PHOTO: A water canal in California.
Hard to believe that an entire state could plead guilty of stealing water from the Colorado River. Even harder to believe, that two states could plead guilty of the same crime.
Not only that… but that both of them — Arizona and California — would enter their guilty pleas during the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference in Las Vegas.
Hard to believe, and that’s okay, because they didn’t actually plead guilty. It was more like a nolo contendere plea.
You can read the whole sordid story in the Daily Post, in an article by Aspen Journalism’s Heather Sackett. Ms. Sackett may have been too forgiving, in her coverage. But I will try and make up for that.
The two perps didn’t refer to their crime as “theft”. They called it a “supply/demand imbalance”. A euphemism a politician might use.
Simply stated, the Colorado River — try as it might — delivers only a certain amount of water, and the water legally belongs to the state of Colorado and six other states — Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and the two miscreants, California and Arizona. (I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use that word.)
Colorado and the other upper basin states — Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico — are supposed to have rights to half the water flowing down the Colorado River, but they typically don’t use their entire half, so they store the extra in Lake Powell. For a rainy day, so to speak.
Well, no, not for a rainy day. For a drought. An extended drought. The opposite of a rainy day.
But the federal government has been sending extra water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, which is where California and Arizona have been getting their dirty little hands on it.
We all know that the Nestlé Corporation steals water whenever and wherever they can, and you probably heard about actor Tom Selleck stealing water for his avocado grove in California.
But the convention in Las Vegas marks the first time the entire states of California and Arizona have confessed to misbehaving.
That must have been painful… to admit being naughty, right before Christmas. Santa probably wasn’t happy. And when Santa ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
From Ms. Sackett’s Aspen Journalism article:
[Colorado representative Becky] Mitchell spoke passionately about the need for pain to be shared among the basin’s water users. Others reaffirmed their commitments to compromise. Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger said there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.
Ouch. Silver buckshot? I wonder if someone is seriously misinterpreting Ms. Mitchell’s “shared pain” comment.
Regardless, I bet California and Arizona are considering Kevlar vests for the next conference.
We have rules about justice, nevertheless. One of the rules suggests that an accused person who might or might not be guilty, should be given the opportunity to “plea bargain” — get a reduced sentence if they confess. This bargaining process has led to a lot of confessions over the years, and I wonder if this technique was in use at the Las Vegas conference?
Hopefully, we will be able to avoid the buckshot altogether.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.