# American Southwest and northwestern Mexico turning into even more of a desert **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 4, 2007, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718 "2007-04-04T15:56:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/21 "2007-04-04T23:49:56Z")
[QUOTE=xtisme] Living myself in the Southwest, its something I’ve pondered from time to time. Luckily, thus far at least, its not a major problem here in New Mexico. Arizona and California though…they are in deep shit. Yeah…all you Easterners can move somewhere else for gods sake! 😛 -XT [/QUOTE] New Mexico also has that gigantic underwater aquifer that’s full of brine. We can desalinate that once the freshwater aquifers start showing problems. And Albuquerque itself does have rights to some of the San Juan-Chama water and those gigantic pipes to get it there. What we all need to do is rewrite the water compacts and cut down what Arizona and California get. And the tribes will have to start conserving more as well. As for getting rid of all the Easterners, that’s a good start. We need to get rid of the [Californians](http://www.latimes.com/news/la-adna-calif1apr01,1,6804122.story?ctrack=1&cset=true) while we’re at it. And probably the Texans as well. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/22 "2007-04-05T01:20:19Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] What we all need to do is rewrite the water compacts and cut down what Arizona and California get. [/quote] Is that politically possible? [QUOTE=asterion] And the tribes will have to start conserving more as well. [/quote] Are they a big part of the problem? [QUOTE=asterion] As for getting rid of all the Easterners, that’s a good start. We need to get rid of the [Californians](http://www.latimes.com/news/la-adna-calif1apr01,1,6804122.story?ctrack=1&cset=true) while we’re at it. And probably the Texans as well. [/QUOTE] Is **that** politically – or constitutionally – possible? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/23 "2007-04-05T01:33:03Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Is that politically possible? [/quote] It will have to be done eventually. The current compacts are unsustainable with current rainfall levels and all parties involved will have to realize that. > [@](#): > > Are they a big part of the problem? Not huge, but as I said, all parties involved. > [@](#): > > Is **that** politically – or constitutionally – possible? That was a joke. Well, kinda. A lot of people don’t like Californians or Texans in New Mexico (one joke I’ve seen is that you know you’re a New Mexican if you hated the Texans until the Californians started to move in) and **xtisme** is right that the area can only support so much growth, both from native births and from people moving in from other parts of the country. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/24 "2007-04-05T01:41:18Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] That was a joke. Well, kinda. A lot of people don’t like Californians or Texans in New Mexico (one joke I’ve seen is that you know you’re a New Mexican if you hated the Texans until the Californians started to move in) and **xtisme** is right that the area can only support so much growth, both from native births and from people moving in from other parts of the country. [/QUOTE] **Why** do people move from other parts of the country to NM? Whaddaya got there? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/25 "2007-04-05T02:54:35Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] **Why** do people move from other parts of the country to NM? Whaddaya got there? [/QUOTE] Sunshine, generally low property values (thus cheap housing and not low values in a bad way), and lots of space. Most everything that was mentioned in the LA Times article I linked to is true of New Mexico as well. Some people move for a job (which is often technical in nature)–my parents moved from northern VA to Albuquerque so Dad could take a job at Sandia. It’s a state with some manufacturing, especially high-tech manufacturing (Intel, Honeywell, Eclipse Aviation), tourism, some farming/ranching, and a lot of government money coming in (three air force bases, Los Alamos and Sandia, White Sands) to support the economy. I’m not sure why anyone would move here just because. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/26 "2007-04-05T14:10:14Z")
From [url=]_The City in Mind,_ by James Howard Kunstler, chapter on Las Vegas: > [@](#): > > Another questionable factor in Las Vegas’s future is the water supply. Las Vegas occupies the driest region in North America with the greatest extremes of temperature. Las Vegas gets four inches of natural rain a year. Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, gets twelve inches. The springs that watered the ancient meadows Las Vegas was named after served as the city’s water supply until the 1950s. Since then, the city has had to make do with the state of Nevada’s allotment from the Colorado River. Since 1922, the Law of the Colorado River, a compact among seven western states, has ruled western water allocation, under formulae drawn up by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The law was fashioned years before the bloated hallucination of contemporary Las Vegas was even conceived, **and the allocations can only be revised on the basis of an absolute consensus by all seven states, with ratification by each state’s legislature – an extremely cumbersome procedure.** > > Under the compact, California has long received the lion’s share of the water from the Colorado River (since 1935 impounded behind Hoover Dam in Lake Mead, with a little dribble released to its destination, the ancient delta at the top of the Bay of California in Mexico). California’s annual allocation is 4.4 million acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill an acre 12 inches deep, or 325,851 gallons, or enough to theoretically supply two American families for a year. **A clause in the federal act stipulates that California has absolute priority over the Colorado River’s water and is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet before other states can receive their first drop.** This was the price that California politicians exacted for their support of the enormous federal projects the compact entailed – including the Glen Canyon Dam as well as the Hoover Dam, and various pipelines, canals, and aqueducts associated with the Central Arizona Project. Nevada’s annual allocation is a measly three thousand acre-feet. (In 1922, Nevada had only eighty-one thousand inhabitants.) California is usually characterized as the bad guy in the picture. The head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Pat Mulroy, told me, “They’ve developed an attitude. They believe that they were there first. The Colorado River belongs to them. They try to con their way rather than entering into partnerships. Six states could solve those problems, but California makes it difficult.” I repeat – is it politically possible to change the Law of the Colorado River, given the conditions noted above? What reason does California have to budge? Kunstler goes on to note that most of California’s share of the water is used on crops in the Imperial Valley; if its share is reduced, what happens to that sector of California’s economy? **Congress** could change the Law, I suppose, but California’s delegation in the House must be larger than the other six states’ combined. ---
**Author:** ![Shecky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Shecky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shecky)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/27 "2007-04-09T16:28:29Z")
Slight hijack - I thought **I** was the only person who read that book. Sorry. As for the OP - if those cities are getting water out of their own aquafers too, then why hasn’t anyone noticed the cities are sinking? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/28 "2007-04-09T19:26:19Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Story [here.](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/davis_2) Scientists believe this “mega-drought,” beginning in the late 1980s, is not a cyclical climate change but a permanent one. Yet more and more suburbs continue to be built in the Sunbelt. [quote] God knows we still don’t have enough people. We have to put them somewhere, don’t we? > [@](#): > > What will happen when inhabitants of the region finally realize they are pushing up against an immovable barrier of water availablity? Given the usual human obliviousness to long term consequences of current policies, not until all swimming pools are empty, all Water Gardens become Dirt Gardens, Lakes Mead and Powell are empty, and we only have running water four hours a day. > [@](#): > > What will the Southwest be like in 50 years? Glad I won’t be here to find out. My current attitude is a mixture of futility and despair. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/29 "2007-04-09T19:33:35Z")
[QUOTE=lokij] I had an idea the other night, why not flood Death Valley from the pacific? At it’s lowest point it’s 282 feet below sea level.. say we dug a tunnel and canals through to the pacific, somewhere north of LA and flooded the whole valley with sea water, we could tap into the energy of the falling water filling the vally for hydroelectricity, then when it’s full and level there might be a tidal flow to tap. Surely a large relatively shallow inland sea would contribute to local rainfall via evaporation and lower area temperatures somewhat. Local property values would rise due to thousands of miles of newly created waterfront property. I know we’d be destroying a unique and harshly beautiful biosphere, yadda yadda.. but would it be possible? [/QUOTE] Wouldn’t you only have the hydro power for the time it takes to fill the Valley? I wonder if a Death Valley Sea could make the climate in the area more humid, and therefore rainier? Though clouds definitely don’t always mean rain, as anyone who lives in West L.A. or Santa Monica knows; in our case, they almost never do mean rain. ---
**Author:** ![lokij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5e9695/32.png) [@lokij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lokij)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/30 "2007-04-09T21:32:53Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus] Wouldn’t you only have the hydro power for the time it takes to fill the Valley? I wonder if a Death Valley Sea could make the climate in the area more humid, and therefore rainier? Though clouds definitely don’t always mean rain, as anyone who lives in West L.A. or Santa Monica knows; in our case, they almost never do mean rain. [/QUOTE] Well.. maybe, perhaps you could design it so that there was a significant tidal flow back and forth through the channel… this would accomplish two things, it would keep the new sea flushed out from any runoff issues and you could use that back and forth flow for hydroelectric. I think it’s very likely it would create bay/sea effect rain.. you’d have dry cool air being forced aloft over the mountains to the west going over a large warm shallow body of water… precipitation would be the logical result I would think. The water would also act to moderate temperature fluctuations.. again leading to somewhat cooler summers and warmer winters.. I wonder if anybody has done any feasibilty studies on a project like this… ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/31 "2007-04-09T21:39:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Origianlly posted by **RaftPeople** > Where would the lizards go? To Hell I’m sorry I actually like lizards 😉 ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/32 "2007-04-10T02:18:02Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I didn’t know any place in the Western Hemisphere had a “monsoon season.” [/QUOTE] Yep, we have it just about every summer, as far as I can recall. ---
**Author:** ![E72521](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@E72521](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E72521)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/33 "2007-04-10T02:30:59Z")
A look at the [Salton Sea in California](http://www.fdungan.com/salton.htm) may give you some idea of the weather you would probably find near a Death Valley inland sea. Almost no rain falls in that part of Imperial and Riverside Counties. It would have to be a massive body of water to add significant rainfall. Also consider that the shoreline along the Gulf of California is bone dry almost all year. Either way, 120 degree heat with 75% humidity would make a Florida summer seem almost chilly. ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/34 "2007-04-10T02:41:39Z")
[QUOTE=vivalostwages] Yep, we have it just about every summer, as far as I can recall. [/QUOTE] If anyone gets the impression that this is a monsoon like in SE Asia, forget it. The entire monsoon “season” in the SW U.S. produces less moisture than a single afternoon in India or Malaysia. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718/35 "2007-04-10T05:11:09Z")
I spent a too-short amount of time in the Sonoran (time spent in school at the Biosphere 2). I just popped in to chime in about monsoon season, and say that one of the most incredible scents I have ever encountered is “wet desert.” Oh, and to recommend _Cadillac Desert_ for further background on the water supply situation. [http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244/ref=pd\_bbs\_sr\_1/104-0576129-1747909?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176181796&sr=8-1](http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0576129-1747909?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176181796&sr=8-1) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-southwest-and-northwestern-mexico-turning-into-even-more-of-a-desert/398718.md?page=1)