Western states pour cold water on federal Colorado River plans
Water-starved western states say the federal government’s plan to manage how to split up the Colorado River is doomed to be picked apart in court. If not, representatives from desert states like Arizona say some scenarios would force them to truck in water to keep some communities alive.
After years of fighting between themselves, states with a claim to Colorado River water via a 1922 compact missed a key deadline earlier this year. That meant the federal government was to intervene and begin the process of solving the problem for them. After the U.S. Department of the Interior released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) with a series of options in January, representatives from the states aren’t happy.
The current agreement lasts through 2026.
Representatives from multiple basin states — which include Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico in the Upper Basin and Nevada, Arizona and California comprising the downstream Lower Basin compact members — say the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plan to divvy up the water ranges from concerning to unconstitutional.
Let’s get caught up
The seven states, conspicuously excluding native tribes and Mexico from the conversation, struck a deal in November 1922 called the Colorado River Compact.
It was born out of a concern by northern states after areas of California and Arizona began diverting large amounts of river water to support expansive agricultural operations.
In the following decades, additional agreements were struck to add water rights to Mexico and tribal nations as well as implement usage restrictions to account for planned population growth.
The arguments between states intensified in recent years. As water levels began to drop, Upper Basin states argued that Lower Basin states should bear the brunt of water reductions. Lower Basin states argued that they had already borne the brunt of water reductions and stand to lose an untenable amount of water in any of the proposals put forth.
Arizona
That’s a similar argument that Arizona and the other Lower Basin states are using for the federal government’s proposed options.
In a March 2 letter to the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said the cast of options “suffers from serious legal and analytical defects.”
Moreover, he said the options all placed the burden of keeping water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell would fall on Lower Basin states. The reductions would siphon so much water from those states that it wouldn’t honor the legal compact. That, Buschatzke said, would most certainly void any plan via judicial decision.
The Central Arizona Project, which manages Arizona’s Colorado River water, painted a dire picture of the federal government’s options, especially one that says some cities would be forced to haul in water if they can find it.
“All the alternatives proposed in the DEIS disproportionately harm Arizona and are unacceptable,” CAP General Manager Brenda Burman said in a March 2 letter cosigned by dozens of local municipalities and other groups.
California
California’s response to the plan was a touch more diplomatic, but made clear that the federal options presented would put the onus on some states over others and inevitably find their way before a judge.
“The Post-2026 Guidelines must reflect a key principle: all Basin states that benefit from the Colorado River share responsibility for adapting to hydrologic realities,” wrote JB Hamby, California’s Colorado River Commissioner.
Hamby noted that California had already spent billions of dollars on sustainability where Upper Basin states hadn’t.
Upper Basin states
Even though the Lower Basin states claim their neighbors upriver are getting the better end of the proposed deal, the Upper Basin states are still unhappy with it.
The Upper Colorado River Commission said in their March 2 letter to the Department of the Interior that the proposals are working off of flawed models that don’t account for things like evaporation from stored pools and still prioritize downriver states over their members.
As representatives from Colorado put it in a March 3 letter, the DEIS “inappropriately includes federal actions that are outside the Secretary of the Interior’s authorities, it fails to impose adequate shortages in the Lower Basin to protect the system, and it relies on water that doesn’t exist to make certain alternatives work.”
The Bureau of Reclamation will take all feedback from the seven basin states and issue its final environmental impact report this fall.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
