My grandpa was a ditch rider on the Stub Canal in Palisade, and when someone used more water than they were entitled to, the solution was simple – he locked the headgates.
This week, the seven Colorado River Basin states announced they had finally reached an agreement to reduce their water use, staving off the draconian control threatened by the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) since last summer. The deal made front page news, in this paper and throughout the West. Is it real?
Reuters called it a “historic deal to save” the river. The Guardian called it a “breakthrough” and CNN called it a “landmark.” The Associated Press and the Daily Sentinel were quite properly more cautious, writing that Arizona, California and Nevada had “proposed a plan to significantly reduce their water use… a potential breakthrough in a year-long stalemate.”
That is a more accurate reading of the plan, actually agreed upon by the three states of the Lower Basin, not by all seven states. Although all seven signed the transmittal letter to BoR, it contained language clarifying that the Upper Basin states had not yet studied it enough to endorse it. That matters because, as we have mentioned several times, BoR has no legal authority to demand reductions in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico. Its authority is much stronger in the Lower Basin because those states have no compact among themselves (as the Upper Basin has), and because of Supreme Court rulings making the Interior Department “water master” specifically in the Lower Basin. The difference is also significant because the Upper Basin has never used its entire entitled share of the River under the Interstate Compact, whereas the Lower Basin (thanks to California) has used far more than its share for decades.
When BoR demanded last summer that all seven states develop a plan to reduce their use of water, by 2-4 million acre feet, it threatened essentially to abolish the Interstate Compact and administer the dams however it pleased to reduce water use. The pushback was immediate especially in the Upper Basin, so at the end of its artificial “deadline,” BoR punted, reducing deliveries to Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico, but giving California a complete pass. The threat of further action this summer finally motivated the three states to develop a specific Lower Basin plan, as they should have done years ago. They propose to reduce water use by 1.5 million acre feet by 2024, and 3 million acre feet by 2026 – in exchange for $1.2 billion federal dollars.
The Sentinel was also correct in saying the states had “proposed” a plan, because it still requires BoR approval, especially the funding. That is where we will eventually learn whether the government is serious about solving the Colorado River problem. The irony should not be lost on anyone that a state abusing its legal share of the river for decades should demand the nation’s taxpayers pay them to live within the law. But that appears to be the take-it-or-leave-it offer, and federal officials already say the savings will come by paying irrigation districts and other users to conserve water. The conserved water would help partially recover Lake Mead.
The BoR had already threatened another set of decisions for this summer, publishing two options. One would cut back water deliveries based on the existing seniority system for water rights, meaning no cuts for the River’s largest user, California’s Imperial Irrigation District (IID), and huge cuts for Arizona. The second option would distribute cutbacks of the same percentage for all water users in the Lower Basin, totaling about 13 percent. The latter is close to what the states have now agreed upon, even including IID, which will give up 250,000 acre feet of its historically unregulated and arguably wasted water. BoR has now put its own plan on hold while analyzing the states’ plan, praising the “consensus-based approach” by its “partners” – an approach for which the agency had no patience or sympathy last summer. What changed?
My guess is that BoR had to acknowledge its overreach – making demands it has questionable authority to back up. The Lower Basin plan won’t completely refill the reservoirs, nor completely limit California to its legal share. But it is a start, and represents an agreement by the states themselves, as the Compact requires, not a federal command.
The question is, if California fails to meet these obligations, as it has so often in the past, will the Bureau of Reclamation lock the headgates?
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