It ‘broke my heart’: Runner says conditions along Colorado River worse than thought

A week ago, ultrarunner Mina Guli clamored down the Nankoweap Trail, rated by the National Park Service as the most difficult named trail in the Grand Canyon, where temperatures were 100 degrees by 6 a.m.

Guli, the Australian CEO of the nonprofit Thirst Foundation, was well into her roughly 1,800-mile run along the Colorado River, which she started in June to raise awareness for the rapidly shrinking river system that serves as a lifeline for the American West.

Guli stopped in Las Vegas on Friday for a policy summit focused on solutions to the water crisis, where she spoke to the importance of her trip.

“It was an amazing journey, but what I saw completely broke my heart,” Guli said.

She later added: “Again and again, I’ve seen conditions along this river that are far worse than any headlines, far worse than what you’ve seen in newspapers or what you’ve seen in the media.”

Guli recounted running through green fields in the Rocky Mountains that locals said had been covered with snow at that same time last year. Near Lake Powell, a waitress told her boats used to drive right up to the restaurant. The water was now 175 feet below it.

Guli’s journey has been arduous. Colby Pellegrino, the deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said coming to a solution about the water crisis was going to require similarly difficult work.

“The ability for everybody to survive on the Colorado River is going to be linked to doing really hard things,” Pellegrino said. “And when we look at Mina’s journey down the river, I think it’s really symbolic of that.”

Guli’s run is part of what she and her sponsor Grundfos, a pump manufacturing and water management company, are calling the “Keep the River Running” campaign. The “State of the Basin Report” was published alongside the campaign, finding that the Colorado River basin faces an unprecedented structural water deficit driven by a 26-year mega-drought and overallocation.

On July 31, the Trump administration released a final environmental impact statement that could lead to steep water cuts in the Lower Colorado River Basin states of Nevada, California and Arizona.

On Friday, Guli urged the states that rely on the Colorado River system to stop thinking about the issue “in silos” and instead come together to formulate a solution.

“This is not about an exercise of pointing fingers — it’s your problem or it’s your problem,” she said. “We need to start to recognize that it’s our problem and the only way to solve our problem is for us to start working together on solutions.”

Other local water experts, like Pellegrino, also spoke at the summit.

Pellegrino highlighted conservation efforts in Las Vegas, which she described as the most progressive water conservation community in the nation.

Ansell Sims, the president of Grundfos USA, later made the case for why businesses at large should care about water.

“When the system at large comes under pressure, however, the pressure doesn’t stay in that riverbed,” Sims said. “It shows up in our budgets and in supply chains. It shows up in permitting and hiring plans. Water scarcity stopped being only an environmental issue a long time ago. It’s an economic issue.”

For Guli, the discussion was an important step in her quest to translate hard facts about the issues facing the river system into stories that people engage with and care about.

“One of the critical things is to get everybody to understand the nature and extent and the urgency of the challenge we’re facing,” Guli said. “This is not a problem that can be kicked like a can down the road. There’s a problem right now, today, and it’s impacting people’s lives and the economics and the communities that depend on this river.”

From Las Vegas, Guli will follow the river south to the U.S.-Mexico border, then turn west and finish on the Santa Monica Pier.

Contact Sophie Baker at sbaker@reviewjournal.com.