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Farmers fear dry future t centrifuges used for What some people outside Yuma have started to ask is whether drought uranium enrichment W�. M"_o makes the water of more value to the thirsty cities that are reshaping the • Veteran actor West and escalating demands on the river. With so much water taken out of charged in shooting the Colorado along the final miles of its journey, it is here in the fields of death of bar patron Arizona and California where the river's future could take a new turn. Dunn is • Foreign strippers must supply nude a third - generation farmer whose family has worked the fields in Yuma since photos to officials the 1960s. He spends more time these days traveling and overseeing the Boy who divorced farm's operation than he does working in the 1,700 acres the family still murderer father owns. wants to make it easier for others Like most farmers, he has adapted to new technology, from the GPS equipment used to level fields to the combination cellphone and personal . More breaking organizer he carries with him. He pays close attention to how much water his news >> farm and the others in his irrigation district use, noting that they're under their allocation again this year. "Yuma has a big bull's eye on it because we have half the state's water," Dunn said as he turned off the highway to his farm's mechanical shop. "If we're doing conservation to build the reservoirs back up, it's easier to accept, because it's not permanent," he said. "But if we're giving up water so someone else can grow, that's different. Once you lose water, it's tough to get it back." Water still flows at healthy levels as the Colorado River races toward the Gulf of California, the river's end, 120 miles south of Yuma. But it's hardly a real river here. From Parker Dam until there is no water, usually somewhere south of the Mexican border, the Colorado is more of a wide irrigation ditch. The amount of water is controlled not by nature but by man. Every drop of water along the final 240 miles of the river is tightly regulated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, released according to strict schedule for use by farmers in Arizona and California and by residents of Phoenix, Tucson and Los Angeles. Between Parker and Yuma, water users slurp up roughly half the river's annual flow. Add on what Mexico gets and the figure tops 60 percent. At Imperial Dam, just outside Yuma, the Imperial Irrigation District draws more than 3.3 million acre -feet of water from the river every year, the single largest diversion on the Colorado. At that point, the All- American Canal, which delivers the water to Imperial Valley farmers, carries more water most days than what's left in the muddy Colorado below Imperial Dam. It's a woeful contrast to the canyonmaker that roars through southern Utah or even the cold, pristine creek at the headwaters 1,400 miles north. But that's the way the river works. This is not the drought- stricken Colorado down here. Everybody's getting the water he wants, when he want it. The river isn't showing the strain of five dry years as much as 20 normal ones. "Right now, we're not in a shortage situation," said Jesse Silva, general manager for the Imperial Irrigation District in California. "We're at our limits, and we have to live within our limits. Nevada is getting their amount like everyone else.... They just want more, and that's different." Nevada wants to build on its share of the Colorado by paying farmers not to farm and then using their water. Nevada officials insist it would be a temporary fix to get them through the drought and buy them time to develop other in -state water sources, but wary Imperial farmers see another water grab. "We feel like we've given and given," Silva said. "We don't want to be a bad neighbor, but until there's a need, we don't want to be asked to do more than we are." Water for food The Imperial Valley lies in a low, flat depression that stretches more than 4,000 square miles from the Mexican border northeast toward Palm Springs. Page 2 of 6 http:// www. azcentral .comispecialslspecia1061 articles /0722colorado- future.html 7/27/2004