9337

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9337
• Author: Colorado River Water Users Association.
• Title: The Colorado River of Many Returns.
• USFW Year: 2001.
• USFW - Doc Type: Coachella, California.
• Copyright Material: NO

COLORADO
solve every problem or eliminate all litigation. That was demonstrated
three times between 1922 and 1940, as Wyoming repeatedly challenged
Colorado's right to divert water from west to east. During much of the
same period, the United States was negotiating a treaty that, in 1944,
provided Mexico the rights to 1.5 million acre-feet annually of Colorado
River water. Finally, in 1946, the Bureau of Reclamation stated that it
would approve no further projects until the upper basin states legally
divided their share of the Colorado River.
This task was undertaken by two clever Colorado lawyers:
Clifford Stone, state legislator, country judge and one-time director of the
Colorado Water Conservation Board; and Jean Breitenstein, a former
assistant attorney general for Colorado and assistant U.S. attorney.
Breitenstein represented Colorado in negotiations to divide the upper
basin's share of the Colorado River water among Colorado, Wyoming,
Utah and New Mexico. He recommended that the division be based on a
percentage allocation because it enabled a consistent method of
determining allocation regardless of the varying water supplies of the river.
The successful conclusion of negotiations among the upper basin states in
1948 cleared the way for more federally funded Bureau of Reclamation
projects in the upper basin.
A young witness to the early development of the Grand Valley
Project was Wayne Aspinall, son of a Palisade, Colorado, peach grower.
Working in his father's business taught Aspinall of the Colorado River's
importance to sustaining life and economic prosperity for western
Colorado. In 1948, Aspinall was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives; and in his 24-year congressional career, he became known
as "Mr. Chairman" for his role as chairman of the U.S. House Interior and
Insular Affairs Committee, which was responsible for reclamation
legislation. Aspinall was a conservationist in the traditional sense and a
staunch champion of Western reclamation.
Aspinall understood that without water project development, life
in the western United States would be meager at best. His chairmanship
was of incalculable value to Colorado in its efforts to secure congressional
approval for Colorado water projects. His understanding of the river,
especially its uneven flow, led him to seek greater stability with water
storage projects. He excelled in this, helping to authorize fully two-thirds
of all reclamation projects ever constructed in Colorado. His work was
critical to passage of the Colorado River Storage Project Act that resulted
in four major reservoirs in the upper basin, and he shepherded the
Colorado River Basin Project Act through the House in 1968. This act
authorized the Central Arizona Project, along with five concurrent
Colorado projects, illustrating Aspinall's ability to forge cooperative
solutions with other basin states while furthering Colorado's interests.
The Bureau of Reclamation's unit of the Colorado River Storage
Project on Colorado's Gunnison River bears his name, the Wayne N.
Aspinall Storage Unit. The unit's name, originally the Curecanti Storage
Unit, was changed by Congress in 1980 to honor Aspinall for his 24 years
of legislative leadership and accomplishments for water users throughout
the West. Three dams, Blue Mesa (Colorado's largest reservoir), Morrow
Point and Crystal, store a total of 1,083,990 acre-feet of water, have a
maximum hydroelectric generating capacity of 297 megawatts and
annually attract more than a million visitors.
Today, numerous projects divert an average of one-half million
acre-feet annually of Colorado River water to the east slope to supply
nearly 2 million people and a large portion of eastern Colorado's
agricultural economy with reliable, high-quality water. The waters of
the Colorado River and its tributaries supplement the natural flow of
the rivers flowing east, including the Poudre, South Platte and Arkansas.
Recent cooperation between west slope and east slope interests has
helped ease tensions.
More than 1 million acres are irrigated by the Colorado River or
its tributaries within the natural drainage basin of the Colorado River
in the state. As a result of transmountain diversions, the Colorado River
also helps irrigate an additional 900,000 acres on Colorado's eastern
plains. In total, nearly two-thirds of Colorado's irrigated lands receive
Colorado River water.
The waters of the Colorado River, however, remain a subject of
controversy as residents of differing geographic regions and philosophical
viewpoints vie for the state's scarce water resources. Changing attitudes
and new political ideologies regarding environmental issues provide new
grist for old conflicts. Concerns such as water quality, instream flows,
protection of threatened and endangered species, and recreation, all affect
decisions on water use, operation of existing water projects and
development of new water projects.
For state officials and water policymakers, the realities of scarcity
and need, historically significant to every decision on the Colorado River,
remain primary. The combination of these forces will produce outcomes as
unpredictable as the Colorado River that floods one year and barely
trickles the next.
Current decisionmakers planning the future of the Colorado River
and the state of Colorado would do well to borrow a page from Delph
Carpenter and employ a strategy that promotes cooperation and
negotiation rather than contention and litigation.
Compiled and written by David W Ayers, Loretta Lohman, Christopher Treese,
Daniel Tyler and Brian Werner.
17
THE GOVERNMENT 1"HIGHLINE DIVERSION DAM ON THE COLORADO RIVER
IS LISTED ON THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES.
EARLY 1940s WORKERS CARVE ADAMS TUNNEL UNDER CONTINENTAL DIVIDE.