( intro music )
The last time I came here,
I walked 90 miles across the dry,
forgotten river channel.
But in the spring of 2014, something happened.
A river of sand became wet once again,
and the first time the Colorado River
kissed the sea in nearly in two decades.
We can bring a river back to life, if we try.
Male voice over: River Colorado.
( applause )
Pete McBride: Thank you very much for coming.
It's a great honor to be here.
About 20 years ago, I had the...
the unusual experience to walk into the building next door
and try to sell them a story,
which ended up being my first story
with National Geographic.
It was a story of taking a biplane
from London to Cape Town in South Africa.
We re-enacted the first African air-passage.
They did it in 1920, we did it in 1998.
They did it in 43 days in 1920,
we did it in 58 in 1998.
( laughter )
But it gave me a very unusual perspective,
not only on African aviation, but on rivers.
I got to fly up the length of the Nile River,
the longest in the world.
So, I came home and...
and started talking to my father actually who
got me pointed in this direction,
of looking at the Colorado River.
A river that I actually grew up on,
but I didn't really know it that well, to be honest.
I knew that the Grand Canyon is there in the middle,
but I really didn't know what happens
to the end of the river below the Grand Canyon
and where does the river actually go,
where does it end.
And as a native Coloradan,
who grew up right there, in the Roaring Fork Valley,
I thought it would be an interesting story
to follow this river. So, I came back home.
I came back to a field I spent a lot of time in.
I'd come every summer back home
and work on the ranch and move sprinklers like this
for flood irrigation systems and I started wondering
about the water and where this goes.
And how long will it take this water
to actually go to the sea, so I followed it.
I first started up in the mountains where I live.
This is Pyramid Peak, 14,000 feet.
I have actually skied this peak,
and I skied it in June
when there was nine feet of snow.
I took this photo on Christmas day
two years ago,
there is three inches of snow.
So, we are facing some climate change issues
and we are also seeing some influence
coming in from the west to us.
This is Snowmass Peak,
not far from where I live, also 14,000 feet,
and you see that brown tint, that's actually dust
that's been blown in from the west
because of more development basically through
road constructions, some oil and gas.
And what happens is it creates a trans-evaporation process
where the particles in the...
of the dust actually retain the sun's heat
and melt the snow up faster.
So, we are losing a runoff at a much faster rate,
They say we're losing the river,
about 5% of the river
due to this trans-evaporation process.
And the Colorado is not the largest
or the longest river in the US.
It is actually seventh.
But many would argue
that it's the most loved and litigated.
This is near Kremmling, Colorado
and if you look at the top of the frame
that's looking due east,
I'm looking at the Continental Divide,
you look what appears to be a healthy river,
but in fact, this river is actually flowing at about
50% of its traditional capacity.
There are 22 trans-basin diversion projects,
basically tunnels that you can't see
that are going underneath
the Continental Divide, in the top of the frame,
and taking water to Denver, Boulder,
Fort Collins, Colorado Springs...
Now what's interesting about this is
that water goes over there, that's great,
they need the water, but that water never returns
to the Colorado River basins. So we are taking water
that would end up in the Pacific,
and we are taking and putting it in the Atlantic.
So, we are seeing changes right out at the gates.
They did a study on the Colorado River
and just the value it brings from recreation.
They've came back with a staggering figure,
that is $ 26 billion that this river produces,
in revenue through fishing, rafting, picnicking,
any form of recreation on the length of the river
that runs 1500 miles.
If you put that on the Forbes 500 list,
it would be ahead of Progressive Insurance
and US Airways.
So, a river with water in it has value.
Most of that water goes towards agriculture.
So, I focused a lot on the aerial perspective,
in part, because I think it gives us
a perspective of where we've been
and where we are going with our landscape,
but also because I had this crazy guy on the right,
who I could hire at a rather affordable price, my father.
( laughter )
So, as we follow this river,
we are going to come into Utah,
beautiful landscape and you can see
how this river is sculpting through it.
This Castle Valley. And if you get on the ground,
in Canyonlands National Park area, Mesa Arch.
A remarkable landscape that's been shaped with
the uplift of the Colorado plateau and
the Colorado River of course, helping carve it out
and create this magnificent architecture.
You could do about a 90 degree turn,
go over another ridge and you would look over on this.
It is a potash mine.
We actually need potash for fertilizer.
I have nothing against potash
but this image I used to represent industry,
because industry is becoming a large straw
on Colorado River.
Potash may not be that terrible,
but oil and gas recently has been picking up
significantly in this part of the world.
There was recently a water auction
for... during drought
and all the farmers went to the water auction to see
if they can get more water through this drought year.
And they were outbid on every single count
by oil and gas companies.
And one oil and gas well can use
one to five million gallons of water.
Just downstream is one of my favorite images.
I took this with my father.
We had to actually break into the airport
because to get here at sunrise,
the airport opened at sunrise,
so I had to crawl over the fence and let him in.
But this is a double oxbow naturally occurring,
and just downstream there, you come into, what I call
the seas of the desert'.
This is Lake Powell, the change is dramatic
the ecology of this river.
They say that it receives
up to 1400 cargo ship containers a day
of silt and sediment, that's basically the memory
of the Colorado Rockies falling down
and it gets deposited in this reservoir
which affects the fish and ecology downstream.
And we are quickly finding out how much sediment is in there
and what's happening because the lake is dropping rapidly.
We are in our second decade of drought
and that white line is the bathtub ring
on Lake Powell. It's about 75 feet.
Lake Powell is now at 51% capacity.
If you go there right now,
it's dropping one to six inches a day.
And that's the dam, Glen Canyon dam.
It produces a 120 million dollars in revenue
through its hydroelectric program.
It goes back to Federal programs
for transmission lines and actually
native fish species programs downstream.
We are getting to such a point of
drought and water shortage that
we are approaching what is called 'Dead Pool'
when there isn't enough water to go over through
the turbines and spin those turbines.
Now just below that dam, starts the Grand Canyon.
It is 277 miles of one of the most enchanted places
on the planet that I've seen.
It's like going to another world of
geology and magic.
Of course, it is not real anymore
to some degree because this river fluctuates
through the habits and needs of man
as we have hydroelectric demands with
air conditioning and what not.
It's called...
as a whole the Grand Canyon is called as
'America's Roofless Cathedral'.
There is a proposal out there right now
to build a 1.4 mile long tramway,
it will descend 1300 feet and carry 4000 people a day
into the Grand Canyon.
Now, those of the people that don't like to hike or boat,
may think that's great.
However, it is also a sacred confluence right there.
Believed to be sacred by the Hopi and the Zuni
and some of the Navajo,
so it is creating a big controversy
and we are going to see that play out
in the next few years.
This is the humpback chub.
They've basically been swimming in this river
for 6000 years.
And now there is only about 6000 of them left,
because they like warm water and once we put that dam
and of course it is the cold water
coming up through the dam, so they've retreated
to this little confluence, it's milky color
because of its high calcium content.
There's four species of endangered fish left,
two have already gone extinct.
This is Nankoweap Point.
And those are the granaries of the Puebloans
that have been there since 1100 A.D.
And so many of the Native Americans
who live around the Grand Canyon,
there are actually 11 tribes that surround
the Grand Canyon National Park,
and they believe that this is
where they came from and where they go.
This is their spirit world.
And just to give you a little idea behind
capturing some of these images,
I conceived this image about five years ago,
when I went down there on another trip,
but you have to... first you have to get a permit
to get down there. You get that,
then you go down on the river trip,
then you have to secure a camp site near the spot
because you can't reserve those,
it's 'first come first serve'.
Then you have to hopefully time your permit lines up
with the full moon, then you have to go up
with some, some high powered spotlights
because you can't go up to the Granary,
so you've got to shine them on a very specific tripod.
And hope it all lines up and boom!
That's what sometimes one image can take.
Now, we may go through whooping and hollering
as tourists in the Grand Canyon, but
there are many people who take it very seriously.
This is a Havasupai elder who has come down.
I happened to go down there this last spring
and it just coincided with
the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Hualapai spiritual trips.
That's partially funded by that money coming upstream
from the Glen Canyon dam.
So, this is a big deal and of course, I asked him,
'What do you think about all these people hooting and
hollering and having parties in the Grand Canyon?'
He says, 'Well, there's nothing I can do about it,
but I just hope you respect it.'
In 1903, President Roosevelt
came to the South Rim of this Canyon.
It's on the right side, you can see the South Rim
and in the very right corner up there
and he says, 'Leave it as it is.
The ages have been at work on this
and man can only mar it.'
And I think we've done a pretty good job,
but the threats are definitely looming
in the distance to mar it.
There's new development that wants to be built up
all around the Grand Canyon, there's water challenges,
there's this tramway.
Uranium mines have been trying to get in there for a while,
they've been fended off for about 20 years.
But it's something that's not going to go away
anytime soon if we don't keep a close eye on it.
The river on the other hand,
we may have not done the best job
of maintaining it through the Canyon.
Now the water color here is emerald green,
it looks beautiful, but it is not very natural,
and it just represents how we have changed
the dynamic of this river and of course that
clear waters eroding a lot of natural sand and sediment.
Now, this is one of the most storied rapids,
this is called the V-wave, if you can get through here
and not lose your oars, you're in great shape.
I went through it with my brother in these boats
that some boatmen described as being built of
papier-mâché and baby bird bones.
( laughter )
This is the 'oh crap' face of here we go
into the V-wave, I'm on the left,
my brother on the right,
he's got more of an 'oh crap' face.
This is 'Oh God, we've just... plan A has just gone sideways,
because we've just lost an oar,
we're going to plan B'.
This is 'Oh we are going to die'
because we are going into the big kahuna wave now
with no oars.
We're taking this little tiny flimsy wooden boat,
through the middle of this giant rapid
and we realize we're about to flip.
So... we thought we were dead.
But we made it somehow. ( laughter )
Of course we smiled at the end.
It was the first time I got to show my brother
the Grand Canyon,
it was a highlight for me because
this river on some levels,
there's an expression called, 'river capture'.
where one watershed will basically
out-erode another one and capture its water
and take it with you.
And essentially what has happened to me is
I feel like the Colorado River on some level
has captured my curiosity and part of my soul,
so I keep going back, so it was a real treat
to share with my brother.
When you leave the Grand Canyon you come
to Lake Mead, Hoover dam. You've all heard of this
remarkable piece of engineering
that they built in 1935,
it used to be the largest dam in the world.
And just like upstream, but even worse at this point,
Lake Mead is now at its all-time record low, 39%.
Las Vegas,
and myself included when I started this project,
many of us point to Las Vegas,
the oasis dream, the big problem.
Their water intake is so close to the water level now,
Lake Mead, that they are actually spending
a billion dollars to construct the third straw.
They are basically building a bathtub drain,
from under here, all the way back over to Vegas.
Because if the water level gets any closer
to their intake valve, by law
they might not be able to use it.
So, we are fearing
some very significant changes in infrastructure.
Vegas at the same time,
which is very interesting to me when I learned this,
they wrote a law of the river in 1922
which basically divvied up the Colorado River into
seven states, they cut it up into different pies,
and nobody... Vegas didn't really exist in 1922,
so nobody expected there to be this booming oasis dream.
So, they didn't give them very much water.
So, Vegas is now forced to use their water very wisely.
They recycle a lot of their fountains and pools,
they do mandatory pool coverings,
a lot of fountains are grey water,
they've been taking
the smart-scaping, zero-scaping to another level.
They realized 70% of their water
from the Colorado river is going to people's front lawns,
so they started a program
where they actually pay people
$ 2 a square foot, and it is now a $ 1.50,
to tear out their front lawn.
I took that first picture at 8 in the morning.
I took that picture same day at 11.
Crew came in, ripped out the lawn,
gave the guy a check, and adios!
( laughter )
And the hope of course, is that the oasis dream
that many of us may love and enjoy
will be able to continue on some level but also
the oasis dream for critters like this,
the Rocky Mountain toad,
that had a love affair with my camera
when I was looking for humpback chub,
wouldn't leave me alone, they'll have water too.
The Gila River downstream, this was taken in 1936.
One of the last tributaries of the Colorado.
That's today.
That was taken by my friend Jon Waterman,
who paddled the length of the Colorado River.
And then we come back down into Yuma, Arizona,
right before the Colorado River crosses
over the US-Mexican border.
A massive amount of lettuce production here,
agriculture throughout the region, and so
if you are sitting there saying,
'This is interesting, Pete, Colorado river is beautiful
maybe I'll go raft it one day.
But I mean, come on, I've got plenty of water here
in Washington D.C., why does this concern me?'
It actually concerns all of us on some level
because every piece of lettuce
that you buy in the grocery store
in the months of December and January
come from the Colorado River.
That's the only place that supplies the nation.
It's basically the nation's salad bowl
comes from this part of the world.
So, we all eat the Colorado River
whether you are aware of it or not.
I grew up on a cattle ranch,
I'm not opposed to the production of beef,
if it is done wisely.
I don't know if this is the wisest method...
having feedlots in the Imperial Valley
where it's 128 degrees.
So I think we need to start moving
towards smart agriculture.
There are also some antiquated laws
where if you don't use your water, you will lose it.
So, there are farmers in this area that are growing
five-six cuttings of alfalfa
and actually shipping it to Asia,
because they don't want to lose their water
even though they don't need the money.
So, in some ways we are actually
exporting some of our water
in the form of alfalfa to Asia.
And then you come after...
to the last major dam of the river.
There are 12 major dams on the river.
This is the Morelos dam.
This is U.S-Mexican border, for 22 miles
the river becomes the border and runs due south.
And if you go below the dam,
which I did with Jon when he was paddling,
just two miles into Mexico,
you come to the end of the river.
Ben Franklin said,
'We learn the value of water when the well runs dry'.
This is the well running dry.
This is what it looked like when I was paddling through.
Jon Waterman: What is this stuff?
Pete McBride: All I know is I'm not that excited
to get into this water.
Jon Waterman: So this is what's become
of the mighty Colorado?
Pete McBride: Yeah.
So, we packed up our boats..
90 miles shy of the sea and started walking.
There were many times where I wondered
why the hell I was carrying a boat on my back.
( laughter )
Pete McBride: The Colorado River has run to the Sea
of Cortez for 6 million years, not a single drop
of it has run naturally to the sea since 1998.
It was one of the largest
desert estuaries in North America.
This is the western flank of it
over on the Baja side.
3000 square miles, jaguars, Cottonwood forests,
it took me two days to find this image.
That's what we've changed it to.
Some people say, 'Well, who cares about the delta,
you know, who... why should we put water down there?'
But I... can pretty much guarantee this guy cares.
20,000 Cocopah Indians used to live in the delta.
This was their traditional fishing grounds.
This guy learned to fish here.
It's dried up in his lifetime.
And I'm pretty sure if this happened to my river
in my backyard, I'd probably feel similar, feel frustrated.
Just to give you an idea where that is exactly,
this little red circle,
it's in the center, that's the delta.
That little frappuccino pit I was paddling,
it is on the middle bottom-third of that circle.
So, I think if these rivers often as arteries,
they help connect communities,
they actually help connect wildlife.
They support our agriculture.
They keep salinity in our water table at bay.
Potentially you know,
they connect our human spirit on some level.
So, I think the Colorado today is
a very powerful metaphor on so many levels
because it shows us
what happens when we ask too much
of a limited resource, it disappears.
I ended here in the delta.
This last spring there was an experimental pulse flow,
thanks to the hard work of very, very many
from a vast group of people
and this is what became of the river.
This was actually less than 1% of the river's annual flow.
It was Mexico's water,
it was part of a new agreement called 'Minute 319'.
Very interesting because, uh,
Mexico basically had an earthquake
that fractured its irrigation system.
They said, 'We need some help. We can't store water anywhere.
It is time to work together for a change'.
So, they went to the U.S.
And this is two miles in
This about where that frappuccino pit was.
Beautiful scene of people coming out
from all over Mexico.
Not only restoring the vegetation,
but the spirit of the river.
Anyway, Mexico said
'We need help' and U.S said 'Alright'.
So, they came back to the table and said
'Alright, We are going to renegotiate Mexico's water,
they do get an allocation, but now they are gonna
make sure that Mexico's allocation is
shares in surplus and shortage
and that they will dedicate some water to the delta.
So, this was that water dedicated.
It was released for eight weeks to see how it did
to try to spawn some of the seedlings,
cottonwoods, and willows, and it was pretty remarkable.
We took paddle boards and canoes
all the way across it.
In 1922, Aldo Leopold
took a canoe across the delta and he wrote,
'The river was nowhere and everywhere',
for he could not-- for he could not decide
which of a hundred green lagoons to take to the sea.
Beautiful line that I've used
over and over at water talks about the Colorado River,
and I never ever thought that
I would actually see this and paddle
across a green lagoon in the delta.
So, it is very encouraging to see
that we can make a change.
( music )
Male 1: We gonna have to go over that.
Pete McBride: Not good.
This is an improvement. I swear.
You're moving.
( speaking in Spanish )
This is called moving an inch... an hour.
Bushwhacking this terrain
in a trickle of water with the paddleboard
is an upgrade. Trust me.
What are we doing here?
The last time I came here,
I walked 90 miles across the dry,
forgotten river channel.
My backyard river, the Colorado...
I have been chasing its flow for years.
Most people think of it as that loved
architect of the Grand Canyon,
carrying the memory of the Rocky Mountains
near my home in Colorado.
But it is different down here at the end,
where severe plumbing on this southwest lifeline
have sucked it dry,
so we can eat baby spinach in January.
But in the spring of 2014, something happened.
Two countries decided to work together
to restore a delta.
The hands of many lifted the gates
on the Morelos Dam
and released a temporary pulse of water.
Less than 1% of the river's flow.
Mexico's allocated agua
into the delta to see what happened.
A river of sand became wet once again.
And a fiesta ignited down downstream.
( music )
Locals celebrated the return of their Rio.
( music )
The native species exploded with seeds.
The river party only lasted a few weeks though.
( music )
Partake? We did what any river lover would do.
We floated it, by canoe, paddleboard,
and eventually slogged it by foot,
crossing the shallows.
I believe this is the Colorado,
it is hard to tell because generally
the Rio Colorado had no water.
But as you can see,
it is a pretty frigging nice river right now.
Male 2: It looks amazing.
Usually, this part of the river
is completely dry, it's sand always,
and it has been many years like that.
Now on May 7th,
after nine 13-hour long paddling days...
Male 3: I'm so tired, I can barely stand.
We crossed 90 miles of the delta
and reached the sea.
It was the first and only paddleboard crossing
of the new delta.
And the first time the Colorado River
kissed the sea in nearly two decades.
On many levels it was a preposterous journey,
foolish, or even wrong headed...
I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere.
It was also beautiful and symbolic.
That with a relative trickle,
we can bring a river back to life...
if we try.
( applause )
( outro music )