WSP12533 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

., '" "'8 ~u" f"t '0' ; , lJ,.LJ 964 ECOLOGY lA W QUARTERLY [Vol. 28:903 the Delta ecosystem and by reestablishing fisheries, agriculture, and other locally beneficial economic activities.361 The Institute participated in the watershed 1999 EDF study, which concluded that flows of only 32,000 acre-feet annually, combined with occasional flows of 260,000 acre-feet, would suffice for the preservation and restoration of the critical regions of the Delta.362 Despite the small amount of water required, many participants believed that the significant political and economic power of the Colorado River water users would defeat any proposal to move water to the Delta over their objection.363 The Sonoran Institute proposal envisioned acquiring water for the Delta via a series of voluntary purchases and transfers of water.364 Conservation interests would buy up water rights from irrigators in the United States, retire those water rights, and then transfer the water through the reservoir system for instream flow to the Delta.365 Because participation in such a program would be entirely voluntary, the Institute believed that this approach would be less likely to upset the current regime of water interests - as long as a non-controversial source could be identified.366 The Sonoran Institute rejected Mexico as a potential source of water for both political and equitable reasons. In the Institute's view, the historical inequities associated with the division of the Colorado between the U.S. and Mexico in the Mexico-U.S. Water Treaty, when combined with projected future shortages, groundwater overdraft, increases in urban demand, and the limitations of Mexican domestic law, all worked against 361. Id 362. See LUECKE. supra note 19, at 42. 363. Personal communications with Luther Propst, ExecutiVe Director, Sonoran Institute, & Steve Comelius, Director of Borde'rlands Program, Sonoran Institute, Tucson, AZ (2000-2002). 364. One of the authors (peter Culp) assisted in the development of this proposal by drafting a 1999 report (see CULP, infra note 365) to the Sonoran Institute discussing the Law of the River and the limitations that it would impose on water transfers to the Delta. 'In collaboration with the Sonoran Institute, an expanded and updated version of this report was published as a working paper by the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy in Tucson, Arizona in 2001 (see Culp, supra note 123). The Udall Center also funded the development of a summary version of the original Sonoran Institute report for the benefit of participants at the September 2000 symposium, . . . to the Sea of Cortes: Nature, Water, Culture. and LiveWwod in the Lower Colorado River Basin and Delta, in Riverside, Califomia. 365. See generaUy Peter W. Culp. Feasibility of Purchase and Transfer of Water for Instream Flow in the Colorado River Delta, Mexico: A Preliminary Investigation. Sonoran Institute Report (Nov. 1999) (unpublished report, on file with authors). 366. Cornelius & Propst, supra note 363.