Experts believe water scarcity will become a significant issue across most of the world over the next decade. In Southeast Alaska, it’s a different story.
The volume of water flowing through Juneau’s Lemon Creek at one point Thursday was equal to the volume of water flowing through the coveted Rio Grande in the Southwestern United States, according to Brett Walton, a reporter with the online publication Circle of Blue.
While millions of people are dependent on the Rio Grande as a water source, Lemon Creek doesn’t bear the same burden.
One Alaskan community’s glacial creek is a dry region’s grand river.
“The flow of Lemon Creek yesterday in the afternoon was the same as the flow of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, and the Rio Grande in Texas and Big Bend,” Walton said. “So the Rio Grande, one of these major iconic Western rivers, these are rivers that are large in history, large in our imaginations but are not big rivers. So a creek here flowing in Juneau is the same size as John Wayne, Rio Bravo — that’s the river’s name in Mexico — that is the size of what we’re talking about with Lemon Creek here.”
And every last drop of water in the Rio Grande is allocated amongst governments, farmers and villages.
The river starts in southcentral Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, flows through New Mexico and then serves as the border between Texas and Mexico before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
“So a lot of the water, almost all of the water, is diverted for agriculture or municipal uses by the time it reaches El Paso, which is in the very western part of Texas,” Walton said. “So downstream of El Paso the Rio Grande is essentially dry most of the time.”
The volumes of water were reported by the U.S. Geological Survey, where gauges document flow volumes in one location, but vary daily due to changing water flow.
Walton spoke at The Politics of Water last week, a three-day forum hosted by the Juneau World Affairs Council and the University of Alaska Southeast.
