The Grand Canyon floods point to our bigger water crisis

The reason most lottery winners eventually go broke is that they aren’t prepared for the unexpected influx of wealth. They blow it on luxuries, bad investments and long-lost relatives. Dry places face a similar risk when they receive a sudden deluge of rainfall. If they’re not ready to capture and use it, then the water can do more harm than good. 

An extreme example of this happened in the Grand Canyon over the weekend. The Colorado River that runs through the natural wonder has lost 20% of its flow during a generation-long drought. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the critical reservoirs upstream and downstream of the canyon, respectively, are at record-low levels. The region desperately needs any water it can get, and the current monsoon season should be an opportunity to get some of that.

But the rain it received on Saturday was far too much to handle, falling at more than an inch per hour at one point and ultimately delivering a month’s worth of rain in a day, Bloomberg News reported. It hit pitched, dehydrated ground, including some recently scarred by wildfire, funneling the water quickly into dangerous areas.

Two people died in the flooding, with a third missing as of Tuesday morning. The cascades washed away trail bridges and, in a cruel twist, parts of a water pipeline used by tourists and firefighters. A desperately thirsty Grand Canyon received far too much water all at once, and in the aftermath people in the canyon will have even less water available than they did before. 

We can’t say for sure that climate change made this torrent so intense. A generational El Niño weather pattern building in the eastern Pacific and the remnants of a tropical storm contributed, too, as the Washington Post noted. But a heating planet does make such storms more likely. Hotter air holds 7% more moisture, meaning when thunderstorms hit, they hit harder than usual. Far from being a boon to dry places, such downpours can overwhelm them, as happened in the Grand Canyon.

A hotter planet means everybody needs to plan for heavier rainfalls, putting infrastructure in place to safely collect the water and store it for a non-rainy day. Plans should also include setting the right priorities for any extra water that falls, the way lottery winners should hire a financial planner before collecting their winnings.

For an example of how not to do this, look, as is often the case, to Corpus Christi, Texas. This increasingly thirsty Gulf Coast city has a history of spending its water first and asking questions later. Its latest error is in handling copious rainfall in May and June that lifted water levels in Corpus Christi’s reservoirs from catastrophic to merely worrisome.

Before the rains, Corpus Christi was on track to declare a water emergency by the end of this year, requiring drastic cuts that could threaten the water-guzzling industrial boom the city welcomed. Now the city’s water restrictions are at the lowest level, and its combined reservoirs are back up to more than 40% of capacity for the first time in two years.

The city could have used some of that boon to make a long-delayed fresh-water release into the wetlands and bay of the Nueces River Delta, Inside Climate News reported. Instead, it asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to suspend the rule that requires such a release when reservoirs top 30%, and the agency agreed, Inside Climate News reported. At the same time, the city told homeowners they could start watering their lawns again.

"Why do we have to let the residents suffer? They want to water their grass," City Council member Eric Cantu said at a meeting, according to Inside Climate News. He also grumbled about how the city was losing revenue from water sales. "Let them use the water so we can get paid," he said.

But pumping fresh water into the Nueces delta isn’t just a concern for egret-hugging liberals. As the area’s salinity increases, it becomes less able to handle the wastewater the city is freely pumping into it, turning it into a "septic tank," as one environmental expert put it.

For a little extra cash and greener grass, the city is setting itself up for an even bigger water crisis in the future, only this time with sewage involved. Municipal-bond investors make Corpus Christi pay more to borrow, my colleague Matthew Winkler has noted, and not because its lawns aren’t lush enough.

Even as it granted Corpus Christi’s shortsighted request, the TCEQ warned the water crisis wasn’t over. The city now expects reservoirs to dip below 30% again in April 2027, forcing less lawn-watering and leaving the bay to get even saltier.

Similarly, the Southwest could get a short-term precipitation boost from El Niño, which tends to make the region wetter. But this bonanza will barely begin to make up for 25 years of drought. As the planet heats, its dry regions will likely become drier, but the scarce rainy days will be far wetter. Avoiding catastrophes and making the most of that bounty will be increasingly imperative.

Windfalls never last as long as you’d hope.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal.