California and Arizona control the largest and second-largest allocations, respectively, of river water in the seven-state Colorado River Basin.
By Tony Davis || Arizona Daily Star
Arizona and California, which have battled over the Colorado River for nearly a century, are at it again. This time, Arizona leaders are blaming California, and other states, for putting the burden of stemming the river’s impending crisis on their backs alone.
It became publicly known last week that Arizona and Nevada made a proposal this summer to save a lot of Colorado River water but that California, and possibly the U.S. government, rejected it. While discussing this proposal, leaders of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project said they felt it “unacceptable for Arizona to continue to carry a disproportionate burden of reductions for the benefit of others who have not contributed.”
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California officials disagree with that comment, and both sides present numbers backing their case about which one has saved more water. Both sides also continue negotiating.
“I don’t know if they will get a deal or not,” said Kathy Ferris, a former Arizona Department of Water Resources director and chief counsel. “We have become dependent on an over-allocated supply.”
The path to an agreement is clogged by concerns about priorities for use of the declining river water, Ferris said.
California and Yuma farmers want to protect their senior priority right for river water, while the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner counts on water users to cut a deal that protects the river but ignores priorities, she said. At the same time, she believes some water users are betting that Reclamation is afraid to take unilateral action, which could trigger intense litigation.
“This is uncharted territory. Who’s going to call whose bluff? Who’s going to blink first? Are the feds going to blink? Will California blink, or are we just going to run out of water?” Ferris asked.
‘Keys to the kingdom’
Where few people will disagree is that the Colorado’s fate depends on Arizona and California’s ability to come to terms. California and Arizona control the largest and second-largest allocations, respectively, of river water in the seven-state Colorado River Basin.
