WESTERN
ROUNDUP- Jan.
24 , 2004
A crisis brews on the Colorado
by Matt Jenkins
With water supplies dwindling, states
get an order to share the pain
For the first time since the federal Bureau of
Reclamation began its massive dam-building program on the Colorado
River in 1933, the seven states that depend on the river for drinking
and irrigation water are bracing for a shortage. As the Colorado River
Basin enters the sixth year of the worst drought in a century, Lake
Mead is now at 56 percent of capacity; Lake Powell is at 36 percent.
Together, the two reservoirs represent the Colorado River Basin’s
water bank account, and the balance is dropping.
The
secretary of the Interior could declare an official "shortage"
as early as 2007, cutting off states’ water in ascending order
of priority, irrigation-ditch style. But amazingly, the Interior
Department still has no formal criteria for declaring a shortage,
or for dealing with one. The Bureau of Reclamation’s river-management
models are based on recorded streamflows going back to 1906, rather
than on paleoclimate data from the past several hundred years that
show more severe droughts, and those models didn’t predict
that the reservoirs would go this low this soon.
"People thought they had a whole lot more time to deal with
the issue," says Patricia Mulroy, the general manager of the
Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas.
In an effort to avoid the cuts that would come with an official
shortage, on Dec. 17, Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles gave
the seven Colorado River Basin states until April to develop their
own alternative to manage the dwindling water supply.
It’s a hugely contentious mandate, but the states are motivated
by a shared desire to avoid a fight in court, which would be expensive,
time-consuming, and a crapshoot. And many water managers say that
tightening down water diversions now could help stretch supplies
in the Colorado River and turn the "sudden death" of an
official shortage into a series of more manageable crises, at least
for a couple more years.
To address the drought long-term, states may finally have to start
thinking as a basin, rather than just looking out for themselves.
The states’ effort will center on finding flexible ways to
manage Lake Mead, which serves as a drought-year bank account for
the Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada —
and Lake Powell, which is essentially an account for the Upper Basin
states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico (HCN, 11/10/97:
Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West). If
both accounts can be kept from bottoming out for as long as possible,
all seven states may be able to avoid an official shortage.
But getting some states to look out for anyone but themselves will
be tough. The Central Arizona Project (CAP), which supplies water
to Phoenix and Tucson as well as to farmers, has the worst water
rights on the river, so if a shortage is declared, it will take
the first cut. To guard against such a calamity, Arizona has been
drawing its full allocation from the Colorado and "banking"
unused water underground as its own, in-state, drought-protection
policy. "The only way we’re going to get through those
shortages is to use what we’ve banked," says CAP deputy
general manager Larry Dozier.
But that strategy has raised the hackles of the other basin states,
which are asking why, six years into the drought, Arizona is still
siphoning water from the Colorado into its drought bank, rather
than pulling water out of that bank.
"That has the effect of driving down the (entire Colorado
River) system," says Jim Lochhead, a Glenwood Springs, Colo.-based
attorney who represents a coalition of Colorado cities and irrigation
districts. Because Arizona’s strategy lowers Lake Mead, says
Lochhead, it creates more pressure on the Upper Basin to release
water from Lake Powell.
The secretary of the Interior currently requires Upper Basin states
to release 8.23 million acre-feet annually downstream to Lake Mead.
An agreement between the states to share shortages proportionally,
at least temporarily, would help spread the pain. If Arizona reduced
its diversions, that would take some of the pressure off Lake Mead,
and the Upper Basin states could ask the Interior secretary to reduce
the amount of water they’re required to send downstream.
The Upper Basin states are likely to propose reducing their "delivery
obligation" to 7.5 million acre-feet. But that, too, raises
huge questions, because the U.S. is required to deliver 1.5 million
acre-feet a year to Mexico, half of which now comes out of the Upper
Basin. Although any "extraordinary" drought shortages
are supposed to be shared by the two countries, just what extraordinary
drought is, or how to deal with it, is something else that has never
been defined.
An April review of water conditions in the Colorado River Basin
will provide a clearer picture of options for this year. In the
meantime, negotiations are sure to be delicate.
"The alternative" to a state-driven compromise, says
Mulroy, "is going to be 15 to 20 protracted years in court,
and abrogating our responsibilities as water managers to a judge."
