Hoover Dam
By Brandon Loomis || The Arizona Republic
HOOVER DAM — Federal officials on Tuesday released a draft plan with options for emergency measures to prop up Colorado River reservoirs, including one that for the first time envisions cuts that would be shared by all users across the watershed regardless of their established rights to water.
The plan spells out proposals to modify a 2007 shortage-sharing agreement and will be open for public comment for 45 days. If adopted this summer, it will affect dam releases starting next year.
But officials with the U.S. Interior Department and its Bureau of Reclamation made clear that they view these options as placeholders, “bookends” between which consensus might be reached, while the states and tribes that share the river continue to seek consensus over the spring. The government will gather comment and refine its options by summer.
Speaking at a news conference in front of picture windows with a view of Lake Mead’s “bathtub ring” caused the huge reservoir’s retreat, U.S. Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said the Colorado Basin’s residents and ecosystems require new solutions for unprecedented strains.
“Fundamentally it is one community composed of 40 million people and landscapes that need us to get this right,” she said.
Federal officials acknowledged that relying solely on either existing legal priorities or on every user’s pro-rata share of the river would create great hardship. They hope to avoid that if states and tribes can mix and match a better set of options.
“It is our hope and our fervent desire that the tools laid out in the (draft) never have to be used,” Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau said. Still, he asserted that the department has a responsibility to protect the system and the 40 million people who use it, and will act this year if the parties don’t reach agreement.
“I am more optimistic than at any time since we started the conversations last summer. There’s a renewed spirit (of cooperation) among the Lower Basin states.”
Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke
Representatives from the river states said they’re making progress behind the scenes and are gaining confidence that they can reach a deal that does not throw out the old legal priorities or completely cut off cities and others that don’t enjoy the same legal priorities as many farmers.
Those states — Arizona, California and Nevada — must bear the brunt of new reductions because they’re the only three that fully put their water entitlements to work. Buschatzke said they may be able to reach a consensus before Interior chooses a preferred plan, and that it could preserve key needs such as a health and safety allowance for municipal water providers regardless of their legal preference. After that, the old system of first-in-time, first-in-right could govern other cuts needed to keep water in the reservoir
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