California, Arizona and Nevada reached a long-sought consensus last month on how to conserve water and prevent the Colorado River from running dry.
Under the plan for states to reduce their water use by 13% through 2026, farmers in the Imperial Valley are expected to shoulder much of the burden.
If we hope to solve our country’s most pressing natural resource challenges, we must go straight to the source: Americans on the ground who know firsthand what is needed to solve them.
The historic Colorado River agreement reached last month temporarily secures access to clean water in the West. All Americans deserve clean air and clean water, but unfortunately, the challenges confronting the Colorado River puts access to this vital resource in jeopardy.
Representatives from more than a dozen Indigenous tribes spoke at a CU Boulder law conference last week about their interests in the Colorado River from each of their perspectives.
Many of the prominent state and federal officials who manage the water attended the conference. But as they and other water authorities prepare to negotiate the river’s future, it’s unclear how tribes will participate, to what degree tribes will be treated as equal sovereigns, and how their desire to use all the water they legally have rights to will be considered.
In the contentious, yearlong negotiations over how to share the pain of Colorado River shortages, California officials leaned on their state’s status as the basin’s most senior water rights holder — or the last in line to take cuts when supplies run low — to fend off arguments it should bear the brunt of reductions.
The gambit worked, ultimately sparking a compromise in which California will share cuts with Arizona and Nevada over the next three years. The deal means the state will give less than 10 percent of its annual allocation, in line with its original offer.
The biggest rivers in the U.S. are the lifeblood of the regions they flow through. They provide drinking water, irrigation for agricultural lands and a habitat where important ecosystems can thrive.
But as climate change worsens, some of the nation’s most important rivers are in serious trouble because of the drought gripping several regions.
In a warm, overstuffed auditorium at the University of Colorado on Thursday, tribal representatives from around the Colorado River Basin had a message for their federal and state counterparts: Tribes won’t be cut out of key water talks that will decide the future of the basin.
“As we develop a post-2026 plan, it’s no longer acceptable for the U.S. to meet with seven basin states separately, and then come to basin tribes, after the fact, with a post-hoc explanation or rationalization of what was discussed, or even worse, what was decided,” said Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
Hot on the heels of a short-term agreement to cut back on Colorado River water use, states are looking ahead to talks about more permanent cuts. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency which manages the West’s water, announced that those negotiations will formally begin next week with a notice in the Federal Register.
The announcement came at an environmental law conference in Boulder, Colorado on Thursday, where scientists, state and federal governments, and tribes met at the University of Colorado’s law school.
Along the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Canal, just beyond the city of Buckeye, is a place being considered for a project that could double the amount of water in the canal.
“It’s a game changer for the state if it works,” said Chuck Podolak with the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona.
Sonia Herbert of Bombay Beach wants people to know that California’s Salton Sea isn’t all dystopian sunbaked abandoned homes, poverty, ominous toxic dust and decaying nostalgia. It’s also a place where people live and find beauty around the mirage-like lake in the desert.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
