A proposed water rights settlement for three Native American tribes that carries a price tag larger than any such agreement enacted by Congress took a significant step forward late Monday with introduction in the Navajo Nation Council.
Mexico’s slow delivery of water to the United States under the terms of a 1944 treaty is prompting lawmakers to explore new enforcement options.
Under the treaty, Mexico is obligated to deliver an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water annually over a five-year cycle. Mexico has delayed the supply of this cycle’s water until the end of the cycle next year.
One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.
Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.
The seven states that share the Colorado River’s water celebrated some conservation wins at their annual meeting here this week but quickly began sparring over who will bear the brunt of future pain that they agree a drying climate will dole out.
An agreement between San Diego’s major water agency and two others in Southern California is expected to save millions of dollars and conserve millions of gallons of water in the Colorado River, which has been threatened by years of overuse and drought.
John Brooks Hamby was 9 years old the last time a group of Western states renegotiated how they share the dwindling Colorado River. When the high-stakes talks concluded two years later, in 2007, with a round of painful cuts, he hadn’t reached high school.
Yet this June an audience of water policy experts listened with rapt attention as Hamby, now 27, recited lessons from those deliberations.
The Board of Supervisors Wednesday unanimously advanced a proposed ordinance amendment that would align county regulations with a court ruling in connection with water rights in the Borrego Springs community.
Supervisors also voted to find that the amended ordinance complies with state Environmental Quality Act guidelines. The supervisors will consider adopting the updated ordinance during a second reading, at their Oct. 11 meeting.
It’s been 20 years since the largest water agencies in Southern California agreed on a historic deal: San Diego would buy water from Imperial Valley farmers. More importantly, though, the deal outlined exactly how much water these agencies could claim from the Colorado River and reduced the amount of water California took from the river.
In what seems to be perennially Michael Abatti v. IID season in the courtroom, Judge Michael Anello of the Federal Southern District Court heard oral arguments from each side’s attorneys on Wednesday, June 6, in San Diego.
Mr. Abatti and 23 of his relatives and friends filed a lawsuit last June alleging that the IID’s new Equitable Distribution Plan violated their rights to water, deprived them of due process, and caused them economic harm.
