As I understand it, the folks appointed to oversee Colorado’s seven river basin districts have been meeting together, to try and formulate a long-range plan. Ideally, such a plan would insure a vibrant agricultural industry within the state, plus enough water for municipal and industrial uses, and still leave enough water in our rivers to allow fish and other aquatic life to thrive.
Here’s a map of the states’s seven river basin districts.
The red line indicates the Continental Divide, with the well-populated Front Range to the east, and the rural Western Slope to the west.
Rivers on the east of this red line flow into the Mississippi River. Rivers on the west of the red line flow into the Colorado River. Except that the folks living along the Front Range — especially, on Division 1 and 2 — have been diverting hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water from the Colorado River for their own municipal, industrial and agricultural uses.
Those diversions are certainly part of the story, when we are talking about low water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. But only part of the story.
Looking at the problems with low water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell from a certain perspective, they really have very little to do with Colorado’s water use. Our state, and the other three Upper Basin states, have been using much less than our allocation of Colorado River water every year since 1922. The Lower Basin States — California, Arizona and Nevada — have had considerably more difficulty managing their water demands within the limitations of the 1922 Compact. For the last several years, annual releases from Lake Mead have averaged about 9 million acre-feet to meet Lower Basin water demands. Lake Mead also loses about 1.2 million acre-feet in evaporative and system losses, so the total annual outflow from Lake Mead has been about 10.2 million acre-feet. As we mentioned earlier in this article series, the Lower Basin is allocated only 7.5 million acre-feet by the 1922 Compact, although the agreement also allows them to use a portion of any “surplus water” during wet years.
We’ve not had many “wet years” since 2000 — but the Lower Basin states continue to suck more than their allocation out of Lake Mead… and Colorado’s Front Range continues to divert water that would otherwise flow into Lake Powell to meet the Upper Basin’s compact requirements.
A few months ago, Colorado’s seven River Basin divisions seemed to have some agreement on a tentative plan to keep Lake Powell filled. As I understand the plan, the state government would develop a program that would pay water users — agricultural, municipal, and industrial users — to voluntarily reduce their water consumption. This part of the plan had been referred to as “demand-management.”
The new surplus of water would be calculated, and then allowed flow downstream into Lake Powell. The Lower Basin would not be allowed to access that “demand-management” water to keep Lake Mead from dropping, but the Upper Basin could release the water voluntarily, to meet Compact requirements during dry years.
And dry years do happen, as we know.
But this plan appears to have been modified behind closed doors, to the benefit of the Front Range water users. Or at least, some Western Slope leaders are suspecting that the plan has been changed. And they aren’t happy about it.
Western Slope water interests received verbal assurances but nothing more formal from the Colorado Water Conservation Board Wednesday in regard to concerns about interstate drought-response negotiations and the implications for agriculture west of the Continental Divide.
At their September 19 meeting in Steamboat Springs, the Colorado Water Conservation Board members sought to ease Western Slope worries about a potential demand management program. Those worries arise from a lack of any current rules that would govern such a program in Colorado, and about who, exactly, will be writing those rules.
From a September 20 article by reporter Dennis Webb in Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinel:
“Our fear is, as Western Slope water users, that we may become the target for demand management, and we want to do whatever we can to ensure that doesn’t happen,” Tom Alvey, a Delta County fruit-grower who is president of the Colorado River District board of directors, told the state board at its meeting in Steamboat Springs.
Alvey was reiterating comments made Friday by the District’s general manager, Andy Mueller, at a district forum in Grand Junction focused on contingency planning measures should the region’s long-term drought continue… Among measures under consideration is a potential demand management program that could involve measures such as temporary fallowing of fields.
Mueller on Friday voiced frustration about not being able to see a demand-management document that James Eklund, Colorado’s representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission, may soon be signing. The river district fears the agreement could help facilitate a demand management program in Colorado inconsistent with what criteria the river district believes such a program should have.
Mueller’s understanding Friday was that Eklund might be signing such a document within a month, but Eklund told The Daily Sentinel that instead draft documents would likely be made public within a month or so, with the goal of reaching final agreements later.
As we see, there are a couple of different aspects to the unfolding water wars. We have the 1922 Colorado River Compact, and Colorado’s obligation to allow a sufficient amount of our precious snowmelt to flow past Lee’s Ferry — where the measurements take place — to satisfy the (growing?) needs of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Then we have the problem of population growth on the Front Range, where 80 percent of Colorado’s population resides, and where most of the state’s (untenable?) population growth is taking place — but where only 20 percent of state’s precipitation falls.
What kind of rules do we want to put in place, to try and keep these two problems from causing full-scale public strife? Upper Colorado River Commissioner James Eklund apparently believes we can reach a Lake Powell storage agreement with the Lower Basin states — and then, later on, decide how a demand-management program would function within Colorado.
But the Colorado River District and other Western Slope entities, including the Southwestern Water Conservation District, are uncomfortable with addressing the “storage” side of things without first spelling out the rules for a fair demand-management program.
Peter Fleming, the Colorado River District’s general counsel, spoke at the CWCB meeting on September 19. From the Daily Sentinel:
But [Fleming] said the river district remains concerned about that range of options raised by the CWCB staff in the memo. He said the district is worried about the “unfettered use” of a new tool.
“It is demand management. It is a controversial topic and we can’t shy away from that. The reduction of consumptive uses is something that is a new thing on the Western Slope in particular.”
At that same meeting, Kathleen Curry, a former state lawmaker whose family in Gunnison runs a cattle and hay operation, expressed concern that decisions aimed at supplying water to the Lower Basin states could impact the viability of Colorado agriculture.
“I hope that the treatment isn’t worse than the disease,” she said.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.