‘Save The Colorado’ repudiates the State of Colorado for making egregious threats to the lives and livelihoods of people, communities, and the environment downstream of Colorado across the American Southwest.
Colorado has made the egregious threats many times, and did it again in a newspaper article posted yesterday by Arizona Central. In the article, the spokesperson for the State of Colorado threatened lower basin states and communities by saying that Colorado “has no delivery obligation” to let water flow downstream, and that Colorado would not allow an obligation to be included in the outcome for the Post-2026 Guidelines for how the Colorado River is managed.
Importantly, the 1922 Colorado River Compact expressly requires water to be sent downstream by saying, “the States of the Upper Division will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.”
In the same article, the negotiator for the State of Arizona also refuted Colorado’s statement by saying the Compact “locks in a system in which they [Upper Basin] have a delivery obligation to us, and they have to figure out a way to achieve that.”
‘Save the Colorado’ repudiates Colorado’s egregious threats and negotiation strategy. If Colorado is not required to deliver water downstream, it would endanger the lives and livelihoods of over 20 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California, as well as decimate the ecology of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
The Arizona Central article is posted here.
Gary Wockner, PhD, is a scientist and conservationist based in Colorado. Follow him on Twitter, @GaryWockner. Learn more at savethecolorado.org