape. Sure. So that's one where like they hold a lot of water back with dams. But what are other like what are other ways in which the rivers aren't when you say that they're not behavior behaving like the audio like what what are they doing or not doing that they used to do? You've mentioned that a couple of times. Yeah, sure. And we can get back to beavers in a sec. So I think just just basics, right? You've got snow in the mountains. And historically that snow melted, it would recharge groundwater. Groundwater would flow into rivers or you know, it would flow into the rivers that would make it into our lakes. I think now as there's warmer temperatures across the west and that's changing how water moves across the landscape. Maybe you have less snowpack. Maybe you have those dry soils are actually sucking it up and that water isn't making it to the ground. Isn't making it to the aquifer or isn't making it to the river. And so, you know, where maybe you have a big rain event and maybe that water just moves really quickly through the system instead of slowly moving across the landscape. But how would you fix that though? So there are a lot of great restoration and habitat conservation projects that are happening all throughout the west and all throughout the Colorado basin. So an example, and we just TRCP just led a tour with some of our partners, National Wildlife Foundation and the National Forest Foundation. National Wildlife Federation, excuse me, in the National Forest Foundation, where we did a site tour is on the White Forest in Summit County in Colorado. It's called the Soda Creek project. And they built beaver dam analogs, right? We put, you know, you know, the folks that did the restoration project put like logs in the river into basically to mimic habitat for beaver to create these ponds essentially to like, you know, to restore that wetland there to get more water out onto the landscape. That's important for bird, migratory bird, you know, waterfowl duck habitat. It's also important for connect, you know, because oftentimes I think in the west too, especially with warmer temperatures, is rivers are becoming disconnected. And so like moving that water on the landscape, making sure our streams are connected, creating habitat for trout, whether that's like putting in giant boulders or logs across a river to create that that that key habitat for slowing the moving of water down, slowing the moving of water down. And in the goal for that sort of creek project is, you know, the goal is to get bevers to move in and to continue to maintain that work. So I think it's, it's not just doing a one off project. It's going back to make sure that when we know when you do that restoration project is still functioning and is it still having that benefit on the landscape. I mean, it's doing all of these projects together. Every individual project adds up over a longer period of time, you know, not just doing a quick, quick, quick, a quick fix. Let's not, you know, we're not going to just infuse some money to do a bunch of different projects and then and go away. We have to figure out that sustained pace of individual projects, lining our canals, upgrading our agriculture and infrastructure, making those investments in in drinking water and infrastructure as well. All of that adds up. What will be, if you go back to that 1922 summit, wherever they call it, get together, deal, what will be the next sort of like rule? I mean, will ever be that everyone comes together, the states come together and they go like, Hey, it's a new reality, man. There's 25% less water. Let's make a big old bargain and everybody's going to sign it and then we're all going to agree on that for the next bunch of decades. Is there a version, like, is there a version of something like that that will happen where it just brings like absolute certainty to the, to the solution and everyone's going to, you know, get it notarized and that's just how we're going to live from then on. Sure. I don't, I don't view that we're going to change our water right law, of course, I just don't think it's going to happen. If I was water's are, that's the first thing I'd change. Really? Just take it off. Let's look at how much water system we developed the system. Yeah. And like, you could take into consideration who is there first and like, you know, there's lots of different nuances. So that's just Melanie's personal opinion. But give me, give me a hit that like, like, you know, I realized you probably don't want to get all kinds of mean letters to people with water rights, but, but lay out for me. Just, just conversationally lay out for me, like, what is the problem with water law? When you say that it could be revised. Like, what is the problem with that? I think the challenge is if, if there's a senior water rights holder at the very bottom of the river, under the, under the current water law firm, and I'm talking at a really high level, you know, that's a lot of nuance here. You need to name names. Yeah. But yeah, but like, the people upstream have an obligation to deliver the water because they are senior on the system. And so all those, all the people upstream are junior. Yeah. And so, and that's challenging. And so that's just, it's just the reality of the situation. So I think in terms of today, but this is not likely, you're saying that this is not just like people that talk about having a new kinds, having a new constitutional convention, like scrap our constitution. But this is why I think that at least in the Colorado River basin, there, there has been some success because the seven states have gotten together, understanding the law of the river, all these previous compacts and laws and court cases and everything else, to sort of have those hard conversations about like, how are we going to manage our system? We don't have a deal today. The seven basin states don't have a deal today. But they're working toward that. And I remain hopeful that they're going to get there because at the end of the day, the states want to come together to figure out an agreement. They don't want the federal government telling them how much water they can't use. So when do they, like, when will they make a deal? Or is it unlikely to happen? I believe it will happen. I had an answer to that quite. I think a lot of people are wondering when the seven basin states are going to come together with a deal. But right now there's not like a binding thing. I mean, you have, you sort of had the foundational agreements, the law of the river and the beer of reclamation and the federal government had a step in to sort of like have a temporary game plan about how they're going to operate the system. But there's no sort of those, those interim guidelines, those 2007 interim guidelines expired. So there's not, there's not a seven basin state deal or agreement about how to what's the best way to manage our, our, our river. Not right now. There will be. I have hope. But is it, remember how when we started out talking, I was saying, I feel like I've been reading the same story for forever. I'll be reading this story for the second half of my life. I'm sure. I think so. It's not, it's not going to be like, Hey, we figured it out. You know, I mean, maybe, I mean, maybe in the sense of that there's a real reckoning with we're going to have to have a different water use in a, in a different way to manage our water. We can't be doing it like we did a few decades ago. That's just, we can't, there's just not enough water to go around. Yeah. But really when we're like, we're thinking about success. I think a lot about, you know, what is success is one is to make sure there's water in the river. Right. And I think a lot of people don't even think about water until it's not there. Yeah. Oh, 100% right. And there's like a lot of folks think, you know, and conservation is part of that. It's like, we got to figure out what solutions we can do today to prevent that water from going away. Right. We wouldn't continue to have water in the river. And that's that upstream work you're talking about. But even in the downstream, I mean, in Arizona, they're, I toured a project in Numa, Arizona where they restored wetlands along the Colorado River, which used to be, you used to have a bunch of trash. And it was overgrown with salt, with salt, seeder, and risk. And they pulled out all those invasive species. They planted willows and cottonwoods and mosquito trees. And there's a recreation trail there. So like, there's projects that happen throughout the basin. It's not just in the headwaters. And that, you know, that was a, that was a success project in the lower basin. Yeah. What, if you look around nationally, what would you picture being the, where will this conversation be happening next? The conversation about like, like where you said, no one thinks about water, so you don't have it. Yeah. Right. It's, it, I grew up in Michigan. There was not a daily conversation about water use, you know, you weren't, people would irrigate. They'd suck water out of some local lake and spray their lawn all summer. People didn't look mean at them. Do you know what I mean? It was just like, it was, it just wasn't a conversation. Sure. Right. I lived in all kinds of northern tier states and, um, Alaska, whatever. Most of the time you're not having a water argument. Sure. Like where, if you had to picture what parts of the country would you, would you, if you had to say, like, Hey, um, be advised. This could be you down the road. Like where will the next spots be? Yeah. Where, where, where there's like a water war. Sure. I don't know the answer to that question, but I, but I'll take us back that in terms of, and we talked about people don't know, or think about water until it's gone. I'll encourage all of your listeners learn where your water comes from. Learn about what's happening in your community, about what's impacting where your water comes from. I think one of the things that surprised me most, and when I travel, I always look up where is the drinking water coming from? So just curious. There's a lot of people I just don't know. They have no idea. They turn their tap on and don't even think about where it comes from or where it goes. Yeah. I did a, I did a book, um, I did a book about raising outdoor kids. I published it a few years ago called Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, but in there one of the things I suggest is that your kid learns wherever you live, that your kid learns the water that's by them and it's path to the sea, and that they'd be able to walk through like, well, I'm on this creek, which flows into that river, which flows into that river, and that dumps into the sea, as being like a fundamental thing that I think I'm agreeing with you, like a fundamental thing that I think people need to understand. And I've often joked that there's states where there's states where more people know that than other. And I think, I mean, I think the West gets a lot of attention with drought, right? Like, you know, and a lot of the wildfire activity, et cetera. But like, we, we, and I lived in DC, but there's still a drought in on the Potomac. We get the drinking water in DC. It comes from the Potomac River. And there is, you know, there is sort of a real, uh-oh, the intake structures that the pipes that pull water out of the Potomac to deliver water to people in DC. We were starting to get to a moment where I think the DC water utility was starting to think about like, okay, we need to think a little bit more about water conservation. So even places that appear water rich, right? Their rivers are huge. Yeah. They're going to have those. I think that's going to be a problem that many communities across the US are going to be grappling with. Yeah. You'll know what they wanted to ask you about is, does in the future do our, is it in the future are our coastlines, like line with desalination and plants? Do you know what, like, what's up, what's up with that? I mean, I think so desalination basically takes salty water and cleans it so you could, so folks can drink it or use it for whatever they need to use it for. Um, there's a lot of focus on ocean desalination because you're close to an ocean. There's a lot of water there. There's also brackish groundwater, like salty groundwater. The community is like in Texas. There's a lot of, you know, salty groundwater. They're looking at desalination as a tool. I think a part of it is like, does the math pencil out and what's, what, what's our source water? Like what, what are we currently using? Does water recycling make more sense? Does water reuse make more sense? Um, I think every community is going to be different. I don't really see a, a universe made, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I could be wrong about just being a bunch of desal plants up and down the coasts. Yeah. And I think if you were in that situation, it would be that you're looking at like, um, you'd be more aware probably, like in places where that's the reality, least, and elsewhere, you're, you're probably looking more at, you'd probably, those people probably learn to think of water more as a thing that costs blank. Right. Like a thing that costs ex per gallon and you view it like a product you're buying. When I'm messing with my kids, not really messing with, but just trying to get them thinking about things the right way. I'll tell them while we're eating dinner and they're sick of the conversation, but I'll be like, in your life, people will, there will be people that are having wars over water. I'm trying to scare them good. Like people will be having wars over water and they'll be eating bugs. You know, I tell them this all the time. They kind of dismiss it, but I'm just trying to get them prepared for the idea that like, there will come a time when there's things that you're taking for granted that will not, that will not be available. 100% now is, and I'm trying to pound in their head that like, they're going to need to learn like, maybe not them, but their kids, someone's going to need to learn to think of water and food differently. 100%. I think success looks like if our, if our kids don't have to take the stuff or granted and don't have to think about it. Yeah. I can see that being a big way toward a big way toward the solution is if, if, if more and more people viewed it as a commodity or more and more people have viewed it as it's like a finite thing that you're in some way or another because everybody's paying utilities. Right. Maybe, maybe you rent and is baked into your rent, but like your rent reflects the, like, even if you don't pay the utilities directly, the part of your rent that comes in reflects the purchase of the utilities that is going in the place. But we just don't think of it. Yeah. I agree. That's a thing. I agree. I need to get my kids that book that you wrote. Don't, don't be fooled. I'll definitely, my kids will know where their, where their water comes from. Yeah. What's not in the book is scaring them about eating bugs and having words over water. You have to just kind of add, live that in. But it is, it is like a, it is like a, it's a shift in mindset. Yeah. 100%. And I think when it, so when I, what started my way of working the water, and when I was, I got my PhD at Washington State University and I did this project in the Spokane River basin. And we, and it wasn't, and my PhD advisor's philosophy was, let's solve a problem that the community wants to be solved. Let's just not think about something like that. We want to, that work, personally, interested in. And so my project evolved. And one of the questions was, how can we improve water management in the Spokane River basin? That's in Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho. It's a tributary that flows into the Columbia River. There's a groundwater source there. They're really connected. And so I built a model with water users there. We ran scenarios, et cetera. And we facilitated a lot of conversations about, you know, how can groundwater pumping in Idaho, impact flows in the river, et cetera. But ultimately, what came out of that was sort of surprising. As a water managers, we're actually like, hey, we actually need to do a water education campaign because people don't know where their water comes from. And we need to be coordinated across state lines and across the whole basin so that the message is the same. One on, where does your water come from, but also on just what can you do in your household to conserve water? Yeah. And so, you know, it's one of those, one of those things where it is imprinted in me in terms of a lot of people just don't know where their water comes from. You know, a thing I wanted to come back on. So kind of a last point to bring out with you is you brought it up, but we never really dove into it. You're talking about recycling, water and Las Vegas, where I would view if I go to Las Vegas periodically for work stuff. And I'd see all those big fountains, you know, and I'd be like, how dare you? How dare you when, when I have to read all these articles about all this water use and here you got these big damn fountains, but I had no idea that there was that they're recycling 90 some percent of the water in the city. Yeah. Yeah. And the indoor water use 99 percent is recycled in the Las Vegas area. And Las Vegas has different rules about, you know, what type of water gets applied on golf courses. They have incentive programs for encouraging people to pull out their grass and have zero escaping because outdoor water use is still a good chunk of the water use in Las Vegas. And so, in my mind, they really are pushing the needle on being innovative, trying to stretch that limited water supply. And like, but that's, that's like a regulation thing like regulating how much water people use local and state decision makers makers putting it in there. Like you can't, you can't do this or can't do that. What's the call where you tear your grass out as zero escaping? You just go a gravel. Yeah. Put native plants in that don't need a lot of water. Yeah. Yeah. That so that's like a, that's like a regulated thing there. I don't know for sure, but I, but I, I'm fairly certain that it's a voluntary thing that, you know, the, and I don't know exactly who, who funds it. But the city and the Southern Nevada Water Authority are involved about trying to figure out how we can pay people to pull their grass out. Yeah. With the recycling waters, it's an interesting concept to imagine that you'd ever have a closed loop system on water, like picture that you'd have a municipality that was so good at water recycling that it was like, there was just like a set amount of water within the system. And it just gets reused. Yeah. I think the harder fact is, is there be like, it'll be like coolant in your truck, you know, it's like getting used and re, you know, now and then you like, change it out or whatever, but it just is living in there, flowing through the system. Sure. Instead of something totally passed through like fuel, you know? Yep. Yeah. So are you like deep down or do you sit at pessimism or optimism about the Colorado River? I'm an optimist. Really? I am. Because I, I, I really do believe we have the tools in our toolbox and in the solutions there. It's, it's not going to be painless. I think everybody is going to experience just comfort. And, and whatever that that seven base and state agreement looks like, there are hard decisions that people are making today about what the future of our water use looks like. But it's not all doom and gloom, you know, I am hopeful. There's, we talked a lot about, you know, this water conservation on farm, we talked about the importance of investing in restoration and habitat projects to help rivers function like they used to. And then, and really comes down to our local communities, getting people at the table to have those tough conversations, to figure out where, where, where do we have common ground, and where can we map out a plan to get us to where we need to be based on the water that we have today? Yeah. Hopefully some fish at the table too. 100%. We're going to dock an fish in at the table. Yeah. Man, thanks for coming on and explaining all the smell. Thanks for having me, Steve. Again, we're, but we've been speaking. with Dr. Melanie Thornton, who is with Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, as the Western. A Senior Director of Western Water. Senior Director of Western Water. Thanks so much. Of course. And I think if you're interested in wanting to stay engaged or become involved in water resources, follow us on social media at the TRCP or visit our website at trcp.org. Thank you. Thank you. If you open your truck door in October and it looks like a hurricane rolled through a sporting good store, you are dealing with something called CAB Chaos. On washboard dirt roads, loose binyles slide off the seat, gear rolls across the floor boards, water bottles are everywhere, well FHF gear. An X Overland built a modular system engineered to keep your gear organized while driving. 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