Questions Grow Regarding The Future Of The Colorado River Compact

[hatrack]

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"Experts say that despite recent heavy rains in the foothills, mountain reservoirs are still low, and technically drought conditions persist.

And five consecutive years of warm, dry weather have forced national and regional water officials to think about how the Colorado River Compact, a 1922 agreement allocating the river's waters among several states, and a related welter of legal cases, would control water deliveries if the drought continues.

Now, for the first time, the seven Colorado River basin states are drafting recommendations to Interior Department officials on how to manage water and possibly shut water users off if two giant impoundments, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, continue to drain.

"When I first started working in the water business, people thought someday Colorado would have to deal with the concept of a compact call, but it would be 50 or 100 years down the road - if ever," said Eric Kuhn, the river district's general manager. "Now it's potentially five or 10 years away."

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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~23447~2368226,00.html

[phantom power]

1. This is going to suck.

or, maybe it will blow.

This drought has been going on for nine years, and people are just barely starting to take it seriously.

It's weird, how reluctant the AZ govt is to initiate water rationing. It's like they'll do anything to avoid the possible appearance of being anti-growth, or anti-business, or whatever it is that makes republicans foam at the mouth.

When your economy lives and dies by the health of a reservoir system, you'd think it would be a good idea to ration water *before* the reservoirs get really low.

[LastDemocratInSC]

2. It would be best to not over-develop a naturally arid region

The fact that the Colorado River basin is among the fastest growing population areas in the nation (as in Las Vegas) is just crazy. This is un-sustainable growth. Flying into any airport in the arid west one is struck by the sharp visual lines of division between the irrigated areas, with golf courses, subdivisions, swimming pools and farms, and the desert. This is insanity.

The history of providing water and electicity to the West's major population centers during the last 100 years is a story of greed, political corruption and the willful ignorance of timely warnings that an environmental disaster was being created.

Here in in the northwest corner of South Carolina we are already fighting political battles against the city of Atlanta, of all places, as it offers money to the border counties of Georgia to drain water away from our shared rivers to support their growth 100 miles away. Our mountain region has plenty of water, as does Atlanta, at the moment, but the leadership in Georgia is seeing the writing on the wall - how do they sustain the current rate of growth?

The need for water pushed more bullets out of guns in the development of the West than any other issue and it looks like history will repeat itself.