Studies of impacts of a hypothetical Severe Sustained Drought on the Colorado River indicated that:

Figure 9. Grand Canyon (Photo by Mike Bucheit)

Lord and others (1995) discuss alternative approaches that could be used to reduce drought damages or to spread them more equitably. Two alternatives that did not effectively reduce overall damages (in their role-playing simulations) but which might ensure greater equitability were:

• Change the operating rules and Law of the River to maintain similar storage levels in Lake Powell (of the Upper Basin) and Lake Mead (of the Lower Basin);

• Share system-wide shortages proportionally among all of the basin states by temporarily ignoring Upper Basin delivery commitments to the Lower Basin when the Lower Basin is not feeling the same shortages as the Upper Basin.

Other alternatives proved quite effective in reducing damages:

• Store water in headwater reservoirs longer in order to minimize evaporation losses;

• Allow water banking and interstate marketing of water [water banking would establish a mechanism for any state to "deposit" unused water in an "account" for withdrawal later when the state needs it to avoid a shortfall or as part of a marketing transaction].

Figure 10. Economic damages sustained under the Severe Sustained Drought scenario, from consumptive uses (top) and from consumptive and non-consumptive uses (bottom), with and without interstate water marketing. (Modified from Booker,1995)

Figure 11. Same as Figure 10, but showing damages with and without water banking. (Modified from Booker, 1995)

These alternatives would require changes in the Law of the River to greater or lesser extent. Such changes are difficult in practice and, even in their role-playing exercises responding to the Severe Sustained Drought, only minor rule changes could be achieved, unless water banking or marketing transactions were allowed.

Lord and others (1995) concluded that management changes that could be accomplished within the individual states were generally more promising, because they could be quite effective (especially where they reduced demands overall) and because they could be accomplished with greater flexibility and speed than changes to the Law of the River. Such within-state management decisions were quite useful during the recent California drought and have long been useful in Colorado. If concentrated in the Upper Basin, within-state management changes were particularly effective.

Considering the severity and duration of the drought considered in these studies, the analysis of severe sustained drought on the Colorado River Basin suggests that tremendous resilience has been stockpiled through the construction of the massive reservoir system on the river as well as through the Law of the River which organizes interstate water management there. Many other regions and rivers might not fare as well under such a drought. At least some aspects of the Law of the River, however, are rigid in ways that might result in an unequal distribution of drought impacts, with the Upper Basin states and non-consumptive uses being most vulnerable. The most successful alternatives seem to require greater flexibility for managers of the Colorado River water-resource systems to cope with long-term droughts. Such flexibility would probably also be necessary if the system were faced with long-term climate change.

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