Water Shortage Disputes Brewing in the Colorado Basin States

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently joked at an event in Colorado that he was there “to take your water”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his pronouncements on the need to “renegotiate” the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which determines how much water each of the 7 states in the Colorado Basin can draw from the river. The joke has become fodder for McCain’s opponents, at the national and local level. Colorado’s governor told the press, in a call reportedly organized by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), that the reference raised serious concerns about the favorability of McCain’s water policies to his state.

Gov. Ritter has said he believes renegotiation would reduce Colorado’s share of the river water, and the mood in Colorado is with him, opposing any attempt to divert more water away from Colorado to the other Basin states. McCain’s campaign has said the joke was just that, a joke, and that he did not mean to alarm neighboring states about his motivations for viewing renegotiation favorably.

Interestingly, there has been a recent agreement between the Basin states on how to deal with extreme drought fairly, given the likely need to rearrange the distribution of water from the river temporarily in such circumstances, and McCain has reportedly not commented on this negotiation. It may be that it would impede his further renegotiation of the underlying laws, or it may be that mentioning it would raise questions about whether it would be considered part of a renegotiation, something that drought-prone states might find even more alarming.

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Source: Casavaria

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Will Water Help Obama Win Colorado?

John McCain’s recent comments to a Colorado newspaper that a 1922 seven-state agreement governing the use of the Colorado River “obviously needs to be renegotiated over time” may sound completely innocuous, perhaps even sensible, to most people.

But to Colorado voters, McCain might as well have said he likes to eat cute puppies for breakfast. It’s hard to explain to a non-Coloradan the outsized significance of the Colorado River–and its coveted snowmelt water–within the state. “Over my dead body,” Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) said in a statement. To which Republican senate candidate Bob Schaffer added, “Over my cold, dead, political carcass.” Get the point?

In this arid region of the country, rural farmers depend on the river’s water, and after enduring the worst drought since the 18th century in recent years, any notion that Scottsdale golfers and Bellagio gamblers need more water than they’re currently allotted is basically Rule #1 under What Not to Say in Colorado. Just as Yucca Mountain is a nuclear issue in Nevada-pun intended-Coloradans often quote Mark Twain, who’s rumored to have said, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Many local pundits in Colorado are already asking whether “McCain just lo[st] Colorado.”

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Source: NewsWeek

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McCain now says Western water pact should stand

DENVER – Sen. John McCain has backed off his comment that a key Western water agreement should be renegotiated, but Democrats signaled they plan to pummel him for his remarks, which even Republicans in swing-state Colorado denounced.

The GOP presidential candidate told the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain last week that the 1922 Colorado River Compact ought to be “renegotiated over time.” But in a letter Wednesday to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., McCain wrote that his comments were misconstrued.

“Let me clear that I do not advocate renegotiation of the compact,” the letter said. McCain aides said the letter was e-mailed across the West after even fellow Republicans derided McCain for suggesting the water agreement may need to be retooled.

The Colorado River is one of the most important water sources in the West, and the 1922 compact allocates the river among the lower basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – and the upper basin states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

A second agreement signed last year a 2007 was designed to ease tension among the compact states caused by a long-term drought.

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Source: San Diego Union Tribune

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Growing more with less water

EAGLE COUNTY — Crawling through the pastures at the Albertson Cattle Company in Burns, high above the Colorado River and on the edge of the Flat Tops Wilderness, is a 900-foot long sprinkler system that looks like a giant robotic caterpillar.

The caterpillar takes it time, slowly inching through about 80 acres of grass on big black wheels. Dozens of spray nozzles hang off its belly, and a large water gun is perched on its head. This crawling irrigation system is designed to apply the perfect amount of water so the grass can grow, be cut down and turned to hay without waste. It all works by gravity.

Just two years ago, these 80 acres of pasture were regularly flooded with inches of water to get the grass growing. When you flood fields, a lot more water is used than what the grass actually needs to grow.

Now, two “gravity-fed pivots,” or crawling sprinkler systems, do the irrigating. These “pivots” use about 70 percent less water than flooding but end up producing more hay than ever. “The productivity is getting close to double what we used to do,” said Kevin Wahlert, a rancher at Albertson Cattle Company.

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Source: Vail Daily

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