Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting: complications of the Colorado River Compact

John McCain lost Colorado on August 16, 2008. A purple state at heart, Colorado has always had a schizophrenic voting base that is split between the liberal bastion of Denver County and a population of ranchers, farmers and conservative Christians. Colorado’s nine electoral votes will usually go to the candidate that panders the most effectively to these blocs. 

Senator McCain did not understand this fundamental rule of Colorado politics as he lost not only the liberals, but also the conservative ranchers in one foul swoop. How did the Republican nominee manage to alienate his base? 

On August 16, John McCain gave a speech in Pueblo, CO. After sauntering onto the stage, the Republic maverick nonchalantly strolled up to the microphone and drawled into the speakers, “I’m here to steal your water.” In the blink of an eye, John McCain transformed himself from presidential nominee to the senior senator from Arizona. In the minds of the Republicans gathered in the room, McCain was no longer one of them. 

John McCain wanted to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact. He wished to give more water to Arizona because his home state has a larger population and therefore it seemed only logical to him that it needed a larger allocation from the Colorado River. According to McCain, “I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties.” 

The reaction was quick and dirty. Not to mention, oddly bipartisan for Colorado. Bob Schaffer, the 2008 Republican candidate for Senate, openly voiced his disconnect with McCain. “Over my cold, dead, political carcass. The compact is the only protection Colorado has from several more politically powerful downstream states.” Said Schaffer. “Opening it for renegotiation would be the equivalent of a lamb discussing with a pack of wolves what should be on the dinner menu.” Welcome to cowboy country, Johnny Boy.

The majority of Colorado’s water comes from the Colorado River, which is allocated by the terms of the Colorado River Compact. This agreement has fixed the distribution of water in the Southwestern United States since 1922. A plan that bisected the Southwest into the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin States, the compact appropriates 7.5 million acre-feet per year to each Basin. The state of Colorado receives 3.88 million acre-feet per year, whereas Arizona only receives 2.80 million acre-feet. In contrast, Mexico receives 1.5 million acre-feet of the Colorado’s flow per year. 

What is wrong with this system? The Colorado River Compact has not been renegotiated in almost 90 years and these allocations are based on 1922 statistics for the average mean flow of the Colorado River of 18 million acre-feet per year. The population of Colorado has grown from the 1920 census of 939,629 to 5,024,748 in the July 2009 survey, yet its water allocation hasn’t changed. In addition, the state of Colorado has been in a drought since 2002.

The realities of climate change will undoubtedly challenge the Colorado River Compact. Various experiments have modeled the effects of climate change on the volume of the Colorado River. Scientists Peter Gleick and Linda Nash have proven that the compact could be violated with a 5% decrease in annual run-off. The result of an increase of 2 degrees Celsius will produce a 10% decrease in precipitation and a complementary 20% reduction in run-off. An increase of 4 degrees will result in a 20% decrease in precipitation and a whopping 30% reduction in run-off. 

A bad snow year affects a lot more than the ski season. These decreases in run-off have the potential to reduce the flow of the Colorado River by 400,000 acre-feet per year by 2025. Translated into human usage, this will result in 400,000-800,000 households going without water. 

This all leads us to the question: “What have state and federal legislators been doing to respond to these growing concerns regarding Western water consumption? While it may, at first glance, appear that the states have done nothing but continue to argue amongst themselves over their respective legal water appropriations, there seems to be a surprisingly more optimistic outlook in regards to the future. 

The facts that the Colorado River does not historically flow at the level it had been during 1922 and that global climate change will continue to contribute to the river’s decreasing water levels are no longer disputed within scientific and political arenas. Moreover, while many fair-haired, leaping gnomes calling themselves environmentalists advocate for the immediate end to population expansion in the West (ourselves included), such an expectation is exceptionally unlikely if not completely unrealistic as Colorado’s population alone is expected to double by 2050. Yet despite these damning predictions, neither politicians nor everyday citizens seem too concerned. Now, this may certainly just be the result of pure, blissful ignorance, but we’re compelled to believe that there is more than just a 2-D game of Atari Pong going on inside the minds of both our elected representatives and the general public.

To support our point, we think it important to note the 2007 agreement made between the seven states of the Colorado River basin and members of the federal government. It was in 2007 that both Lake Mead and Lake Powell dropped below 50% since their respective creations. This, combined with the mounting evidence in favor of global climate change, prompted the aforementioned officials to meet and sign an agreement to equally share the burden of consumption cuts fairly equally if allocations were cut based on relative water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell. In addition to this, the agreement also allowed the states the right to build water projects (once a right reserved exclusively by the federal government) for each other in exchange for an increase in river water. Such an agreement was unprecedented and not only saved all the involved parties an exorbitant amount of money in legal fees, but also marked a new era of interstate cooperation in the face of inevitable injury. 

So what? An agreement is nothing more than a bunch of state legislators getting drunk on their respective state’s tab at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas three years ago, right? Well, to some extent, yes, I’m sure a little fun was had by all, but recent numbers seem to show that there was something more that came out of that conference than just a piece of paper with a lot of illegible signatures. 

A number of the seven states, including Wyoming and Colorado, use less water than they are legally appropriated and the rest of the states are all working on improving conservation efforts through restrictions and new state-sponsored programs. For example, in December of 2009, Los Angeles was able to reduce its water consumption by 18.4% in the June-October months, the hottest and thirstiest times of the year for the city. What makes this reduction even more impressive is it was the city’s lowest level of water consumption in over 18 years even with a 500,000-person increase in its population within that time period. 

These facts, coupled with the increasing support of the Green movement and what some may call a paradigm shift in the mindset of the general public towards their relationship with the Earth and her natural resources, seem to indicate that perhaps the future isn’t so bleak. That is, it won’t be so bleak if we, as a collective body of actors, can realize exactly how screwed we’re going to be and that no one is going to avoid that bent-over-the-barrel feeling if we don’t accept the inevitable and start making individual and collective adjustments to our use of our precious, life-sustaining resources.