Colorado River delta trickles toward Mexican disaster

Fighting a fierce north wind and cresting waves, a dozen Cucapa Indian fishermen were in trouble before they were halfway home, their small boats and balky outboard motors overmatched by the roiling estuary of the Colorado River delta.

"Malo viento," muttered Julio Figueroa, as he nosed his boat slowly through the wind-whipped waves, his feet submerged in 10 inches of water.

Boats have capsized and people have drowned in these waters where river and sea collide. Others have drifted out to sea after waterlogged motors stalled.

The Cucapa say that every year they must venture farther downstream, braving some of the highest spring tides in the world. Rough seas are not the only hazard. It is illegal to fish here. The waters are part of a federal sanctuary created to protect several imperiled marine species.

Although getting caught could cost them their boats, the Cucapa say they have little choice. Upstream, where the current is slower and the fishing legal, there is not enough water anymore and, consequently, not enough fish.

As U.S. scientists warn of a semi-permanent drought along the taxed river by midcentury, Mexico today offers a glimpse of what dry times can be like. Rationing is in effect in some areas. Farmers have abandoned crops they can no longer irrigate. Experts fear the desert will reclaim the region's most fertile land.

The Cucapa are a tiny portion of the 3 million people in northern Mexico who depend on a meager allotment of Colorado River water that was not enough when it was granted by treaty in 1944 and is not enough now.

Traversing 1,440 miles through seven of the most arid U.S. states, the Colorado River arrives here as an intermittent stream laden with sewage, fertilizer, pesticides and salts leached from farmland.

The Cucapa and their ancestors have been living in the Colorado River delta for 1,000 years, sustaining themselves on lush wetlands. As the river and its surroundings dried up, many of the Cucapa went elsewhere. Today, the handful who remain -- fewer than 200 -- cling to a water-starved environment that is as imperiled as they are.

Every year at this time, the Cucapa head for the "zono nucleo," the core of the marine reserve where the river meets the Gulf of California. Playing cat-and-mouse with police patrols, the Indians net corvina, a commercially popular fish that can bring as much money in a month as in a year working in fields or doing other manual labor.

One-hundred years ago, 30-ton steamboats made their way up the mouth of the Colorado. Now, at low tide, there is no longer enough water to float the Cucapa's 20-foot-long "pangas" and their cargo.

For all his hard work, Figueroa ended the day mired in the nearly dry riverbed, a mile short of his destination, his fish losing freshness and value.

"Malo viento," he kept saying. But it was the river, not an "evil wind," that had let him down.

Dams, drought, climate change, urban growth, industrial agriculture and politics on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are to blame, and none of those adverse conditions will reverse any time soon.

Reservoirs have been drawn down to historically low levels. Some scientists predict that the river's annual flow could drop by 50 percent over the next 40 years due to a changing climate.

Despite heavy snowfall in the central Rocky Mountains this year, U.S. river managers advise states that depend on the Colorado River to prepare for water shortages within five years.

Measures to shore up U.S. reserves, meanwhile, may make water more scarce in Mexico.

For many years, Mexico has benefited from an unofficial surplus over its meager allotment of river flow. The extra water comes from underground seepage in an unlined canal in California and storm runoff that makes its way south.

The U.S. is in the process of stanching the flow by lining the All American Canal, a 90-mile-long irrigation ditch in California's Imperial Valley. Plans also are under way to build a reservoir to catch 60 percent to 70 percent of the surplus surface water before it reaches Mexico.

The extra water has been a boon to crops in the arid Mexicali Valley and to the Colorado River delta, where the Cucapa and other poor fishermen eke out a living.

"To the extent it survives at all, the environment down there lives off the slop, off unplanned releases," said Peter Culp, a consultant to the Tucson, Ariz.-based Sonoran Institute, a nonprofit group working on delta restoration.

Without the surplus, farmers in the Mexicali Valley say they will have to fallow land, cut their workforce and rely on aquifers that are being pumped at an unsustainable rate.

"Some people will be put out of work. Others will have to reduce their standard of living," said Leopoldo Hurtado, who farms 40 acres near the border. "We will have to pay to dig deeper wells and raise fewer crops."

A recent study by San Diego State University estimates that the production of some fruits and vegetables in the Mexicali Valley will drop by more than half over the next 20 years. More than 7,000 farm families could lose their livelihoods, according to Mexicali economist Enrique Rovirosa.

For northern Mexico, the only supplement to the Colorado River is ground water. But the desert region receives about 3 inches of rainfall a year.