The Colorado River is supposed to end at the Gulf of California, but hasn't done so for decades.
The Colorado River is supposed to end at the Gulf of California, but hasn’t done so for decades. A joint effort between the United States and Mexico seeks to change that.
Today, we travel to the Colorado River Delta to see what’s happening. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times water reporter Ian James
More reading:
A pulse of water revives the dry Colorado River Delta
The river’s end: Amid Colorado water cuts, Mexico seeks to restore its lost oasis
Listen to our special Colorado River series here
Gustavo Arellano: For millions of years the Colorado River flowed from high up in the Rocky Mountains all the way down to the Pacific Ocean, spilling into the Gulf of California.
But not anymore.
In our final installment of our series on the Colorado River we reach the end of the line: the delta.
Ian Tape: Yeah. I mean, there's something about a river meeting the sea or not meeting the sea, right?
Gaby González Olimón: The idea that a river should reach its end. It's like if one of your veins didn't reach the heart, mm-hmm, and thinking about how we caused that, mm-hmm
Sound ID: The transition that has taken place in the Colorado River Basin is astounding. The Colorado River Basin is in its 23rd year of a historic drought. This is a full on five-alarm fire going on right now. We know this system is taking everything from us and it's not gonna stop until we stop it. This is the end of the Colorado River here. It's where the Colorado River would meet the sea if so much water wasn't taken out upstream from here.
Gustavo Arellano: For decades now, so much water has been diverted to cities and farms that the river usually disappears shortly after it gets into Mexico, miles before it reaches the sea.
But then last spring, water flowed into parts of the Colorado River Delta again.
Gabby: It was very impactful seeing the dry riverbed and then this very small stream of water coming full speed.
Gustavo Arellano: That flow was part of an ongoing agreement between the United States and Mexico to release water into the delta…and it’s spearheaded by a few environmental nonprofits.
But can this effort to restore some of what’s been lost in the delta survive the crisis on the Colorado River?
I’m Gustavo Arellano. You’re listening to “The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times.”
It’s Friday, February 10th, 2023.
Today we travel to northern Mexico to witness a moment of hope, and to understand how much more still needs to be done.
Gustavo Arellano: Our guide throughout the series on the past, present and future of the Colorado River has been LA Times water reporter Ian James. Ian, welcome back.
Ian James: Thanks, Gustavo.
Gustavo Arellano: Just a few weeks ago, we were talking about where the Colorado River starts with snow up in the Rocky Mountains, and now we're at its historical end, which is supposed to be at the sea, right at the Gulf of California, but it hasn't quite made it there for decades.
Ian James: Yeah, no, it doesn't make it to the sea anymore. All the water is taken out upstream, and for many years the river has seldom met its end.
Ian in the field: We’re crossing, uh, through the border now, uh, some gates here. We're just gonna go through here and cross into Mexico
Ian James: So to better understand what’s happening there, I went to the Mexicali valley last spring, with my LA Times colleagues Albert Lee and Lee Sinco …
Ian in the field: Turnstiles. Here we go.
Ian James: … and we parked on the U.S. side of the border in Calexico, and then we walked across.
Ian James: On the other side we rented a truck that would allow us to go on some of the dirt roads in the delta.
Ian James: We were only briefly in the city and then we headed out into the countryside
Ian in the field: Somebody have their seatbelt off. Yeah, that's me.
Ian James: And we're driving through farmland.
Ian James: We were on a mission to see these areas where water was starting to flow into the delta again.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, what's the story behind that water?
Ian James: Well, the U.S. and Mexico over the past several years have had this agreement to work with environmental groups and release some water into the delta to try to help a bit of this ecosystem come back.
Ian James: The Delta used to be this flourishing ecosystem, more than 2 million acres with lagoons and forests, But over the past century, and especially over the past several decades, it's completely dried up as the water's been taken out upstream. So all of that ecosystem has been largely destroyed.
Ian James: The goal of this, what they call a pulse flow of water into the delta, is to try to bring back pieces of that ecosystem that was lost.
Gabi Gonzalez Olimón: Hello again. Um, I wanted just to see what the plan would be for today. I mean, we've talked about this a bunch
Ian James: Gaby González Olimón of the Sonoran Institute is with one of the environmental groups that's working on these projects, and she took us to a couple of habitat restoration areas and other parts of the delta.
Gaby González Olimón: So we're gonna do the first part up here where the gate is, uh-huh. This is one of the main gates. All this water is flowing directly to the river.
Ian in the field: What are we seeing here? Where is this water going?
Gaby González Olimón: So this is another of the restoration sites of the Raise the River Alliance. And this is called Channel C .…
Ian James: It looked like this wetland with a forest next to it. Beautiful spot.
Gustavo Arellano: So this pulse of water that's part of this agreement, I'm trying to imagine it. Is it like a wall of rushing water that just fills up the dry riverbed immediately, or is it more of a small trickle that slowly but surely just soaks the entire area?
Ian James: Well, I actually didn't see kind of the front of the water as it came down the riverbed. I understood from others that it moved rather slowly and took quite a while as it spread out from this wetland area to go down the dry riverbed and finally make its way at high tide to the estuary. But what we saw was we saw water rushing out of this large canal and cascading down into a wetland. It looked like a, a rushing stream. And from there, the water slowly moved on toward the south.
Gaby González Olimón: I think it's important to mention that the river was almost dead for so many years, and right now this is an historic moment.
Ian James: Gabby told us that she hopes to help people better understand how the heavy use of water upstream has dried up most of the delta.
Gaby González Olimón: For me it's important for people in the U.S. to understand where their water goes.
Ian James: And also how she and other people are working on bringing back pieces of what was once this amazing flourishing ecosystem….
Ian James: But this agreement to release water back into the delta, it’s just one small part of a complicated and fragile relationship that Mexico has with the Colorado River.
Gustavo Arellano: Coming up after the break, how Mexico is dealing with the crisis on the Colorado River.
Gustavo Arellano: So Ian, this joint project to release water into the delta in northern Mexico, has that kind of cooperation between the United States and Mexico ever happened before around the Colorado River?
Ian James: It's happened a couple times before, and actually the biggest release happened in 2014. That was this huge pulse flow that brought back a flowing river for about eight weeks. It was an experiment to see what would happen, and that water flowed all the way from the border to the Gulf of California
And then in 2017, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to do these smaller pulse flows. And over those years environmental groups have been involved in managing restoration sites with wetlands and forests in the areas where water comes flowing in. The plan is to continue doing these smaller releases of water over several years.
Gustavo Arellano: So how much water are we talking about?
Ian James: It's actually not a lot of water that’s getting released. Last year it was about 35,000 acre-feet, which is actually less than 1% of all the water that Los Angeles uses in a year. But it has a big effect.
Gustavo Arellano: And these pulses, they’re happening at a time when the Colorado River is in really bad shape. That's what we've been talking about these past couple of weeks, and for the most part, we’ve been talking about the situation in the United States. But I’m curious, how is Mexico dealing with the crisis?
Ian James: The water shortage affects Mexico too. Mexico gets 1.5 million acre-feet of water, which that was part of a 1944 treaty. But as we've talked about, climate change is having serious effects on the river. Higher temperatures have been compounding the drought and really drying out the region, so that reduces the flow of the river. If you see it from the air, it does look something like a scar on the landscape
Gustavo Arellano: So Mexico is in the same boat as the United States, so to speak, when it comes to the Colorado River crisis. Basically overuse slamming into climate change. But I would think that in Mexico, these problems are probably graver. I mean, the United States is a bigger country and a richer country, and it's right up in the north, and they're the ones who get first dibs for that Colorado River water.
Ian James: That's right. If we look at how the river was divided, northern Mexico does get a lot less water than Southern California or Arizona. On the other hand, Arizona is being required to cut back on a much larger scale so far because of the agreement that exists among the states, And actually, Arizona, because it is dealing with such a major cutback in water, is actually talking with Mexico and looking at the possibility of desalinating seawater on the Sea of Cortez, helping to invest in a plant there and then move some of that water to Arizona.
Ian James: In Mexico, the crisis means farms will need to adapt, and farmers will probably need to upgrade their irrigation systems and possibly switch crops so they are using less water. As for cities, they're talking about needing to recycle wastewater and needing to turn more to desalination. Both of those things will require significant public investments from government.
Gustavo Arellano: How has the crisis changed the Colorado River Delta? Or even before that, like, what has people’s overuse of this resource for the last 100 years meant for the region?
Ian James: A century ago, it was this amazing giant wetland, and I wish I could have seen it, but it helps to read Aldo Leopold, an environmentalist who described it in his book “Sand County Almanac” as a hundred green lagoons. He talked about the vast forests and giant flocks of birds and other wildlife.
Ian James: It was just this thriving place, and the Colorado River flowed all the way to the sea. But it's not like that anymore.
Ian James: So standing here in the delta, the ground is hard and crusty. It's like a salt crust.
Now the river disappears into sand in northern Mexico.
And in this salt crust, there are little shells uh, little clam shells from the last time water was flowing here, I guess.
It's this area with long stretches of dry riverbed that meander through farmland.
Gustavo Arellano: Once the river stopped reaching the Gulf of California, how were the people who lived in the area affected?
Ian James: Well, drastically. I talked with people who have traditionally depended on fishing in the delta, and that's become harder.
Angela Melendez: My grandpa and his sons used to fish for survival. Yeah, they were poor, if you wanna say it, but they had a river, they had fish -— all the fish they could eat, all the lobster and trim ?? they could eat sometimes
Ian James: We met Angela Melendez. She's another person who works for the Sonoran Institute and she works as a geographic systems coordinator. She’s flown a drone to photograph the restoration work
Angela Melendez: Let’s do this technology!
Ian James: Her family came from southern Mexico and moved to a home right by the river. She said her grandfather fished
Angela Melendez: For survival, and then they saw these big, big, big, big boats just coming in and getting tons of fish.
Ian James: And her mom used to swim when she was a kid.
Angela Melendez: The river was so strong that it used to like collide and produce a very big wave and then people just knew it, people just knew were like: Hey, careful, ’cause it's gonna bring a whole, a lot of water.
Ian James: We were standing, talking, looking at a part of the river. Where water had refilled a swimming hole just a few weeks earlier, it had just looked like this dry ditch next to the road, and she talked about what her mother said it used to be like. It made her emotional.
Angela Melendez: She was young and with her family and just maybe excited for the next years to come. But everything went downhill from there.
Angela Melendez: And when our environment is degraded and hurt and exploited, that translates to your life too. You think. you don't, you don't matter cuz your town doesn't matter and no one cares and then, well we're like, OK, but we're gonna care. We're gonna do our part, it’s so hard
Gustavo Arellano: More after the break.
Gustavo Arellano: Ian, the water that was released back into the Colorado River Delta as part of that agreement between the US and Mexico, how did it change the natural landscape that was left there?
Ian James: Well over the past couple of years, biologists working in that area have seen plants just shoot up along the river channel where the water flowed.
Ian James: They've spotted about 120 species of birds, and at a couple of these habitat areas where there's water year round, they've actually been seeing beavers swimming around.
Gustavo Arellano: Beavers are always cool.
Ian James: Yeah.
Ian Tape: Oh, this is beautiful. Que bello Now we're paddling in.
Ian James: I took the opportunity to go kayaking with Eduardo Blancas. He's the restoration coordinator for the group, Resteremos El Colorado
Eduardo Blancas: Me voy a tratar a no perder mi teléfono en el agua
Ian James: And, uh, next to the wetland, there is kind of a wide pond. It spreads out next to this forest of cottonwoods and willows and mesquites,
Ian Tape: We're hearing birds.
Ian James: Beautiful spot. And all these trees have grown into a tall forest just over the past several years. They planted these trees
Ian Tape: And I just saw a fish jump.
Ian James: It looked like a river again.
Gustavo Arellano: And how were people feeling about all these changes in the delta?
Ian James: The people we met by the river and the wetland, they said they love it. One farmer has set up a snack bar and umbrellas where families can come and relax by the water. There were these shade structures and a pedal boat, and kids were playing in the water
Gaby González Olimón: We started seeing families here, families from the nearby communities coming down here with small children who have never seen the river. So that was their first contact with the Colorado river
Ian James: Gaby mentioned how it makes her really happy to see families coming to the water and getting to know a river that several years ago didn't exist and they didn't know,
Gaby González Olimón: I loved that moment.
Ian James: and Angela talked about bringing her mom back to see the river. She said that would make her really happy.
Angela Melendez: I can't explain it with words. I never can. Words are hard,
Ian James: Both of them said they planned to continue doing this work because they think it's important that the Colorado River be allowed to flow through these areas.
Gaby González Olimón: this is what we work for, reconnecting the river and the ocean. So these are the days we enjoy the most, I think
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah… It's great to hear about this bright spot on the Colorado River and what's otherwise been a pretty dark and gloomy journey….but what's the reach of this agreement between the US and Mexico to continue releasing water into the delta? Is everyone going to see dramatic benefits from just that little bit of water, these pulses?
Ian James: It’s hard to say. it is a relatively small amount of water. The environmental groups have some water rights that should enable them to keep sustaining these wetlands, but with the severe shortage, everyone I talked to agreed that it's gonna get harder and it's gonna be challenging to bring back flows for the environment in the delta.
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela: el pues un cambio muy drástico porque el río colorado más antes era un río que todo el tiempo tenía agua
Ian James: We went out to a town called El Indiviso…which is near the estuary, and we met with Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela. She’s a member of the Cucapa indigenous community and she's president of a Cucapa fishing cooperative. She explained that in her lifetime, the area has changed dramatically.
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela: el cambio que que se ha visto, pues este era un río que tenía mucha, que había mucha maleza, todo ver de muchas especies de diferentes clases de pescado, de diferentes clases de aves también y que ahora, pues ya no tiene nada, porque no tiene agua el río,
Ian James: And she told us that fishing is part of their culture, but that without water, there are far fewer fish than what she once saw.
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela: La pesca para el pueblo que papá es de lo que vivimos de lo cuando se inventan, pero es parte de nuestra cultura.
Ian James: And she also talked about what she'd like to see as far as a solution. She said that just a little bit of water would go a long way for her community.
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela: para el del del río por fuera poca, pero que se le dejara al río para que esté esa poquita de agua que que pueda tener dulce para nosotros significa mucho
Gustavo Arellano: It's so poignant to hear Hilda talk about what the Colorado River has meant to her community. I mean that's the overarching theme of your series, Ian, the people who depend on the river, and yeah, there's tens of millions of folks who rely on it to drink and bathe and farm and all of that. But then there's people for whom the river is part of their identity, their livelihood, and for them less water doesn't just mean literally less water. It's also a loss of who they are, and there isn’t any way around that at all.
Ian James: That's exactly right, and that's what we wanted to do was to go inside this water crisis and. See how it affects people.
Ian James: The Colorado River once was and could again be this living river, but it's been treated as a water supply to develop and use to the maximum. And so the river has been totally used up for a long time. And you see that visiting the delta in Mexico. What's changed over the past two decades is that the river's big reservoirs are now three fourths empty too.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah...we're at this moment where we need to make drastic changes to how we live in the West, and we make those changes pretty quickly. Like now. But at least this time it seems like there’s an opportunity to be much more inclusive and smarter about how we go about it.
Ian James: Yeah, I would agree. Even in the midst of this crisis, there is hope that the people who make decisions about how the river is used will be able to make major changes and do things differently. Because really our water future and the future of the river will depend on learning to live within the river's natural limits.
Gustavo Arellano: Finally, Ian, you've taken listeners from the headwaters up in Colorado to now the Delta in Mexico. It's been just such an education to me and all of our listeners, so thank you for that. But if there's one thing, one thing that you want all of us to remember, what is it?
Ian James: One thing I would say, something that a Mexican environmentalist said stood out to me as important. He said, it's a water revolution that needs to happen. And I think that seems right, the way the river has been used and overused just won't work anymore, especially with the climate crisis. And it may not be easy cutting back, but people will need to find ways to permanently adapt to this drier climate and a smaller river.
Gustavo Arellano: Reality at the end. Ian, thank you so much for this journey and for this conversation.
Ian James: Thank you so much, Gustavo.
Gustavo Arellano: And that’s it for our special series of Crisis on the Colorado River. Find earlier episodes on your favorite listening app.
Kasia Broussalian and Denise Guerra were the jefas on this series. It was edited by Jazmin Augilera and Heba Elorbany. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mike Heflin and Mark Nieto.
Special thanks to everyone who worked on Crisis on the Colorado River. Just some of the names: Albert Lee, Carolyn Cole, Brian van der Brug, Monte Morin, Molly Hennessey-Fiske — who is now at the Washington Post; we miss you Molly! — Gina Ferazzi, Luis Sinco and Sean Greene.
“The Times” is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our fellow is Helen Li. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias. Save water.