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States deal for water <br />"History shows we've never been complacent about managing water," said <br />Rita Maguire, president of the research group ThinkAZ and former director of <br />the state Water Resources Department. "I think that vigilance has served us <br />very well. What we would never want to see is arrogance. It's important to <br />recognize we need to work with our neighbors." <br />Law of the River holds <br />In the coming weeks, whatever ideas emerge as part of a riverwide drought <br />plan must work within the Law of the River. <br />The Law of the River is not a single law but a collection of statutes, <br />compacts, agreements and court decisions spanning decades. Arizona <br />helped write large swaths of the law by suing California repeatedly to <br />enforce the water allotments. <br />That means a proposal as dramatic as redrawing the river allotments or as <br />simple as Nevada borrowing water from Utah would not fly. <br />"You don't want to open everything up so it's total chaos," said Dennis <br />Underwood, former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and now <br />vice president of the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles. "That's the <br />whole basis of the law." <br />The Interior Department intends to enforce the existing laws and compacts, <br />said Bennett Raley, assistant Interior secretary. <br />"When you don't have rules of the road, it's chaos," he said. "As difficult as <br />these issues are, the river is far better positioned to deal with the reality of <br />drought than any river basin in the West." If states complain that the law <br />can't stand up to the drought, "what they're really saying is they don't like <br />how it works for them." <br />But this drought could push the law to its limits. If runoff into the Colorado <br />doesn't recover and Lake Powell continues to drop, the seven states could <br />find themselves with too little water to go around. <br />Within the law are several compacts signed among the states. Those <br />compacts describe how water is apportioned and what happens if there's not <br />enough. <br />Under one critical compact that divided the river between the upper and <br />lower basins, the upper -basin states - Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and <br />Utah - are required to deliver 7.5 million acre -feet a year to the lower -basin <br />states, Arizona, Nevada and California. Right now, the upper -basin states <br />are drawing deeply into Lake Powell to meet that figure. <br />If the lake runs dry, the law allows the lower -basin states to issue a "compact <br />call," which would force the upper -basin states to send water downstream, <br />even if it means cutting into their own supply. <br />Every state fears such a call. The upper basin could challenge the call by <br />arguing that it had met the compact's requirements based on a 10 -year <br />running average, which is allowed under the rules. If the upper basin refused <br />to comply, the lower -basin states could sue. <br />If that happened, a judge could wind up deciding who gets water and when. <br />Stan Cazier, a Colorado water attorney, puts the odds of a compact call at 1 <br />in 10, based on the history of drought in the West. <br />"That's decent odds," he said, "but it doesn't make you feel comfortable <br />when you've been through years like 2002 and 2004. We're all going to be <br />hurting." <br />In Phoenix, the director of Arizona's Department of Water Resources sees <br />the scene through a different lens. Herb Guenther is one of the true veterans <br />of Western water and knows the issues and the people inside and out. He <br />helped negotiate California's landmark settlement two years ago and is <br />working on the shortage agreement now. <br />Page 5 of 7 <br />http:// www. azcentral .comispecialslspecia1061 articles /0722colorado- conflict.html 7/27/2004 <br />