Redford Center Film to Examine the Future of the Colorado River

Early next year, the Redford Center will release a documentary on the Colorado River called The River Red, directed by Mark Decena. (Take a moment to follow the film on Facebook)  The film couldn’t come at a better time. The Colorado, and the seven Western states that depend on it, face unprecedented challenges.  

Earlier this week, the Bureau of Reclamation held a webinar to ask water managers, the public and others for suggestions regarding how to avoid severe water shortages of Colorado River water in the future.    

Earlier this year, as part of its ongoing Basin Study, the bureau confirmed that growing demands on the Colorado River now exceed the average flows on the river. That is the primary reason for the dramatic drop in the level of Lake Mead in the past decade. A wet year has helped to raise the level of the lake this year, but the Bureau projects that climate change will cause basin water supplies to decline by 9% in the coming half decade. In the meantime, population in the West continues to grow. 

In the Basin Study’s new fact sheet the Bureau has now concluded that “large supply-demand imbalances (greater than 3.5 million acre-feet) are plausible over the next 50 years, particularly when considering potential changes in climate.” Annual water supply shortages in this region of 3.5 million acre feet per year are hard to imagine. That’s more than 20 percent of the flow of the river and five times the amount of water used by the City of Los Angeles. Such potential shortages threaten the environment, water users, Native Americans, recreation and the economies of much of the West.  

Meeting this challenge will require creative thinking and an ambitious shared effort. The Bureau has appropriately asked the public and water managers to submit creative ideas about how to respond to this challenge.  

The team producing The River Red is hoping to help meet this challenge for a new vision of the future of the Colorado River. They’ve spent the past year filming people across the Basin, examining the importance of the river, the challenges facing it today (like oil shale production)  and pointing the way to promising solutions.   

Especially if you live in the West, take a moment to forward The River Red’s web site to friends and colleagues. More than 20 million people, from Denver to San Diego, have a great deal at stake. And all of them can be part of the solution. 

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