Robert Adler makes
this an enticing read for anyone interested in environmental issues, Adler
points out the negative factors that affect the Colorado River area and
mentions the difficulties involved with inducing change among these factors.
Adler discusses how humans changed the river to meet increasingly dependent
human needs. Diverting the river, constructing dams, building levees and dikes
caused an unnatural disruption in the river ecosystem affecting fish
populations, water flow, water levels, and erosion rates in various areas. The
migration patterns of fish are disrupted because dams now block the route to
their ancestral ponds. The movement of sediment along the Colorado River is
also affected due to the changes in flow and blockages by dams, altering the
terrain of the riverbeds. These alterations led to the decline of certain
species, specifically varieties of humpback chub through changes in the river
conditions and competition with non-native species.
Mitigation of
pollutants and other environmental effects proved to be costly and time
consuming. Researchers found that the most efficient and least expensive way to
remediate the environment was to imply a preventative approach, “acting the
role of the epidemiologist who seeks to prevent disease rather than the surgeon
who seeks to prevent accidents and causes of diseases rather than treating
patients once they become injured or ill”. (Adler 8) Water issues was also a
primary topic in the book, focusing on the pros and cons of damming the
Colorado River how the water is being used, and how it was being managed. What
was found was that much of the Colorado River flowing through the southern
lower basin states had become highly saline such that it was posing health
risks to native wildlife and human populations. An extremely inefficient system
for water agricultural lands wastes a large amount of the allocated water from
run-off and evaporation.
The
author does seem to be wide-eyed and optimistic about the future of the river
and believes that it can be reclaimed. Adler highlights effective restoration
strategies that can improve conditions along the river, focusing on responsible
water management, reduced water consumption, and improved agricultural practices.
The author provides some provocative suggestions for improving water storage
capacity such as pumping treated wastewater back into underground aquifers.
This would help prevent saltwater intrusion and would eliminate water loss from
evaporation, an issue that causes a dramatic loss of potable water stored in
man-made reservoirs each year. Proposals to decommission dams has also become a
heavily debated issue among environmentalists and politicians. Restoration of
natural flood waters would see improved environmental quality as nutrient rich
sediment would run downstream forming new riverbanks, allowing new vegetation
to grow which would provide new habitat for many local species. We must take a
look at the hard questions. Is it worth tearing down a perfectly functioning
dam that supplies jobs to an entire town of people for the sake of restoring
the environment downstream? Some hard decisions need to be made in the coming
future, but there is hope that we will strike a balance between having enough
water to supply human demand without damaging the environment.
From
my personal experiences on the trip I saw a lot of the issues that adler
addressed in his book. Although we did not travel along the Colorado River this
year we saw a lot of the same problems in other areas, such as the Elwha dam
removal site in Washington and the Moccasin power plant just outside Hetch
Hetchy in California. I tell you what, it is one thing to read about an issue,
but to really understand it you need to be standing there right in the middle
of it. Recent data shows that salmon populations have increased dramatically
along the Elwha River since the dams’ removal, s positive sign that dam removal
can show positive restoration results in a short period of time. The hope is
that Elwha river restoration project cans serve as a model for future projects.
During our time in Nevada and California we got to see first-hand just how big
of an issue water was in those arid states. We saw Lake Mead and you could
easily see just how far the water levels had gone down in the past decade. The
water 7.5maf of allocated water for the lower basin is primarily supplied from
Lake Mead and Lake Powell and those reservoirs are clearly being used faster
than they can be replenished. On our drives through Southern California you
could look out one side of the van and see nothing but barren plots of dirt, and
on the other you could see wide green fields of crops. The sheer amount of
farmland that we drove through coupled with the idea of how hot and dry it is
where all these crops are, you begin to see why water is so important there,
peoples livelihoods depend on getting that water. I suppose that what this trip
showed me is that it can sometimes be hard to grasp just how big these issues
can be and what effects can branch off of them, and perhaps one reason it is so
hard for these issues to be taken care of is simply because there is a troubled
sense of immensity with these problems. Hopefully we will soon see the bigger
picture and it is up to people like me and my classmates, who have seen these
issues first hand, to reiterate to people just how big these issues are.
References
Adler, Robert W. Restoring
Colorado River Ecosystems: A Troubled Sense of Immensity. Washington:
Island, 2007. Print.
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