This
story is taken from Politics
at sacbee.com.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/v-print/story/9076337p-10002238c.html
The Bush administration
is threatening to impose unilateral water cutbacks on California, Arizona and
Nevada if the three states can't come up with a plan to deal with a historic
drought on the Colorado River.
Following five years of
dry weather, the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado are roughly half-empty
and dropping fast, and Interior Department officials are urging water agencies
to work together on a contingency plan or have one imposed on them.
"We need the three
basin states to get their act together and deal with shortages," said
Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley in a recent meeting with water
officials from California, Arizona and Nevada. If the three states can't work
out a plan, he said, the Interior secretary "will have to do it."
For years, Los Angeles,
Las Vegas and other fast-growing cities in the region have depended on surplus
water from the Colorado - supplies that exceed their entitlements. Now, the
Southwest is shifting to a much drier period, and states are facing not only
the loss of surplus but also cutbacks that could affect tens of millions of
people.
In California, the water
squeeze is already being felt statewide. With less water from the Colorado
River, Southern California is pushing conservation, more use of groundwater
banks and extra pumping from the Delta.
"We are entering
some new territory," said Raley, who notes that the modern Southwest has
never had to deal with an extended drought.
Since 1999, Lake Mead has
dropped more than 80 feet and is at 58 percent of capacity. With less water
pressure going through its turbines, Hoover Dam is losing some of its capacity
to generate power, and Las Vegas is preparing to deepen its water intake in Lake
Mead to keep up with a moving target.
Upstream, at Lake Powell,
the water loss is even more dramatic. In four years, Powell has dropped nearly
120 feet, and now holds 42 percent of its maximum water capacity. Never before
have both Lake Mead and Lake Powell been at such a low state at the same time,
according to officials for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Water leaders in the
Southwest are closely watching these lake levels, and so are those in other
Western states. Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the upper-basin states
of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming must deliver 7.5 million acre-feet of
water to the three lower-basin states each year. Lake Powell was built so the
upper basin could deliver on that promise, but now Powell's future is in doubt.
According to federal
forecasts, drought and water deliveries could drain Powell in three years. In
such a situation, the upper basin would be forced to forgo river withdrawals or
risk a major court battle.
To head off that
prospect, water officials from seven states have been meeting regularly in
recent months, said Dennis Underwood, a former reclamation commissioner who now
works for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The most
recent meeting was held Monday in Phoenix, where officials discussed options
for keeping the taps flowing.
Some of those options,
said Underwood, include storing lower-basin water in upper-basin reservoirs to
reduce the huge evaporation that occurs in Lake Mead. Agencies are also
discussing water trades and "forbearance agreements" - paying farmers
not to irrigate - to help vulnerable areas through a drought.
One such spot is Las
Vegas, the nation's fastest growing city and one that draws 98 percent of its
water from the Colorado. Not wanting to gamble on their future, Nevada
officials have been pressing for some type of interstate water-sharing
arrangement.
Pat Mulroy, general
manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said the recent talks are a
recognition that the regional water situation is serious. "People are
finally realizing that the drought is real," said Mulroy, "and not
something I thought up in a bar."
In a December speech in
Las Vegas, Interior Secretary Gale Norton laid out some of the possible
scenarios. Under the 2001 Interim Surplus Guidelines, Norton said she is
required to cut surplus supplies to California, Arizona and Nevada if the
surface of Lake Mead drops to 1,125 feet in elevation - 10 feet below its
current level.
Further down the road,
Norton could use her court-appointed authority as Colorado "river
master" to declare a shortage and impose cutbacks. Some water experts
believe Norton could make such a declaration when Lake Mead's surface level
hits 1,083 feet elevation - about 52 feet below its current elevation - but the
law isn't specific.
To ratchet up the
pressure, Interior officials invited Southwest water leaders and a group of
journalists on a boat trip this month down the Grand Canyon, where Raley
repeated his warning Norton was ready to take action. "Time lost now is
time we may not be able to recover," said Raley, pacing across a sand bar
like Gen. George Patton.
Some environmentalists
say the Bush administration is delaying tough decisions by playing this kind of
drawn-out pressure politics. This year, they note, the Bureau of Reclamation
declared a partial surplus on the Colorado River, which further depleted Lake
Mead. Now federal officials are preaching drought preparedness.
"The bureau is
dragging its feet," said Jeff Van Ee, a water watchdog for the Sierra Club
in Las Vegas. "They haven't taken this drought seriously."
Raley, who oversees the
Bureau of Reclamation, said he started working closely on the drought problem
in January. Before that, he helped seal a landmark settlement that quantified
how much water California's cities and farms could draw from the Colorado
River. By agreeing to limit its water withdrawals to 4.4 million acre-feet,
California was given a 13-year grace period to continue receiving
"surplus" water from the river.
Now, say water officials, that grace period appears to be moot.