WSP05306

• File Number: 8200.700
• Description: Colorado River
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Author: Getches and Meyers
• Title: The River of Controversy - Persistent Issues
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

perhaps the most reliable is that there will be coutinuing conflict. In..vita-

ble tensions are created by fundamental demands for equity, for environmental

quality, for efficiency in the face of natural limitations. These tensions

test the fiber of our existing political and economic institutions. They try

not only the stability of institutional arrangements created for managing the

river, but also some of the basic concepts of our polity, such as federalism.

Conflicts over the river are, indeed, not simply over who gets to us a parti-

cular quantity of water, but over values that run to the core of our social

organization. The effects of decisions on water allocation, on pricing of

power, on how to value instream uses, and on th.. degree of enforcement of

water quality laws reach far beyond their immediate targets. The results can

be dramatic: new industry may supplant a pastoral society; the quality of

life in a vast land area may rise or fall; major demographic shifts may occur;

nature's plan for an entire region may be forever obscured; ancient Indian

cultures may live or die.

Here we explore a number of issues that have plagued the river and surely

will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. They are grouped under

three categories: competition among uses; Indian and federal reserved rights;

and federal-state relations. We then examine some of the possible approaches

to the issues.

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COMPETITION AMONG USES

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Can Agricultural Uses Compete Politically And Economically With Municioal And
Industrial Uses?

Congress was stongly motivated by a desire to assist agriculture in

authorizing expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize a

system of dams and intricate delivery systems on the Colorado. The "Law of

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