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.!?~) G~ ) ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT Water-Short Colorado May Be Dammed If It Builds, Dammed If It Doesn't If completed, the McPhee Dam will hold the last unused water from the Colorado River in Colorado, and the region's next major drought may ignite a water war. BY LAWRENCE MOSHER "That there will not always be a limitless supply oj wilrer Jor all desired purposes in the West is a fact just beginning 10 be recognized by a Jew. and dealr wirh by even fewer." -Philip Fradkin, A River No Mare (1981) ) IF THE McPhee Dam is completed on time in about two years, the waters of the Dolores River will begin to back up, forming a I o-mile-Iong reservoir that will reach upstream toward the small town of Cortez on the arid southwestern plateau of Colorado's West Slope. The event will signal the state's at- tempt to wring the last drops of unused water out of the Colorado River system, which begins in Wyoming's Wind River Range and drops 14,000 feet to the delta sands of Mexico's Gulf of California 1,700 miles away. Yet the dam may never be completed. Inflation and design changes have qua- drupled its costs since 1977. Although the Reagan Administration is committed to finishing the project. which is .about a fifth completed, a legal cloud is forming over the issue of how local residents will pay their share. In many respects, the McPhee Dam symbolizes the controversy over how the nation uses its limited water resources. Conflicts will sharply escalate in the wa- ter-scarce Southwest as farmers, cities and energy developers vie for the last unused water in the Colorado basin against a backdrop of environmental con- cerns. States such as Colorado, where the water originates,. are strongly tempted to use it before it flows away. But their ability to act is complicated by the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which aller cates scarce water between the Upper Basin states (Colorado, Utah and Wyer ming) and the Lower Basin states (Ari- zona, Nevada and California). The compact assumes an average an- nual flow of 16 million to 18 million acre feet of water at Lees Ferry, Ariz. It allocated 7.5 million acre feet to the Up- per Basin and 7.5 million acre feet to the Lower Basin. and a 1944 treaty guaran- teed Mexico another 1.5 million acre feet. As it happened, the compact was writ- ten during the river's wettest period on record. The flow at Lees Ferry reached a low of 5.5 million acre feet in 1977, and researchers at the University of Arizona's Tree Ring Laboratory have estimated the river's average annual flow over the past 450 year.; at 13.5 million acre feet. If they are right, the Colorado is oversubscribed by three million acre feet a year. That's particularly bad news for Collr rado and the other Upper Basin states. which are required by the compact to provide the Lower Basin with its share of water before keeping any water for them- selves. But that hasn't stopped some represen- tatives of the Upper Basin states from advocating dams that would help them impound water for their own use. Esti- mates of the amount of unused Upper Basin water still available for Colorado use range to one million acre feet a year. UNo Colorado governor could give up any Colorado water." Gov. Richard D. Lamm said in an interview. "All our towns live on stored water. . . . I like the outdoors and free-flowing water too. But the environmentalists apparently want all our water to go to California. Colorado just does not have the luxury of not prlr viding water for the population growth that is now taking place. It's a Hobson's choice. .. Downstream in Arizona, Gov. Bruce E. Babbitt argues that because the 1922 compact makes the Upper Basin's water rights "inviolate," the upstream states should feel no compunction to use their water or lose it. But he admitted in an interview that Colorado and the other Upper Basin States would be forced to use less water if a dr:ought reduced the Colorado River's flow_ Lamm's unspoken objective in pushing dam construction in Colorado. therefore, may be to confront the 1922 compact with the hydrological clout of more stored water. The state could then keep the water despite the compact. Such a step would provoke a new water war in the Southwest that would make the legalistic confrontations of the past look like children's water gun fights. DAMMING THE DOLORES At a time of federal budget shortages, enormous water projects appear to be things of the past. Yet most western poli- ticians continue to argue that if the fed- eral government can finance a subway in the District of Columbia, it can also pay for the western dams, aqueducts and res- ervoirs already authorized by Congress. Most of these politicians also cling to a states' rights view of water ownership that clashes with the increasingly popular environmentalist approach to regional water planning and water conservation. Colorado conservationist Ben Harding, a civil engineer in Boulder and consultant to the National Wildlife Federation, says the regional approach to water planning makes damming the Dolores appear less attractive than it did 14 years ago, when Congress authorized the project. Price is another factor; Harding predicts that the McPhee Dam "will stop itself' because local residents will not want to pay their share of the escalating costs. By contrast, Dana B. Hill. the Bureau of Reclamation's project engineer for the dam, says he is confident it will be fin- ished regardless of the local financing j NATIONAL JOURNAL 7/17/82 1257 ..'j