“Colorado is so low you can cross it without getting your knees wet”

West of the Rockies, in the state of Colorado where the river of the same name has its source, Anthony Prough has just loaded his red kayak onto the roof of his 4×4. He says he has taken all the rapids from Colorado to Mexico since moving to Cedar Edge in 1984. At the time, he recalls, no one thought there was a lack of water. “There was six or three feet of snow. It needed a double marker. We haven’t seen that kind of snow for a long time. And today Colorado is so low you can cross it without getting wet. knees. It’s really scary. “

Iconic landscape of the American West, Colorado, over 2,300 km long, irrigates seven states. Some 40 million Americans depend on it. The lack of water, Paul Kehmeier’s family thought about it 125 years ago. On the heights of Eckhert, further west, Paul’s great-grandfather built a small dam to have his own reservoir. But that’s not enough anymore. “I wanted to plant a new alfalfa field and decided not to do it because for the past two or three years we haven’t had the normal amount of water for irrigation., explains the farmer. And I’m afraid next year will be this weak. “

Heat, drought, a classic cocktail of American West summers and a vicious circle that is increasingly visible in the river. “A number of studies have attempted to determine by how much flow decreases for each degree Celsius of temperature increase. And we believe that number is somewhere between 3 and 10% decrease in flow per degree.says Brad Udall, a water and climate researcher at the University of Colorado, Fort Collins. It’s probably near the top of that range. “ The Colorado basin has already warmed by more than one degree in 20 years. Its level has therefore already fallen by 10% because of the rise in temperatures.

Yet the United States is still lagging behind in the fight against global warming. President Joe Biden is trying to raise the bar with an ambitious project with a multi-billion dollar investment plan, but it remains blocked in Congress for the moment. A major producer of coal, the country is currently in the family of “skeptics”, even if it signed the agreement on deforestation at the COP26 which is held in Scotland until 12 November.