Water wrongs: why can't we get it right the first time?

• Author: Getches, David

Water policy has faltered throughout the ages. Our water decisions have often created more problems than they have resolved, leaving severe environmental and social disasters in their wake. In most cases, it is not that we did not know better. On the contrary, we have been making the same errors for thousands of years by replicating policies that failed societies both ancient and modern. But this destructive trend need not continue and can be reversed by integrating and accepting old knowledge and responding to new knowledge about the uncertainty and limits of water supply. It requires modesty about out ability to control nature.

The stories begin in Iraq, long predating the multiple sins of Saddam Hussein. What we know as Iraq today was once Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent region where civilization began. For thousands of years societies flourished in the sprawling lands where Iraq, Syria, and Turkey converge. Here originated the first written language, sophisticated commercial systems, metal tools, and art, thousands of years before Christ. (1)

These scientific and cultural advances were achievable because ample food could be produced on fertile lands, allowing time for people to put their intellects to work. Today, the area is a sparse, unpopulated desert. The ancient Sumerians who lived there around 3500 BC are credited with creating irrigation systems that supported major production of wheat and barley. (2) By 2500 BC wheat production was largely phased out, a trend that resulted from salt accumulation in the soil. Although more salt-tolerant barley continued to be produced, overall agricultural production declined. (3) Conquests and the fall of Sumerian civilization followed. People emigrated and those who remained were impoverished. Today, most scholars posit that it was environmental degradation from intensive irrigation that led to the demise of the region's flourishing economy, culture, and political structure. (4)

The decline came slowly and, as there were then no textbooks on the subject, it may be understandable and excusable that the Sumerians did not identify and reverse the process. Those who left the area as the Sumerian civilization dissolved moved north, transporting the same irrigation practices. More salinity crises occurred in the new regions. (5) Apparently, the emigrants did not learn the lessons of Sumeria: Repeated soil irrigation without adequate drainage in an arid climate leads to salt buildup.

What about those who developed irrigation systems on the Colorado River in the American Southwest? The Colorado forms in the Rocky Mountains, runs through the Grand Canyon, and ends in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. It is the only major river serving most of the states of the Southwest and the Mountain West. (6) This hot and dry climate is characterized by poor and naturally saline land. Without irrigation, farming stood no chance of success in much of the region. In the early part of the twentieth century, boosters pleaded with the U.S. government to put up capital when private investors refused.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation eagerly went to work on building dams and canals to serve farmers and later to expand cities with water from the Colorado. Dam building continued throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The massive developments began with the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, one of the human-made wonders of the modern world. (7) Hoover was a success in many ways. It came in under budget and ahead of schedule, and provides a year-round source of water to the seven Colorado River Basin states. (8) In addition, it was emulated not only in the U.S. system but all over the world, and kicked off the era of big dams, a frenzy of dam building during the first sixty years of the twentieth century.

Glen Canyon Dam was the capstone of the Colorado River projects, approximately the same capacity and height as the Hoover Dam. (9) No sooner was Glen Canyon finished, and the government was filling it with water, than the salinity in the river spiked to such a level that irrigation water diverted in Mexico destroyed crops. (10) This touched off an international dispute with Mexico. (11) Domestically, the crisis also affected farmers who were beginning to experience declining crop yields from the increased salinity. (12) Cities also realized the negative and costly effects of using water with increased Salinity. (13)

An agreement was reached with Mexico to curtail the salinity in the water and was embodied in a document interpreting the Treaty recognizing the right of Mexico to use a share of Colorado River water. (14) This--coupled with U.S. concerns with the salinity problem--necessitated an elaborate and expensive federal salinity control program. (15) Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on major engineering projects to prevent salt accumulation and to clean up polluted water. (16) The most expensive single investment was for the construction of a huge desalination plant designed to take salt-laden agricultural return flows, treat them to a pristine level, and then dump the clean water back into the polluted river to dilute the flowing water to the salt levels promised to Mexico. (17)

The desalination plant has lain virtually unused since it was completed. (18) Thanks to high river flows that diluted the salt, coupled with physical measures, the salinity problem in the Colorado River has been held at bay. The enormously expensive solutions have been trial and error and, at best, will attenuate the worst of the effects of heavy development of the Colorado. But was all this necessary when the adverse impacts of irrigation could have been foreseen and avoided? Perhaps we can make excuses for the ancient Sumerians, but how forgiving should we be of those who repeated their mistakes in the twentieth century?

Although dam builders have made engineering mistakes--resulting in disaster and deaths from the collapse of dams (19)--more typically the engineers achieved what they set out to do: They built bigger, stronger dams that harnessed great rivers and promoted economic activity. Some of these projects have produced great benefits for society, but even they caused environmental and social problems--and sometimes disasters. The negative consequences were typically unintended, but no less negative. Although we have improved out engineering techniques, the methods used to irrigate most farmlands in the world, including in the American West, are not much different from the methods used by the ancients. Sandra Postel writes, "[i]rrigation's historical record spans six millennia.... The overriding lesson from history is that most irrigation-based civilizations fail ... the question is: Will ours be any different." (20)

The big dam era also made its mark on the Columbia River--and altered dramatically the great fisheries of this region, (21) a story with which many Oregonians are intimately familiar. Dam construction on the Columbia-Snake River System began in the 1930s in order to provide electricity and irrigation water for the region. (22) As with the dams on the Colorado, spectacular canyons and falls were necessarily flooded and the flow regime was permanently changed. The once roaring Columbia is now a series of slack water pools. This has had a devastating effect on the salmon, as the hydropower system affects every stage of salmon life. (23)

In some cases the government built fish ladders for returning fish, but neglected to provide a means to protect the young fish trying to pass from tributary streams down to the ocean. (24) These crude efforts were not universal and allowed only the hardiest to survive. (25) It is estimated that annual salmon runs have diminished from as high as 16 million to around 1 million. (26) "Currently, approximately 60% of the salmon stocks in the Columbia River basin are listed as depressed, threatened, or endangered." (27) Additionally, over 100 of the native stocks have already gone extinct. (28)

The multiple factors causing native salmon decline have been analyzed by Professor Craig Johnston. They include: 1) habitat degradation; 2) hydropower development; 3) hatchery effects; 4) over harvesting; 5) ocean conditions; 6) water quality; and 7) increased water temperatures caused by removal of vegetation, water withdrawals, dams, discharges from industries, irrigation return flows, and wastewater treatment faculties. (29) Although the causes are many, hydropower is believed to account for 80% of the salmon decline. (30)

When early explorers boasted that salmon were so numerous you could walk across the river on their backs, (31) most of the threats discussed by Professor Johnston did not exist. But Indians in the region whose cultures and livelihoods were inextricably tied to salmon understood that the fishery was vulnerable. The "first salmon" ceremony and other Indian religious and cultural practices ensured that there would not be depletion from over-fishing or contamination. (32)

The decline of salmon grossly impacted the Northwest tribes for whom salmon have played an essential role in culture, religion, and history. (33) The Stevens Treaties (as interpreted by the Supreme Court) reserved for tribes the right to fish. (34) However, without fish in the river, the tribal right is useless. Even the first settlers recognized the idea that in order for salmon to survive, they need an unobstructed passage upriver. (35) Surely the federal government knew or should have known that the type and extent of dam building it undertook would imperil salmon.

To be sure, the great dams on the Columbia provided a treasure trove of electrical energy as well as other benefits. (35) The four Shake River dams produce approximately five percent of the Pacific Northwest's energy, 1,250 megawatts per year. (37) Like the dams on the Columbia, the Colorado dams deliver vast amounts of electricity, bringing valuable benefits to the West. The Colorado is now distinguished...