Walcher: Drought studies: When will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger’s 1960s folk standard, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, made a genuine classic through cover versions by the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; and at least 50 others. It is often quoted, generally out of context, as will be the case here, because of the line closing each stanza, “When will they ever learn.”

I hear it occasionally in arguments about endangered species, as in, “Where have all the flowers gone, young girls picked them, every one.” I think of it more in connection with these never-ending “studies” about the Colorado River, how much more water there used to be, and why it isn’t there anymore. Government agencies spend millions every year on such studies, usually through grants to college professors, whose conclusions are virtually always the same. They invariably conclude either that the original negotiators of interstate agreements were wrong about the flow of the river, or that it is much lower today because of global warming. Most importantly, they always — always — advocate reducing water use as the sole solution.

These studies never — not even once in the last 20 years — discuss the role of federal land management in reducing the flow of water throughout the West. That ignores the most important factor in reduced water flows across the West, especially in the Colorado River Basin. Numerous forest health analyses show that mismanagement of public lands has resulted in massive unnatural overgrowth that prevents vast amounts of water from reaching the streams. Moreover, volumes of surveys document non-native high-water-consuming plants like tamarisk and Russian olive clogging rivers across the southwest, about which the government has done virtually nothing.