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<br />001549 <br /> <br />2002] <br /> <br />THE LAST GREEN LAGOON <br /> <br />905 <br /> <br />INTRODUCTION <br /> <br />The late Marc Reisner once wrote: "In the East, to 'waste' <br />water is to consume it needlessly or excessively. In the West, to <br />waste water is not to consume it - to let it flow unimpeded and <br />undiverted down rivers."l By ReiSner's western standards, the <br />modem Colorado River represents the ultimate achievement in <br />'hydrological engineering - a river that in most years no longer <br />reaches the sea. With the river now supporting more than 30 <br />million people and 3.7 million acres of irrigated farmland, every <br />drop of the Colorado is carefully planned and controlled, <br />delivered with mathematical precision through a nearly <br />incomprehensible plumbing system of dams, headgates, and <br />canals. 2 <br />Even more amazing - or terrifying - is the speed with which <br />this feat of engineering was accomplished. Less than a century <br />ago, the Colorado was a muddy, free flowing river. Diversions of <br />water from the river did not even begin until the early years of <br />the twentieth century, when settlers in California's Imperial <br />Valley began to draw water from the river.3 As late as 1916, <br />steamboats journeyed regularly from the Gulf of California <br />through the Colorado River Delta, navigating well past the town <br />of Yuma, Arizona to provide materials and supplies for early <br />miners.4 Today, a canoe would barely float on much of the river's <br />length below the last diversion at Morelos Dam. <br />While the transformation of the Colorado from river to rivulet <br />has had tremendous environmental consequences throughout <br />the Colorado River Basin, perhaps 'no place has been more <br />grievously injured than the Colorado River Delta. When Aldo <br />Leopold visited the Colorado River Delta in 1922, he encountered <br />a lush landscape of riparian forests; wetlands, and lagoons. <br />Leopold's description ranks as one of the most lyrical passages in <br />modem naturalist literature: <br />, . . . the river was nowhere and everywhere, for he could not <br />decide which of a hundred green lagoons offered the most <br />pleasant and least speedy path to the' Gulf. So he traveled <br /> <br />1. MARc REISNER, CADILlAC DESERI' 12 (1986). <br />2. See Jennifer Pitt et aloo. Two Nations. One River: Managing Ecosystem <br />Conservation in the Colorado River Delta. 20 NATURAL REsOURCES JOURNAL 819. 827 <br />(2000). <br />3. See DALE PONTIUS, COWRADO RIvER BASIN STUDY (Report to the Western Water <br />Policy Review Advisoty Commission) 8-13 (1997). <br />4. See generally RICHARD E. LINGENFELTER, STEAMBOATS ON THE COLORADO RIvER <br />1852-1916 (1978). <br />