After 84 years of bickering, the seven states that share the waters of the Colorado River have agreed on ways to share the pain of future droughts. If embraced in Washington, the deal would help Western states avoid costly court battles and economic uncertainties. Colorado would be allowed to continue using its share of the river’s waters.
The delicately negotiated deal contains important water protections for both the upper basin states – Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah – and the lower basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California. The agreement still faces a long bureaucratic process before it can be implemented, but it represents a giant stride in settling what had been, until last Wednesday, a seemingly unresolvable interstate feud.
The deal wouldn’t replace the all-important 1922 interstate compact that governs how much Colorado River water each state can use. Instead, it would improve how the river’s limited supplies are managed in drought conditions.
Under the proposal, Colorado and the other three upper basin states would have to be more prudent in using their share of the river but largely would be protected against lawsuits and political maneuvers by lower basin states. That’s good news not only for Colorado’s Western Slope but also for Front Range cities like Denver that pump water from the river over the Continental Divide. All the upper basin states would still have to meet their existing obligation to send the lower basin a total of 7.5 million acre-feet of water on a rolling 10-year average. Upper basin states also may do cloud seeding to bolster Rocky Mountain snowfalls, which feed the river.
Lower basin states would implement several conservation and efficiency measures long advocated by environmental groups. Farmers and ranchers would line irrigation ditches to reduce waste and sometimes let fields sit fallow, for example. California’s cities would do more desalinization of seawater and possibly share it with fast-growing neighbors Nevada and Arizona, and Nevada would desalinate its groundwater.
U.S. officials would need to agree to better manage Lakes Powell and Mead. If drought reduces water flowing from the Rockies to the lower basin, the Interior Department opens spigots at Powell and replenishes Mead, which provides both water and power to Nevada, Arizona and California. Using computers and other technology, the feds could better predict when to send water from Powell to Mead and so conserve the stored water.
While Arizona had to compromise the most because it has junior rights, it was largely protected by provisions of the agreement. Some legal spats were unresolved, but if the pact works as intended, those issues may never be litigated. The pact would last until 2025.
The underlying 1922 compact was signed after an abnormally wet period in the West, so the river almost never provides as much water as the pact envisioned. Yet demands are beyond what negotiators foresaw in pre-Depression America: The West’s population has mushroomed, and all seven states expect continued growth. The 1922 pact needs to be preserved in its essence but updated in its implementation.
Today the seven states will send the Interior Department their plan. Interior then will include the states’ proposal in its larger effort to craft an environmental impact statement on the river’s future management. That progress wouldn’t have happened without federal pressure – U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, all but shoved the seven states to the negotiating table. But all the parties in these difficult talks deserve high praise for seeking pragmatic ways to solve shared problems.
