Sunday, December 16, 2007

Colorado River II: 7 States Sign Historic Water Agreement

7 States Sign Historic Water Agreement

























By Joe Bauman Salt Lake Desert Morning News, Friday, December 14, 2007

An agreement signed Thursday to help the seven Colorado River states cope with drought is historic, says the director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Don Ostler, whose four-state commission is based in Salt Lake City, was present in Las Vegas to see the agreement signed by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and representatives of all states in the Colorado River Compact. The compact apportions water among the seven states using the river: Utah, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming. "It's without a doubt the most significant agreement on the Colorado River since the original agreement (the Colorado River Compact) was signed ... in 1922," Ostler said. Adjustments have been made to the agreement in the past 85 years, but they weren't as significant as this, he said. "So yes, it's been a historic, exciting" time. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agreement provides that:

• Specific water levels of Lake Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona, will be used to determine when a shortage is declared for the Lower Basin states -- Arizona, California and Nevada। By shortage, the agreement means less than 7.5 million acre-feet available for those states.

• Reservoir conditions in Lake Powell (Utah and Arizona) and Lake Mead will determine the operation of the two reservoirs. Those operations, according to a press release, are intended to "minimize shortages in the Lower Basin and avoid the risk of water delivery curtailments in the Upper Basin."

• A mechanism will be set up to encourage and account for augmenting and conserving water supplies in Lake Mead to "minimize the likelihood and severity of potential future water shortages and to provide additional flexibility to meet water use needs, particularly under low reservoir conditions।"


• Interim surplus guidelines established in 2001 are "modified and extended through 2026." In prepared comments released by the Interior Department, Kempthorne said drought conditions in America and around the world threaten to worsen. "Here in the West, for example, runoff in five of the seven Colorado River Basin states is projected to decline by more than 15 percent during the 21st century." If the region becomes warmer and evaporation increases, "we could face a situation in which the amount of precipitation we are receiving today produces significantly less runoff in the future."

The department secretary said he was impressed by the conservation measures, such as the agreement that allows water users to obtain future credit for conserving water and leaving it in Lake Mead। "It also sets up a framework to allow cities to contract with willing farmers to temporarily fallow fields in dry years while respecting the basin's agricultural heritage," he said।

Perhaps most important, Kempthorne added, the agreement among the seven states has a "key provision" that future controversies surrounding Colorado River resources will be handled among the states through consultation and negotiation, before any states resort to litigation.

He added that the department is working with Mexico to resolve issues concerning Colorado River water that crosses into Mexico। Under the compact, the republic to the south is guaranteed water from the system.
Ostler said that without the agreement, water users faced a high possibility that lawsuits would involve any or all of the compact states। The resulting "legal conflict" could drag on for years, and the fight would not only be costly but would tie up development plans. Under the new arrangement, operations of Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be coordinated so that both should rise and fall together to an extent, "while still preserving the Upper Basin's allotment of water." Ostler characterized the agreement as giving to each state and taking a bit from each state। The most important part is that it heads off "this legal conflict that was looming."

The water agreement protects the Upper Basin also, he said. For example, if Lake Mead is high and Lake Powell low, Powell could reduce its releases. "In the past, the releases would just be set and it would happen," he said. Ostler thinks the waters of the United States would not suffer environmental damage because of the new operations. He added, "I think the next step ... would be to develop plans with the government of Mexico" for a new agreement there.

Source: Desert News (Salt Lake City)



7 States Sign Historic Water Agreement

By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News

An agreement signed Thursday to help the seven Colorado River states cope with drought is historic, says the director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

Don Ostler, whose four-state commission is based in Salt Lake City, was present in Las Vegas to see the agreement signed by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and representatives of all states in the Colorado River Compact. The compact apportions water among the seven states using the river: Utah, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming.

"It's without a doubt the most significant agreement on the Colorado River since the original agreement (the Colorado River Compact) was signed ... in 1922," Ostler said.

Adjustments have been made to the agreement in the past 85 years, but they weren't as significant as this, he said. "So yes, it's been a historic, exciting" time.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agreement provides that:

• Specific water levels of Lake Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona, will be used to determine when a shortage is declared for the Lower Basin states -- Arizona, California and Nevada. By shortage, the agreement means less than 7.5 million acre-feet available for those states.

• Reservoir conditions in Lake Powell (Utah and Arizona) and Lake Mead will determine the operation of the two reservoirs. Those operations, according to a press release, are intended to "minimize shortages in the Lower Basin and

avoid the risk of water delivery curtailments in the Upper Basin."

• A mechanism will be set up to encourage and account for augmenting and conserving water supplies in Lake Mead to "minimize the likelihood and severity of potential future water shortages and to provide additional flexibility to meet water use needs, particularly under low reservoir conditions."

• Interim surplus guidelines established in 2001 are "modified and extended through 2026."

In prepared comments released by the Interior Department, Kempthorne said drought conditions in America and around the world threaten to worsen. "Here in the West, for example, runoff in five of the seven Colorado River Basin states is projected to decline by more than 15 percent during the 21st century."

If the region becomes warmer and evaporation increases, "we could face a situation in which the amount of precipitation we are receiving today produces significantly less runoff in the future."

The department secretary said he was impressed by the conservation measures, such as the agreement that allows water users to obtain future credit for conserving water and leaving it in Lake Mead. "It also sets up a framework to allow cities to contract with willing farmers to temporarily fallow fields in dry years while respecting the basin's agricultural heritage," he said.

Perhaps most important, Kempthorne added, the agreement among the seven states has a "key provision" that future controversies surrounding Colorado River resources will be handled among the states through consultation and negotiation, before any states resort to litigation.

He added that the department is working with Mexico to resolve issues concerning Colorado River water that crosses into Mexico. Under the compact, the republic to the south is guaranteed water from the system.

Ostler said that without the agreement, water users faced a high possibility that lawsuits would involve any or all of the compact states. The

resulting "legal conflict" could drag on for years, and the fight would not only be costly but would tie up development plans.

Under the new arrangement, operations of Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be coordinated so that both should rise and fall together to an extent, "while still preserving the Upper Basin's allotment of water."

Ostler characterized the agreement as giving to each state and taking a bit from each state. The most important part is that it heads off "this legal conflict that was looming."

The water agreement protects the Upper Basin also, he said. For example, if Lake Mead is high and Lake Powell low, Powell could reduce its releases. "In the past, the releases would just be set and it would happen," he said.

Ostler thinks the waters of the United States would not suffer environmental damage because of the new operations। He added, "I think the next step ... would be to develop plans with the government of Mexico" for a new agreement there.


Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

Taming Rivers, the Genesis



Taming Rivers, the Genesis

For eons, rivers began their treks to the oceans as trickles in the highlands of their watersheds. Making their way down via braided streams, they descended ardently and unimpeded into torrents. Six thousand years ago, however, man began a centuries long quest to tame rivers. From that moment in Mesopotamia when the first dam was constructed on the Euphrates River, man has worked with vigor to “tame” rivers by channeling, obstructing, barricading and damming them.

At no time in history was this truer than in the Twentieth Century. During that one hundred year period, man – in the guise of engineer - was engaged in an epic struggle with Mother Nature in order to vanquish and subjugate her. This battle to construct a “wholesale transformation of natural environments” that produced electricity and water to nourish urban expansion, as well as, the construction of modern cities, went hand in hand with the fabrication of nature. This tendency however did not arise in the last century; it only reached its zenith then. Worldwide only short and limited stretches of rivers run wild today. Previously, free flowing rivers across the planet were tamed by an estimated 840,000 dams, including some 40,000 large dams whose four story plus (15 meters) heights loom out across the landscape.

Indeed, man’s modernist propensity to subdue and tame nature has fostered a pursuit for control over her. Numerous scholars have described this penchant as “Modernity’s Promethean Project.” Prometheus was acknowledged as the father of the arts and sciences in ancient Greece. Twenty centuries later, during the Age of Enlightenment, both Scientist and Engineer were accorded Prometheus’ mythological status, assuming his mantle of eminence as a modern “Cultural Icon” and “Modern Hero.”

From Edward Teller’s “scientific horror” created by the power of nuclear weapons, to the cataclysm of Katrina caused by the Army Corps of Engineers shattered promise to protect New Orleans from category 5 hurricanes, “the heroes of modernity promised to dominate nature and deliver human emancipation employing imagination, creativity, ingenuity, romantic heroic attitude, and a touch of hubris against the given order of the world.”

A number of scholars conceptualize these two processes as part of one single development, “the urbanization of nature”. Nevertheless, despite the catalytic impact that dam projects have upon the modern and rural landscape and their effect on the socio-environmental fabric, their impact has received little scrutiny in the natural resources law literature.
Today, dams exemplify humankind’s propensity to urbanize or tame nature –or more correctly, mankind’s new power to control nature. Moreover, in the modern era, dams are viewed as the great concrete cathedrals of the American West. Indeed, this would not have surprised the renowned Frankfurt School philosopher Max Horkheimer.

He firmly believed in the connection between the exploitation of nature and human beings. Modern capitalist societies, Horkheimer felt, had lost their bearing, their sense of reason. They were intent on domination for the sake of domination, on dominating nature, man, and whatever else they could think. Out went moral reasoning, and in came a crusading urge to manipulate and exploit. Whatever sacred value was once attached to the natural world was stamped out by the instrumentalism and calculation of expert engineers and others engaged in an irrational quest to conquer and subdue. But little of this crosses the mind of the average visitor on a trip to Hoover Dam, or any other dam for that matter.

In fact, during his term as Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, noted that “[m] any of these dams have become monuments, expected to last forever.” Americans and visitors from abroad visit “dams like the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River or the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River” like modern pilgrims to a holy shrine, albeit a concrete one. They are awe-struck and reverential “at the dramatic evidence before them of the newfound power to control [rivers specifically and] nature [in general].” But at what cost?

This is a nascent subject, one that has not been addressed in the legal literature for at least twenty years: an assessment of the costs that dams have exacted in terms of natural resources, including wetlands, fish, and endangered species, among others. The next section, entitled America and the Age of Dams, traces the dam construction frenzy that gripped the United States for over fifty years. As in so many fields, the rest of the world has followed the United States lead in constructing dams. The shear cost of the “concrete jungle” in the wilderness viz a viz the destruction of the Colorado River Delta, and its attendant resources.