"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now."

When we moved from Minnesota (Land of 10K Lakes) we brought our rain barrel with us. Our realtor told us such water reclamation devices were prohibited by law in this part of Colorado. Evidently all the water on the front range has been claimed! As such, a home rain barrel would be usurping the water rights of others. We thought the rain barrel law nonsensical. We were merely delaying and more specifically directing the discharge of rain water from our roof to our garden. Evidently others thought the rain barrel law nonsensical. A pilot rain water collection and use program is under evaluation.

A long existing, and likewise nonsensical law, known as the Colorado River Compact requires updating in 2026. While the intentions of the hundred plus year old Law, to assure the fair use of Colorado River water were noble, fairness has not, and could not have been realized. One of the reasons this law is nonsensical is that few, if any, meaningful restrictions to manage the expanded use of a finite supply of water have been enforced.  Lower Basin States of the Compact have relied on giant rain barrels (the Hoover and Grand Coolee Dams) to help stave off the travail. However, without controls on growth and development, the resource risk now extends to these dams. The dams, with record low water levels, may not be able to continue to provide electricity. Maybe folks did not understand that a key requirement of hydroelectric power is the hydro. There will be a lot of travail and groaning, along with lawsuits, as an updated Compact is promulgated.  

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation (FBR) will try to manage the Colorado River Compact update process. Scott Cameron is Acting Commissioner. Aubrey Bettencourt has been nominated by Trump and is awaiting Senate confirmation. There are high hopes for Ms. Bettencourt. There are dismal hopes the Senate will confirm any nomination soon enough to stave off a real water (squirt-gun) fight.  Scott's LinkedIN photo implies he's ready to do something new. Maybe he just wants to get out while the getting is good. 

Even with FBR involvement there is greater likelihood water use will be litigated. Several states are planning to invest more in likely court action, then they've probably spent in trying to manage water use.  

Government officials would want constituents to believe that water shortages, and the resulting restrictions in use, are only coincidental to an ever increasing use of a finite resource.  They'd wish constituents to believe that an increasing number of wildfires and wildfire severity is only coincidental, and not commensurate with insufficient expenditures towards good land and forestry preservation practices.  It seems easier for officials to try and focus constituent attention on lightening strikes versus a careless, negligent or even depraved human disregard for land and forests. It seems easier to try a market a 'localized' global warming event as the primary cause of wildfires and water shortages. 

Three years ago it was theorized there were just too many coincidences for Covid19 not to be considered a the product of a virology lab.  The previously esteemed Dr. Fauci insisted a Chinese lab, which indirectly received NIH funding, was not the probable source of a gain of function virus. Now it is not so coincidentally acknowledged that when a pompous and narcissistic presidential duo, Trump and Biden, retained and foisted on the US a pompous and narcissistic bureaucratic King Fauci, that nightmares would follow. Fauci, or Mister "I am the Science", has pleaded the Fifth on several of his Covid19 statements or claims. It didn't really matter. Fauci's journal, unwisely posted on a government server, cast his claims and his motivation in a self centered and politically motivated anti-science light. Like politics & religion, politics & science has proven it can be a dangerous concoction of mistrust.