Craig Elmore’s family history is the stuff of Westerns. His grandfather, John Elmore, a poor son of a Missouri preacher, arrived in California’s Imperial Valley in 1908 and dug ditches to deliver water to homesteaders.
Senior water rights holders have arguably the sweetest deal in California water. They often have ironclad deals and some even get access to substantial water during the worst of drought.
But three new bills in the state legislature are taking aim at senior water rights in an attempt to level the playing field.
Getting states to agree to use less water is hard. Doing so in a matter of months is near impossible.
The last time the Colorado River Basin agreed to a set of reductions to address drought conditions and dropping levels at Lake Mead was in 2019. Those reductions took five years to iron out and amounted to a fraction of what the federal government now says needs to be cut in order to keep the system from crashing.
There is an old saying in the water world that it is better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a law book, which is the position California finds itself in as it stands apart from its neighbors on the Colorado River in negotiations over the use of the river’s water.
On Jan. 31, representatives for the six other basin states submitted a proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, describing the measures by which the supply deficit on the Colorado River should be closed in the near term.
Drought and population growth have taken their toll on the Colorado River, pushing it to historic lows.
As we work together with our neighboring states and the federal government on a long-term solution, many eyes are focused on the Imperial Valley, because of its senior water rights. And as much as we believe in upholding the rule of law, we are equally committed to being responsible water users and doing our part to keep the river healthy enough to meet the needs of all seven states.
(Editor’s Note: Stephen Benson is a farmer in California’s Imperial Valley, a board member of Imperial Valley Water (IVH2O), former board member of the Imperial Irrigation District and a current board member of the Family Farm Alliance and Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association. He can be reached at
The failure of California and six other Western states to meet a Jan. 31 deadline for deciding how to divvy up the dwindling water supplied by the Colorado River clears the way for one of the biggest fights over natural resources in U.S. history — and already the Golden State is being cast as the villain in some national coverage for being the sole holdout to a deal agreed to by Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah. Due to a regional “megadrought” now in its third decade and the accelerating climate emergency, the Biden administration last year called for creation of a plan that cuts annual water use by at least 15 percent.
After a key deadline passed this week without an agreement on how to address the Colorado River’s crisis, California is now sharply at odds with six other states over how to take less water from the shrinking river.
Now that California has rejected a plan offered by the rest of the region, the state has entered a political tug-of-war with high stakes. So why has the state that uses the most Colorado River water decided to go it alone?
Months of bitter negotiations between seven states that rely on the Colorado River’s vanishing water have collapsed along a clear fault line over the past week: California versus everyone else.
The multi-state talks, which have been ongoing in fits and starts for months, were focused on achieving unprecedented water cuts to save the Colorado River – a system that provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in the West.
The Colorado River begins as melting snow, trickling from forested peaks and coursing in streams that gather in the meadows and valleys of the Rocky Mountains.
Like arteries, its major tributaries take shape across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, coming together in a great river like no other — a river that travels more than 1,400 miles and has defined the rise of the American Southwest over the last century.
Across the sun-cooked flatlands of the Imperial Valley, water flows with uncanny abundance. The valley, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, is naturally a desert. Yet canals here are filled with water, lush alfalfa grows from sodden soil and rows of vegetables stretch for miles.
Within this grid of greenery, near the desert town of Brawley, Mark McBroom grows 6,000 acres of hay crops, like alfalfa, and fruit orchards, all irrigated by water imported from the Colorado River.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
