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7/14/2009 5:02:35 PM
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UCREFRP
UCREFRP Catalog Number
9367
Author
Colorado Water Workshop.
Title
Proceedings
USFW Year
1992.
USFW - Doc Type
Colorado Water Workshop July 22-24, 1992.
Copyright Material
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There are other problems in the Compact. First of all, the <br />Mexican Treaty did come to pass. The United States did promise to <br />deliver over 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico and that burden has to <br />be born. This led Mr. Parks, our former director of the Water <br />Conservation Board to say that the Upper Basin was facing a future <br />built on left-overs -- what was left-over after Mexico was satisfied, <br />what was left-over after the guarantee, or the so-called guarantee, <br />to the Lower Basin. <br />There is another problem related to the Mexican Treaty <br />obligation. When the Compact was drafted, it explicitly states that <br />the division is made _of the Colorado River and all of its tributaries. <br />There is a large tributary of the Colorado River in Arizona, which <br />rises in New Mexico, flows southwesterly across the state, through <br />Phoenix, through the Salt River Valley -- it is the Gila River System. <br />That river has been fully developed and used, in the economic sense, <br />within Arizona. Arizona did not want that water made a part of the <br />Compact. They refused to sign the Compact because of this provision <br />that I have just referred to. Ultimately, Arizona ratified the <br />Compact twenty-two years after it was signed, stating that it was <br />clear the Gila River was not included in the Compact. This was a most <br />remarkable vote pas because Carl Hayden, their senator, had introduced <br />numerous amendments to the legislation authorizing the United States <br />Congress to remove the Gila River from the language. <br />Since the time of the Gila River issue, there have been other <br />problems surfacing with regards to the Colorado River. Our nation has <br />changed in many ways. We have a variety of environmental laws. We <br />have a whole panoply of conflicting and overlapping laws, which tend <br />to make development of water for classic beneficial use more and more <br />difficult. <br />There is another section in the Compact that I want to call to <br />your attention. It is subparagraph E of Article III. It says, "The <br />states of the Upper Division shall not withhold water and the states <br />of the Lower Division shall not require the delivery of water, which <br />cannot reasonably be applied to domestic and agricultural uses." This <br />section says that if the water is not being used in Colorado and it <br />flows down the river, anyone can use it, regardless of whether it is <br />within their allotment of the 7.5 million acre-feet or not. <br />California has taken to that with an enthusiasm that I am sure Jim <br />Lochhead will address. I am not sure what the total volume of <br />California uses are these days, but they are surely, substantially in <br />excess of 4.4 million acre-feet per year, which was the cap put on <br />them by litigation in the United States Supreme Court in 1963. <br />The problem again comes back to this allotment of water, whether <br />it is 7.5 million acre-feet to the Upper Basin, or whether it is 7.5 <br />million acre-feet less the guarantee read into Article III that we are <br />still not using. That means that California under Article E is fully. <br />entitled, supposedly, to use the water. They have built an economy <br />in reliance on it. Many profound thinkers wonder how would those uses <br />ever be divested. That has been the focus of Colorado's concern and <br />nervousness for the last twenty years. <br />There are legitimate questions, it seems to me, that should be <br />asked in Colorado. Is this an academic exercise, or is this just <br />water buffalo thinking? Is it silly to worry about this? Is there <br />a future that we need to protect? Is it realistic to think we can <br />6
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