Rusty Childress

Fine art nature photographer | Visual storytelling in celebration of the natural world | Inspiring stewardship through bold, cinematic imagery. 📸

[Johnny B. Good @Cat5SMASHICANE]

I always felt like George Carlin was on the liberal side. Turns out I was wrong. He was right down the middle and found many issues on both sides. He had no problem calling it out. The man was brilliant and definitely ahead of his time. Too bad he wasn't here now. 🔥🤣🔥🤣🔥

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Shift happens: When Colorado River cuts hit home
Rusty Childress, Guest Commentary//March 13, 2026

#ColoradoRiver #ArizonaWater #WaterReality #LakeMead #LakePowell #WaterCrisis #ArizonaGrowth #WaterPolicy #DesertFuture #WesternWater #CAP #WaterSecurity #Aridification #ColoradoRiverCrisis #ArizonaPolitics

https://t.co/MOMTfSuI1I

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

What the drying Colorado River reveals about us,
Rusty Childress Rio Verde

The Colorado River didn’t fail us. We failed to pay attention, choosing comfort over correction when maturity was required.

For two decades, scientists have been saying the same thing: the West is hotter, the river is shrinking, and the math doesn't work. Flows have averaged 12 to 13 million acre-feet in recent decades, nowhere near the numbers baked into a century-old compact written during an unusually wet period. We knew this. We kept building anyway.
That's not stupidity. It's something more specific and more embarrassing, it's what humans do when the consequences feel abstract and the cost of changing feels immediate.
Full reservoirs are a kind of sedative. When Lake Mead sat high through the 90s and early 2000s, it didn't just store water, it stored confidence. Leaders pointed to it as proof that growth was safe. Subdivisions went up in Central Arizona. Alfalfa kept growing in the desert. The reservoir was visible, but the aquifer depletion, the shrinking snowpack, the warming baseline were not. We trust what we can see, and for a long time, we could see a lot of water.
The dams didn't solve the problem. They delayed the reckoning, and in doing so, made it worse.
Here's what nobody says plainly: every state in the Colorado River Basin knew this day was coming and chose not to go first. Not because the water managers were corrupt or ignorant, but because the incentives punished honesty. If Arizona cut permanently and Nevada didn't, Arizona lost. If California offered real reductions and the others stalled, California ate the cost. So everyone waited, and finger-pointing became the basin's unofficial water management strategy.
This is the tragedy of shared systems. When responsibility is spread across seven states and forty million people, it dissolves. Everyone has a reasonable local argument for why their piece of the system should be protected, farmers pointing to food security, cities pointing to growth, tribal nations pointing to senior rights long ignored. Each argument has merit. Taken together, they produce paralysis.
And underneath all of it, there's hope, the most dangerous emotion in a drought.
Hope that this winter will be the wet one, that desalination technology will scale, that someone else will solve it. Hope isn't irrational, but it has a specific and well-documented function in human psychology: it lets us postpone pain. We are wired to avoid losses now even at the cost of larger losses later, so a good snow year becomes an excuse to delay the cuts that the next dry year will make inevitable anyway.
Lake Powell is now edging toward minimum power pool, and dead pool, where water can no longer flow through the dam, is no longer theoretical. At that point, the federal government stops asking and starts telling, because the alternative is a system failure that no state can fix on its own.
What's remarkable is that this is exactly what the scientists predicted, not the specific year, not the precise elevation of the reservoir, but the shape of it: slow deterioration, delayed response, a political system that moves slower than hydrology. The warnings were there, they just couldn't compete with quarterly earnings reports and election cycles.
The Colorado River crisis is a water story, yes, but it's also a case study in how humans handle slow-moving catastrophe: we don't. Not until the catastrophe is no longer slow-moving.
The river doesn't negotiate. It doesn't care about the compact, the seniority system, or the jobs. It delivers what the climate allows and nothing more, and that gap between what the law allocates and what the river provides is not a legal problem. It's a reality problem, and reality is the one thing we've been most reluctant to bargain with.
The margins are thin now. The next few months will show whether states can finally do what they avoided for twenty years, align growth with actual flow and accept a smaller share of what is physically there, rather than defend expansion plans tied to water that exists mostly on paper.
That's the actual test, not engineering, not litigation, but whether we can grow up fast enough to match our behavior to the world as it is.

#ColoradoRiver #WaterCrisis #WesternDrought #WaterScarcity #ClimateReality #LakeMead #WaterPolicy #ArizonaWater #Drought #WaterManagement #SustainableWest #ClimateCrisis #WaterRights #DesertLiving #WaterConservation #BasinStates #SnowpackDecline #WaterLaw #EnvironmentalAccountability #ActNow

https://t.co/QK4Rqu1eNz

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

When water managers protect growth over the river
Rusty Childress Rio Verde

OPINION — The deadlines have passed, the water keeps dropping, and the seven Colorado River states still have no deal. Years of closed-door sessions produced zero headway. Everyone protected their political comfort zones. No one protected the river.

The basin is hotter and drier, and this is not a drought cycle. It is a smaller river. On paper, the system divides 16.5 million acre-feet between states and Mexico, but once losses are counted, total obligations push closer to 17 to 18 million acre-feet. The river now averages 12 to 13 million. In extreme years it has fallen near 6. That 4 to 5 million acre-foot structural deficit widens dramatically in dry years.

Lake Powell and Mead were designed as buffers against drought, not permanent shortfalls. Powell has dropped 32 feet in a year and hovers near minimum power pool at 3,490 feet. If it hits that mark, Glen Canyon Dam stops producing hydropower and loses its ability to move water downstream. Inflow this water year is just 52 percent of average. Under the Bureau of Reclamation's probable minimum scenario, Powell could reach that threshold by December.

The consequences are already here. Pinal County farmers watch fields go dry while cities pump groundwater as if it were infinite. It is not. If Colorado River cuts deepen, groundwater overdraft becomes the next crisis on top of the first.

Without agreement, Washington writes the rules. Arizona's leverage shrinks. Delay is no longer affordable.

Operations must become supply-based. Releases from Powell must track actual inflows. Arizona must align demand with supply. Stop approving massive subdivisions, water-intensive data centers, and industrial-scale alfalfa as if the tap is endless. Growth that exceeds supply is not ambition. It is willful blindness.

The math is in charge. The river does not care. History does.

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

@elonmusk Musk has it wrong about human overpopulation, don’t need!

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

https://t.co/qFyP4FLRq3

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

For too long, we've protected growth instead of the river
Rusty Childress Special to the Arizona Daily Star
The deadlines have passed, the water keeps dropping, and the seven states that depend on the Colorado River still have no deal. Years of closed-door sessions and expensive modeling produced zero headway. Everyone protected their political comfort zones. No one protected the river.
The river is answering to aridification. The basin is hotter and drier, the supply is smaller, and this is not a drought cycle. It is a smaller river. Arizona built a desert empire on a short slice of unusually wet data and locked it into law as if it were permanent.
Here is the part no one wants to say plainly. On paper, the system divides 16.5 million acre-feet between the states and Mexico, and once evaporation and system losses are counted, total obligations push closer to 17 to 18 million acre-feet a year. The river in the 21st century averages more like 12 to 13 million. In extreme years it has fallen below 10, and once dropped near 6. That 4 to 5 million acre-foot gap is the structural deficit. In dry years it widens dramatically.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead were designed as buffers against drought and year-to-year swings in snowpack. They were never meant to compensate for a permanent shortfall.
Powell has dropped 32 feet in a year and is now hovering near minimum power pool at 3,490 feet. If it hits that mark, Glen Canyon Dam stops producing hydropower and loses its ability to reliably move water downstream to Arizona. Inflow this water year is just 52% of average, meaning the reservoir is being asked to deliver more than nature provides. Under the Bureau of Reclamation’s probable minimum scenario, Powell could reach that threshold by December.
The consequences are already here. Pinal County farmers are watching fields go dry while cities drill and pump groundwater as if it were an infinite backup plan. Across Arizona and the Basin, groundwater has become the silent pressure valve for surface water failure. It is not sustainable. In rural Arizona, declines are measurable and accelerating. If Colorado River cuts deepen, groundwater overdraft becomes the next crisis, a double hit on top of the first.
The old idea of guaranteed Colorado River allocations is evaporating along with the reservoirs. What remains is paper water, numbers in contracts that shrink when elevations fall. Yet developers keep building as if the structural deficit does not exist. Keep doing that, and we will bankrupt the river.
Without agreement, the federal government moves forward on its own. When states fail, Washington writes the rules. Arizona’s leverage shrinks. Litigation may follow, but federal control arrives first. Delay is no longer affordable.
Operations must become supply-based, not driven by 1922 entitlements. Releases from Lake Powell must track actual inflows, not growth policy. With cavitation risks and dead pool thresholds, the river is governed by math, not negotiation. Arizona must align demand with supply. If we use more than the river provides, everyone loses.
Arizona does not need a sweet deal. It needs sustainability. Stop approving massive subdivisions, water-intensive data centers, and industrial-scale alfalfa as if the tap is endless. Growth that exceeds supply is not ambition. It is willful blindness.
Arizona was built on boldness. We carved canals into the dust and built an economy where none should exist. That ambition is a genuine strength. But untethered from hydrology, it becomes self-deception. The Law of the River no longer matches the river itself. The rules were built not just on abundance but on overconfidence and denial, the assumption that shortages were temporary, that someone else would take the hit, that peak flows were permanent supply.
Arizona has a choice: live within the river we have, or chase a ghost. Negotiations failed. The bill is due. The math is in charge. The river does not care. History does.https://t.co/kDK2PoHK1e

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

How 30 tribes became the most powerful voice on the river
Rusty Childress Rio Verde

OPINION – In 1922, a small group of leaders divided the Colorado River behind closed doors. They ignored the Tribal Nations who lived near the water for centuries. They also ignored how the river actually worked. They looked at a few wet years and guessed there would always be plenty of water. They were wrong.

For a long time, big dams hid those mistakes. But today, the water is running out. The seven states that use the river face a major federal deadline of Feb. 14. If they cannot agree on a new plan, the government may take control. The old days of using “paper water” that does not exist are over. Everyone must face the reality of a dry river.

This is where tribal power changes the game. Tribes are now in the center of the fight using senior rights, money and new management roles. First, tribes hold the oldest legal rights to the water. In the West, seniority is everything. The person who had the water first keeps it when the river goes dry. Together, 30 tribes own about one-fourth of the river. Recognizing these rights makes everyone else's pie smaller. For a century, cities used this water for free. That is over.?

https://t.co/mdQsZUDcLt?

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

https://t.co/mLuAS1nKhP

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Arizona is charging ahead with growth plans the Colorado River can no longer support.
Long-term declines in river flows, permanent aridification, and an already over-allocated system mean Lake Mead and Lake Powell are unlikely to recover to historical levels.
Yet new housing, industrial projects, and long-term water commitments continue as if supply is guaranteed.
This disconnect between physical reality and policy mirrors other risk-blind systems: warning signs are acknowledged, then ignored.
Without aligning growth decisions to actual water availability, Arizona risks locking itself into shortages, infrastructure failures, and cascading economic and environmental consequences.
#ColoradoRiver #WaterScarcity #ArizonaWater #LakeMead #LakePowell #ClimateDrought #WaterPolicy #SustainableGrowth #PrecautionaryPrinciple #CentralArizonaProject #WaterRisk #ResourceLimits #ArizonaFuture #WaterSecurity #EnvironmentalPolicy

https://t.co/m0Lt75a3s7

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

https://t.co/xgqSBBDL9V

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Opinion: Why Colorado River states must confront the digital water boom https://t.co/ROaW8Z9JpT

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Metro Phoenix is vulnerable to lack of water
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 30, 2025

Central Arizona’s growth is a triumph of semantics over hydrology. The Phoenix metro area, now 5 million people, expanded because policy language made desert scarcity sound manageable. The cornerstone of this expansion was the "100-year Assured Water Supply," a phrase that functioned more as a growth permission slip than a scientific guarantee.

The 1980 Groundwater Management Act assumed the Colorado River would remain a permanent backstop. Planners never envisioned five million residents competing with mega-farms and data centers for a finite resource. By using the word "assured," the state allowed developers and lenders to push risk decades into the future.

That future has arrived. With Colorado River reservoirs nearing "dead pool," the vulnerability of the entire system is exposed. Recent state data shows Phoenix lacks the water to support its current footprint, let alone future sprawl. Phoenix didn't grow by accident; it grew because comforting language allowed confidence to outrun capacity. Responsibility now requires our laws to match the brutal physical reality of the desert. The era of masking scarcity with semantics is over.

Rusty Childress, Rio Verde

#ColoradoRiver #WaterLimits #ArizonaWater #SustainableGrowth #7States1River #OVERSHOOT

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

https://t.co/k85JUn5G2d

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

The mirage of ‘assured’ water in Arizona
By Rusty Childress | Rio Verde

Seven states share one river, and nowhere is the risk clearer than in central Arizona. The Colorado River was never meant to support unlimited growth, yet the Phoenix metro area has expanded to more than five million people in a desert that physically supports far fewer. What made that possible was not hydrology. It was semantics.

For decades, Western water policy has relied on language that sounds responsible while quietly separating decisions from physical reality. The most influential phrase is "100-year Assured Water Supply." It feels solid and scientific, as if the future has been measured and secured. In practice, it has functioned as a growth permission slip, allowing confidence to outrun capacity.

The term traces back to the Arizona Groundwater Management Act, signed by then-Governor Bruce Babbitt. Arizona was trying to bring order to groundwater pumping, but the law was written for a very different future. Planners were projecting for a much smaller human footprint. No one imagined a metro area of five million people spreading across the desert, competing with agriculture, mining, subdivisions, and data centers for enormous volumes of water year after year.

That context matters because a "100-year" supply was never proof of sustainability. One hundred years is an arbitrary planning horizon dressed up as certainty in a region where nature offers no guarantees. The word "assured" quietly did the heavy lifting. Developers could demonstrate compliance, cities could approve permits, lenders could close deals, and buyers could assume the hard questions had already been answered. The risk did not disappear. It was deferred to future residents, future taxpayers, and a river that may no longer deliver as promised.

What makes this more troubling is that the language was never intended as a scientific guarantee. Kathleen Ferris, then executive director of the Arizona Groundwater Management Study Commission, has openly acknowledged that she and Jack DeBofksy "cooked up" the 100-year assured water supply requirement as a political compromise. This is how semantics shape outcomes. When water is labeled "assured" or "secured," scrutiny fades. Legal rights written decades ago are treated as if they were wet water flowing reliably through pipes. Paper becomes a substitute for physical supply.

Arizona Department of Water Resources planning models now show there is not enough water to support the Phoenix area as it exists today, let alone as it grows. The amount required to sustain five million people, vast development, and a modern economy exceeds what the land and aquifers can reliably provide. In plain terms, the "100-year" promise was built on water that exists on paper, not in the ground.

Meanwhile, the river's reservoirs operate with little margin for error. Lake Powell and Lake Mead remain perilously close to minimum power pool levels. The Central Arizona Project sits at the end of the priority chain, where future deliveries are fundamentally uncertain. In severe shortage scenarios, large cuts to municipal supplies would force cities to scramble for replacement water, accelerate groundwater pumping, raise costs, and deepen long-term vulnerability. In that context, calling any part of this system "assured" is a semantic illusion.

This is why the era of paper water is ending. As the human footprint has grown, the gap between language and reality has become impossible to ignore. The fix begins with honesty. Retire "assured," "secured," and even "100-year supply," and replace them with language that asks simple questions. Is the water really there? Will it still flow in a shortage? Does it last as conditions get hotter and drier?

Seven states. One river. Phoenix did not grow to five million people by accident. It grew because semantics made scarcity sound manageable. Responsibility now begins with letting our language match reality.

#7States1River
#ColoradoRiverBasin
#WaterConservation
#WesternWater
@7States1River

https://t.co/foOhD74dLE

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Childress: Arizona needs to get smart about future development
Guest Commentary by Rusty Childress

Just beyond Scottsdale’s city limits, in the Rio Verde Foothills, sits an enclave of luxury homes.These houses come with all the bells and whistles, including sweeping views of the surrounding landscape.

They’re a stone’s throw from the pristine Tonto National Forest.

And they could soon be functionally uninhabitable, once the city of Scottsdale — faced with increasingly dire water supply woes of its own — stops hauling water to Rio Verde residents whose wells have run dry at the end of this year.

The community is a prime example of how easily unchecked development can strain precious resources, degrade the environment, and ultimately leave residents with little option but to pack up and move elsewhere.

And yet Maricopa County, and Arizona in general, is continuing to develop at a breakneck pace, with new residential building permits near a 16-year high. For the sake of the environment, and the state’s current residents, that’s a trend that simply cannot continue.

It’s no secret that the Grand Canyon State has seen an explosion in population growth in the past 40 years. Since the early 1980s, Arizona has added more than 4 million new residents, more than doubling the state’s population.

Many people say all this growth is good for the economy. And they have a point. Arizona has one of the fastest growing economies in the country, with an unemployment rate below the national average, thanks to all these new workers and consumers.

But all that growth has brought some not-so-nice side effects, particularly for the state’s fragile environment.

Consider that new development has destroyed close to 2,000 square miles of natural habitat and farmland in Arizona since 1982. That represents a 114% increase in developed land over the same period.

And look at what’s happening to the Sonoran Desert, one of the most biologically diverse desert ecosystems in the United States. Located uncomfortably close to the fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Tucson, the Sonoran is at constant risk of destruction-by-bulldozer as developers eye the desert biome as a prime site for their next subdivision.

As one recent example, a homebuilder has drafted plans to erect over 1,400 new houses along preserved Sonoran land just north of Phoenix.

📷

It’s difficult to overstate how dangerous such ideas are for Arizona’s environment. The state’s aquifers — a major source of water — are already close to bone dry. The Colorado River and Lake Mead reservoir, which provide Arizona with 36% of its water supply, have reached record low levels.

New development will only increase demand for scarce water supplies.

It’s not just the environment that’s at risk from seemingly endless growth, though. Arizonans’ quality of life will also decrease dramatically if unchecked development continues.

Development has led to an increase in pollution and a decrease in air quality — which has surely contributed to Phoenix’s position as a leading city in asthma-related deaths.

Noise pollution from new data centers has drawn ire from local residents, many of whom understand that excessive noise isn’t just annoying, but it can also cause a whole host of health problems: elevated blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, and mental health problems, to name a few.

Many of Arizona’s new residents came to the state for its promise of a high quality of life: sunshine, clear skies, and wide open spaces. If current trends continue, it’s only a matter of time before those amenities become a thing of the past.

The only way to keep the state’s population growth in check is to hold local policymakers accountable — at the ballot box.

Town commissioners and zoning board members are the ones who approve new construction permits. They’ll decide whether we stay on our current unsustainable path or whether we’ll change course. Elections for local offices like these might not command the same attention as statewide and national races, but they have an enormous impact on folks’ day-to-day quality of life.

Of course, national races are important too. About 44% of Arizona’s recent growth has been driven by foreign migration. If immigration trends continue, America will add about 70 million new people to its population over the coming four decades — and a considerable number would undoubtedly settle here in Arizona.

Development can certainly be a force for good, but only when it’s properly regulated.

To prevent future Rio Verde-like catastrophes, and protect Arizona’s natural wonder for generations to come, we have to put the proper guardrails in place.

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Childress: Arizona needs to get smart about future development
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Guest Commentary by Rusty Childress

Just beyond Scottsdale’s city limits, in the Rio Verde Foothills, sits an enclave of luxury homes.These houses come with all the bells and whistles, including sweeping views of the surrounding landscape.

https://t.co/lKwjE8inZ5

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

Letter to the Editor: Let's face the facts about Arizona's water future – Phoenix Business Journal
In this letter to the editor, a Rio Verde resident Rusty Childress says Arizona politicians and developers need to understand that the Colorado River crisis isn't just about water shortages - it's about the fundamental physics that could dry up the state's water supply.
Every Arizonan has seen the headlines: “Colorado River can’t meet demand.” “Experts call for more cutbacks.” The stories sound serious — but they stop short of telling the truth that matters most. If Lake Mead falls just a few dozen feet lower, the Central Arizona Project (CAP) — the canal system that delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson, and Pinal County farms — will not face “reductions.” It will shut down.
That’s not a political statement or a worst-case projection. It’s physics.
Lake Mead sits behind Hoover Dam, the upstream gate for the entire Lower Colorado River system. When the lake’s surface drops below about 895 feet, the dam’s outlet tunnels rise above the waterline. At that point, gravity — the same force that moves every drop to Arizona — stops working. Hoover Dam can’t release water. Davis Dam, downstream, begins to drain. Parker Dam, which forms Lake Havasu, stops receiving inflow. And the Mark Wilmer Pumping Plant — the intake for CAP — becomes a stranded pipe.
When that happens, the canal goes dry.
Engineers call that threshold “dead pool.” It’s not a metaphor. It’s the point at which the Colorado River ceases to function as a delivery system. No policy negotiation, no conservation plan, no new compact can make water flow uphill.
If Hoover reaches dead pool, Phoenix and Tucson lose about 1.5 million acre-feet of imported water per year — roughly half of what supplies the Valley. Power generation at Hoover stops too, taking 2,000 megawatts off the grid. Reservoirs downstream become stagnant, salinity spikes, fish die, and what’s left of the delta in Mexico dries up.
Yet most media coverage avoids this reality. Reporters use words like shortage, cutbacks, and resilience — language that sounds manageable, gradual, even hopeful. “Collapse” is the one word they won’t print, even though it’s the one that applies.
Part of that restraint comes from habit. Water agencies and government spokespeople frame the crisis in tiers and percentages. Journalists repeat those terms to stay aligned with official sources. The result is a kind of collective understatement — a conversation about policy when the problem is mechanical.
This soft-pedaling matters. Arizonans are led to believe we’re facing tough choices and painful cuts — not the end of the system itself. The truth is that without enough hydraulic head at Hoover Dam, there is no Central Arizona Project. No pipeline, no backup valve, no plan B.
Some insist technology will save us: desalination plants, new pipelines, maybe giant pumps to lift water out of a dead pool. But none of those exist today, and even if they did, they couldn’t replace the simple physics of gravity moving water 155 miles downstream.
We should be talking about this openly — not to spread fear, but to face facts. Cities, developers, and legislators continue to plan as if the Colorado River will limp along forever. It won’t. Unless Lake Mead’s levels stabilize, the CAP system that made modern Arizona possible could become an empty canal within a few years.
It’s time for plain language. The Colorado River isn’t just “over-allocated.” It’s dying. And if we keep avoiding the word collapse, we’ll be unprepared when the taps run dry.
The people of Arizona deserve the truth — not euphemisms, not optimism by omission. We can handle the facts. What we can’t handle is pretending that the impossible — water flowing uphill from a dead pool — will somehow keep happening.

[Rusty Childress @Childressdotcom]

In this letter to the editor, a Rio Verde resident Rusty Childress says Arizona politicians and developers need to understand that the Colorado River crisis isn't just about water shortages - it's about the fundamental physics that could dry up the state's water supply.
https://t.co/PK6IcWE5Za