Common sense prevails. On May 12, Governor Hickenlooper signed into effect a bill allowing Coloradans to use up to two rain barrels to collect no more than 110 gallons of water for personal use. The water must be used for outdoor purposes: gardening and the like. 

Huzzah. 

Why is this a landmark action? Until Hickenlooper grabbed his pen and swirled his signature, Colorado was the only state in the nation where this particular act of conservation was illegal. For over 100 years the conversation about water conservation via rain barrel always stalled around the key issue of water rights. The concern was that if enough folks began using barrels, flows to our downstream neighbors might be reduced. 

In Colorado, water that falls on your roof—or dusts our peaks in winter to become the flowing creek near your house, etc.—is technically not yours. Much of the water that begins its seaward journey from Colorado belongs to people who live far away—as far away as San Ysidro, California: nearly 840 miles distant as the crow flies.

Add to this reality that demands at both ends of the “pipe”—for that is, sadly, what the Colorado River has become—are increasing. 

Los Angeles is a megacity with major municipal water needs, but Denver is no longer a cowtown, and the new arrivals keep … arriving. This writer included. They’ll need water, among other resources. And, if you didn’t know, there are other states along the Colorado River which also depend on its flow. 

According to a recent story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lake Mead, which supplies 90 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s water, hit a low in mid-May not seen since the lake was first filling following construction of the Hoover Dam in 1937. 

In other words, Lake Mead is at a record low. Even better news: the lake’s surface is expected to drop two feet lower as we move into June. 

It was revealed in that same Review-Journal article that even as down-basin states Nevada and Arizona are giving back 200,000 acre feet to the reservoir, upper basin states Wyoming, Utah and, yes, Colorado are planning diversions that could draw the lake down 250,000 acre feet. 

So, why the excitement over rain barrels when they represent only a drop in the bucket (pun intended)? Rain barrels are an environmental advocacy tool. They are a practical and ongoing experiment in conservation ecology, and they remind us just how precious little precipitation we receive here on the Front Range—eight to fifteen inches a year. 

Now, an inch of rain falling on a 1,000-square-foot roof equals roughly 600 gallons of water. Let’s say we had a wet year: 15 inches. With each inch representing 600 gallons, we come in at 9,000 gallons in a year. Quite a bit of water! But when you consider the average American family of four uses between 300 and 400 gallons a day? Working off of a low-end usage rate of 300 gallons per day, that 9,000 gallons would last you a month. 

So, where does the rest of the water come from? 

Most Coloradans—over 80 percent—draw from surface sources. Lakes and rivers. But, as anyone whose head is not buried in the sand knows, we’ve had year after year of record-breaking warm temperatures. The warming trend is not reversing anytime soon, and increased desertification in the Southwest and Mountain West regions means increased evaporation from flowing and stationary water sources. And, it potentially means reduced rainfall. 

“The Law of the River,” the name for the the body of legal material that governs the flow of the Colorado River to the states that draw from it, moves at a glacial pace, if it moves at all. It may as well be seen as a static entity for all intents and purposes. But the shifting realities of climate change? Most models represent rising global average temperatures hyperbolically—as we move into the future the line curves ever more sharply higher. 

Back to the barrels themselves. When you collect water in a rain barrel and are conscious of just how much water it provides for watering your plants and vegetables (versus how much they need), you begin to live the reality of this particular patch of American soil. Just what is that reality? Desert. We live in a desert, and from Western Kansas to Tahoe is all desert, essentially, though it might go by other names. 

You wouldn’t know it though for all the green lawns that line our streets. 

And to that: the expectation that a green, lush lawn be a part of the American Dream in this part of the country? That—and many other water-dependent conveniences—might just have to be something we let go down the drain.