Where the Water Goes

by David Owen

The author is a New Yorker reporter, and so like a long new yorker article, you can expect to see dense information narrative peppered with peering vignettes into people's personal lives along the way.

The author flies, drives, sails, and sometimes walks along the complex geography of Colorado river, and mainly focusses on the story of water rights and land usage along the river.

If all of Colorado river were left to the ocean, the total water discharge is comparable to Kaveri, or about one sixth of Godavari. And yet the river is so thoroughly managed that no water of the river reaches the ocean.

In fact, the waters of the river are some of the most managed waters in the whole world.

Usually, when you are in a river's basin, or if you are adjacent to a river bed, you get to claim it's waters. But Colorado goes thru so many gorges and desert lands, that this model doesn't work.

So, instead they have a chronological order of water rights. If your great great great great grandfather had water rights, you are most likely to be a senior, and you get to claim river's water ahead of every junior behind you.

The river's waters are maintained by a literal ledger, where western states claim water, and then any discharge or run off from agriculture back into lower basin of river are added as credits against your consumption.

It's so crazy that California and Arizona have even devised treaties where California stores Arizona's waters in it's reservoirs as part of book keeping. Its a fascinating case of how states fight and yet work with each other to make it better for everybody.

The book also has minor detours, minor peering vignettes into the river's surroundings as the author makes his way to the ocean.

One of the funny ones is about a pretty loner introverted desert tortoise that lives in very arid region with no ready surface water. You are advised not to approach too close the tortoise not because it's dangerous, but because it can get scared easily and pee itself. Peeing in such arid conditions without replacement fluids is considered fatal!

The book also a few pages on fresh water management on a Cruise ship where all the water is made from desalination. Ready water supply, right?! But, the challenges include maintaining optimum levels so it's not a drag on the cruise ship, while at the same time meeting the demands of it's passengers turning on the showers and toilet flushes at roughly the same time.

The book talks briefly about quite a few unintuitive things like development of desert cities like Phoenix is actually an energy efficient thing as it takes more energy efficient to cool down from 110F to 70F, than heat up from -20F to 70F. The additional advantage is that's about the same season when solar energy production peaks.

Another unintuitive insight was into organic farming and how it results in an farm sprawl as the yields are lower than regular farming.

Overall, it's a fascinating book, and kept me wondering why none of the Indian rivers are studied no where close to this detail.