ST. GEORGE, Utah – For the first time, farmer Jimmie Hughes saw all 15 tanks he keeps for his cattle to dry out at the same time this year.
Now, he and his co-workers are forced to transport water tanks for two hours on dusty mountain roads to give water to the 300 cows. “It’s just a daily routine, we’re not making any money,” said Hughes, 50, one day at the end of last month, amid another day of unshakable sunshine in a winter that saw very little rain here in southern Utah.
The southwest is again blocked by drought, causing cuts in farms and ranches and putting further pressure on urban supply. Extreme to exceptional drought is affecting between 57% and 90% of land in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona and is diminishing a layer of snow that supplies water to 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, according to the USA Drought Monitor.
Jimmie Hughes, bottom right, farms in Mohave County, Arizona, where he and his co-workers often transport water over mountain roads to pastures. A stock tank that fills up slowly with a natural spring is used to keep livestock supplied with water.
A water truck is fueled in Mohave County, Arizona. The water is taken to other areas where cattle graze and is stored for future use.
The team of governmental and academic agencies that produce the monitor defines a drought as a period of exceptionally dry weather that causes problems such as crop losses and water scarcity.
The current drought, which started last year, is already one of the most severe ever recorded in the southwest region. Utah and Nevada had their driest years in 126 years of federal records during 2020, while Arizona and Colorado had the second driest and New Mexico the fourth, according to Brian Fuchs, climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska -Lincoln. He said the Southwest had been mired in droughts for much of the past two decades, and the last came after one of the driest summers on record.
Dried up
The southwestern United States has been hit by severe drought and, in some places, a record since last year.
In the irrigation district of Elephant Butte, in southern New Mexico, farmers have already been warned that they will receive only 16% of their normal quota in June.
“It sucks here,” said Gary Esslinger, managing treasurer for the Las Cruces, NM district. He said the 6,500 farmers in the area have already removed a third of their 90,640 irrigable acres from production in previous drought years and are likely to keep them offline this year as well. New Mexico state engineer John D’Antonio Jr. said his office is asking other farmers not to plant this year, if they can, as reservoirs across the state hold only 20% of what they normally do.
Drought conditions have also spread to California, where the snow cap was 58% of the average on Monday, according to historical records dating back to just under a century. This increases the likelihood of drought that can contribute to forest fires and cause cutbacks in agriculture, state officials say. A deluge of precipitation at the end of the winter rainy season could decrease the risk of these results, but it is not currently in the forecast.
“We have time, but we have to keep our fingers crossed,” said Fuchs.
Meteorologists say the combination of warmer weather and changes in atmospheric patterns that deflect storms to the north are making periods of drought more frequent and pronounced. As a result, the landscape is not having enough time to recover before the next drought arrives, said Fuchs.
Colorado had an above-normal snow season a year ago, but much of the spring runoff was absorbed by the still-dry soil from the previous drought, he said. The state continued at the end of 2020 to suffer its biggest forest fires ever recorded.
The population of St. George, Utah and its suburbs doubled between 2000 and last year.
Meanwhile, reservoir levels in the southwest are dropping. The largest of these reservoirs, Lake Mead, is 41% full after years of declining flow in the Colorado River. Federal officials warn that it is on track to fall below the 1,075-foot limit in the next two years, which would trigger government-imposed water cuts for millions of users.
Complicating matters is the explosive population growth in the southwest. St. George and its suburbs – nestled between red rock canyons and snow-capped mountains – totaled 188,000 people last year, more than double the population of 91,000 in 2000, according to census estimates.
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“We’ve always been dry,” said insurance entrepreneur Ed Bowler, guiding his truck through rows of new homes on a one-day tour in late February. “But we didn’t have all these people.”
The past two summers have been the warmest on record outside Washington County. St. George spent 154 days last year without receiving any measurable precipitation, breaking the previous record of 121 days that had existed since 1929.
In the long run, Southern Utah employees are looking for water pipes to help meet the needs of the area.
There are no other good options, said Zach Renstrom, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District. “Our plan B,” he said, “is that at some point you will have to say, ‘Stop. You cannot build more houses here. ‘”
The Southwest has been mired in droughts for much of the past two decades.
Write to Jim Carlton at [email protected]
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