Biden’s Colorado River Plans Fail to Address Underlying Water Abuses by Giant Agribusiness
Published Apr 11, 2023
Today the Biden administration released varying emergency proposals to deal with the ongoing water shortage crisis impacting the Colorado River and communities that depend on it for power, water and irrigation. The plans aim to cut use of the river by a maximum of 2.083 million acre-feet by 2026. In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:
“Any legitimate plan for the Colorado River must directly confront a key driver of the crisis in the first place: the overuse and abuse of limited water resources by big agribusiness and fossil fuel corporations – the very same industries contributing to climate chaos in the first place.
“Federal and state officials must work together to protect the Colorado River as a public trust resource and prioritize the wellbeing of Western communities before corporate profits. The Biden administration and governors must find the political will to stop the expansion of water-intensive factory farming, including meda-dairies and egregiously thirsty crops like tree nuts and alfalfa. They must halt these practices and chart a course to a more sustainable and resilient future, one that aligns with the reality of climate change and our precarious water future.”
Currently, 80% of the Colorado River’s water is put towards agriculture, and 80% of that supply is used for crops like alfalfa, which is largely used as feedstock for cattle. The current framework to cut water uses, however, focuses on overall allocations and makes only a passing reference to the actual purpose that water is used: Each industrial, municipal, and agricultural user should be held to the highest industry standards in handling, using, and disposing of water; there is precious little water left to waste.
Research from Food & Water Watch found that in California large agribusinesses and oil and gas operators use massive and unsustainable amounts of water, permitted by ineffective regulations that put profits over people. Expanded nut crop acres required more than 520 billion gallons more water in 2021 than just four years prior. Alfalfa irrigation guzzles around 945 billion gallons of water per year, and corporate mega-dairies use more than 142 million gallons per day. Meanwhile, climate-polluting oil and gas operators devoured 3 billion gallons of freshwater between 2018 and 2021.
In New Mexico, another state that draws on the Colorado River, mega dairies consume vast quantities of water while producing significant pollution. Food & Water Watch estimates that New Mexico’s mega-dairies together consume 10 million gallons of water each day — equal to 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools. At the same time, dairy cows produce more manure than any other livestock raised on factory farms. Together, the cows living on New Mexico’s mega-dairies produce enough manure to overflow nine Olympic swimming pools each day. That is 11 times as much sewage produced by the Albuquerque metropolitan area.
Press Contact: Seth Gladstone [email protected]
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