TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072291/0722104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 18.1 KB | 381 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 20

COVER STORY

A Fight over Liquid Gold


In a huge portion of the parched West, life would be impossible
without the Colorado River. Now the very prosperity that its
waters created threatens the river's survival.

By PAUL GRAY -- Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and
Richard Woodbury/Denver


    The Colorado River begins high above the tree lines, amid
the glaciers and snowpack on the western slope of the Rocky
Mountains. Icy rivulets collect and drip into streams, trickling
and then plunging downward. In the peaks of eastern Utah, where
the Green River hurtles south from Wyoming to meet the Upper
Colorado, the water starts getting serious. It wants to reach
sea level -- in this case the Gulf of California, some thousand
miles to the southwest -- and nothing natural has ever managed
to stand in its way. In its slashing, headlong rush, the
Colorado gouged out a pretty impressive piece of sculpture known
as the Grand Canyon. The river has been running in this rut for
5 million or 6 million years.

    In the past half-century this mountain-moving,
gorge-cutting force of nature has been tamed by a spectacular
system of dams and reservoirs. Today the domesticated Colorado
dispenses water for 20 million people in seven states and for
2 million acres of farmland. The river's urgent yen for the sea,
held in check by 10 major dams, generates 12 million kW of
electricity a year. Stretches of the river remain as they once
were and provide habitats for fish, birds and wildlife,
including a number of endangered species. People come here to
play. Six national parks and recreation areas along the
Colorado's shores support a multimillion-dollar recreation
industry of boating, hiking, fishing and whitewater rafting.

    Life in much of the American West would be unimaginable in
its present form without the Colorado. Those cascading
fountains adorning Las Vegas casinos? Take away the river's
largesse, and there would be tumbleweed blowing along an
abandoned Strip. San Diego could turn into a very thirsty place
should something go wrong with the river: almost 70% of the
water its citizens use every day is piped in from the Colorado.
And what of California's Imperial Valley, which grows a major
portion of the nation's vegetables? Goodbye Colorado River,
hello cactus and mesquite.

    But while the West has bloomed on the river's bounty,
exploding populations and a prolonged drought have had an
ominous effect on the Colorado itself. The river that used to
surge into the Gulf of California, depositing ruddy-colored silt
that fanned out into a broad delta of new land at its mouth,
hardly ever makes it to the sea anymore. The once mighty
Colorado fizzles into a trickle, its last traces evaporating in
the heat of the Mexican desert.

    "The Colorado is not in good shape," says Norris Hundley
Jr., a historian at UCLA. "It essentially exists in a
straitjacket." Last April the Arizona stretch of the Colorado
was named "the most endangered river of 1991" by American
Rivers, a Washington-based conservation group. A prolonged
drought in the U.S. Southwest, now in its fifth year, has dealt
the Colorado a double whammy. Less snow to melt at its sources
means less water coursing downriver; reduced rainfall elsewhere
means even greater demands on the diminished flow.

    The recognition that the river is a finite resource has
been slow to dawn in the West, where rugged individualists have
traditionally cocked a snoot at natural restrictions, rolled up
their sleeves and hacked or drilled the world of their dreams
out of the wilderness. Something in the Western temperament
strives mightily to deny that much of the region is a desert --
witness the tropical extravagance of Beverly Hills, the emerald
golf courses of Palm Springs, the ubiquitous swimming pools
throughout the West.

    The Colorado has always been a source of contention, but
the current problems surrounding it are prompting more alarm
than ever before. Plans are being made for an unprecedented
summit conference in November of the Governors from the seven
states served by the Colorado. And almost certain to come up,
whether or not it is on the official agenda, is the 1922
Colorado River Compact, the agreement that divvied up the water
among the Upper Basin states -- Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New
Mexico -- and those in the Lower Basin -- California, Nevada and
Arizona.

    This crucial document facilitated both the astonishing
development of the West and the problems that followed as a
result. Originally the compact looked like simplicity itself.
The Upper and Lower Basins would each receive 7.5 million
acre-feet annually. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed
to cover an acre of land to a depth of 12 in., approximately
325,000 gal. That is enough to fulfill the needs of a family of
four or five people for one year.) A 1944 treaty guaranteed an
additional 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico. All fine and dandy,
except for one thing: the Colorado's output was grossly
overestimated. Instead of the 16.9 million acre-feet estimated
to be there for the dividing, the river has been flowing at a
rate of only 14.9 million; during the present drought, that
figure has dropped to about 9 million acre-feet a year.

    Even the possibility that the 1922 compact might be
revised raises hackles in all seven states. Already, fierce
controversies over the Colorado are swirling in courts and
legislatures. When there is no longer enough of a vital resource
to go around, who is entitled to what portion and why? Says
California Congressman George Miller: "The heart of the West is
water. It's about winners and losers, the future and the past.
It's about economics. It will be the most important commodity
in dictating the future. It's the most serious confrontation
that the West has engaged in in 100 years."

    The combatants in this latest version of the West's long
tug-of-war over water are more numerous and clamorous than ever.
The four Upper Basin states have always regarded the three in
the Lower Basin with a gimlet eye. The upper states have never
used all the water allotted to them; the surplus could be, and
often was, picked up by the lower states -- mostly California.
No one minded as long as the river seemed inexhaustible; now
the upper states fret that the lower states have grown
accustomed to -- and have prospered on -- more than their fair
share. Across the region and within each state, powerful
interests have staked out claims to the river's overallocat ed
waters:



    FARMERS. Agriculture has traditionally been the biggest
beneficiary of the Colorado's water, receiving some 80% of the
river's allocated yield. This is chiefly because the farmers and
ranchers got there first. A central tenet of Western water law
-- a fiendishly complex body of statutes and precedents -- is
the concept of "first in time, first in right." Whoever was
initially granted a legal claim to water tended to keep it and,
all other things being equal, to pass it down to descendants.

    Furthermore, farmers have been favored not only in how
much water they get but also in how much they pay for it. Much
of the water available from the Colorado has been produced by
federal reclamation projects such as the Hoover Dam, and the
government, to encourage agricultural development, has made this
supply available to farmers at low cost. This practice has led
to wild pricing disparities; some farmers in Colorado get their
water for $400 an acre-foot, one-twentieth the amount it costs
neighboring municipalities.

    This generosity in a time of shortage is now under attack.
On the one hand, critics are pointing out the often wasteful
uses of water employed by Western farmers: the practice of
irrigating fields by flooding them, thus allowing much of the
water to run off the fields or bake off in the heat; the
production of "thirsty" crops like rice and cotton in areas only
inches of water away from being desert.

    On the other hand, some farmers, especially in the Upper
Basin, and some ranchers have succumbed to the repeated
temptations to sell some or all of their water rights to parched
urban areas. Whether similar water marketing should be permitted
across state lines is a matter of fierce debate. Some experts
estimate that Colorado could reap $140 million in new revenues
if the deal goes through. But the sale of agricultural water
rights could cause many farming communities to dry up and
vanish.

    If large-scale transfers of Colorado River water rights
become a reality, the experience of Crowley County in eastern
Colorado could become a somber indicator of the future. Starting
in the 1970s, farmers along the Arkansas River, a separate
system from the Colorado, began selling their water rights to
the mushrooming cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora. Prices
soon soared to more than $700 an acre-foot. Now what used to be
70,000 acres of irrigated land has shrunk to 5,000 acres, and
the closing of dozens of farms has wrecked the local tax base.
"We're drifting back to dry-land desert," says farmer Orville
Tomky, who has farmed in the county for 40 years. "Everything
is slowly drying up. The cities have bought nearly all the water
in the county. Maybe we'll just default and be taken over by the
state."



    CITIES. Like the rest of the nation, the Southwest has
been growing increasingly urban. What were only recently
one-horse outposts now exfoliate for miles into the blazing
environs, their citizens housed in air-conditioned comfort and
assuming plentiful water as a God-given right. Among the seven
states served by the Colorado River, California has become the
800-lb. gorilla at all negotiations, its cities expanding, their
thirst apparently unquenchable. The Old West here comes into
direct conflict with the New: the leathery rancher in Wyoming
with his herd to water vs. the condo-dwelling Sybarite in
Laguna Beach with a Porsche to wash and two hot tubs to keep
filled. The Metropolitan Water District, responsible for finding
water for the cities of Southern California, is widely regarded
by competing parties with fear and suspicion. Says Jerry
Zimmerman, executive director of the Colorado River Board of
California: "California is being accused of utilizing other
states' water and attempting to continue to use water that other
states may need at some future time."

    The battle over the Colorado's waters has grown even more
frenzied because of the five-year drought. So far, California
has been able to cope with water shortages, which have been
exacerbated even further by its booming population, by siphoning
off the unused portion of the Upper Basin states' allocation
from the river and encouraging conservation.

    But the time when such halfway measures will no longer
suffice is rapidly approaching. For the first time last year,
Arizona started taking much of its share of river water for
fast-growing Phoenix and Tucson, leaving its larger neighbor to
face the possibility of a short supply. Within California,
farmers have become alarmed at the possibility that the water
they need for irrigation may be diverted to the cities. Says
John Pierre Menvielle, a third-generation farmer in Calexico,
on the southern edge of the Imperial Valley: "People in Los
Angeles and the coastal plain say, `You guys are wasting water.
We ought to get it from you.' They're overbuilding, they're out
of control. They want us to put limits on what we're doing.
Where's their limits?"



    UTILITIES. The era of stringing huge dams along the
Colorado peaked during the '30s and '40s and is long gone. And
the relatively cheap hydroelectricity -- and handsome profits
-- generated by existing facilities is now being weighed, and
found wanting, in the light of other concerns. One long-running
dispute concerns the Western Area Power Administration's
operations at the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, just above the
Grand Canyon. The agency releases huge amounts of water through
giant turbines to meet peak power demands in places as far away
as Phoenix. These dramatic surges of water create artificial
"tides" that, environmentalists complain, erode the sandy shoals
along the river's banks and damage breeding grounds for fish and
waterfowl.



    ENVIRONMENTALISTS AND RECREATIONALISTS. Both groups were
in shorter supply when the Colorado was being harnessed than
they are today, and their concerns often diverge. A
recreationalist's dream -- a motorboat rally on Lake Havasu,
with plenty of beer -- is a nature lover's nightmare. But some
vacationers come to the river merely to hike or look at
wildlife, and they are as likely to be disturbed by the
encroachments of civilization and mechanized control as are the
environmentalists. Says Darrell Knuffke, the Central Rockies
regional director of the Wilderness Society: "As the river has
been divided, subdivided, ditched, dammed and diverted,
everyone's interests except the land's have been considered."
How can a river nourish a vast area and still remain true to its
pristine past?



    NATIVE AMERICANS. "The Indians are the giant `What if?' on
the river," says Boulder lawyer John Musick, who specializes in
water issues. "They have time and the law on their side. They
have a solid case, and they're dead serious. It's like a huge
bill finally coming due." Because of treaties and agreements
between their tribes and the Federal Government, Native
Americans living on reservations along the Colorado River have,
in many instances, claims on water that date back to the
mid-1800s. Thanks to the first-in-time concept, they are often
the senior owners of river rights, and they have begun making
their case vigorously in courtrooms. Combined, the Native
American claims amount to a sizable chunk of the Colorado's
annual flow. While few observers expect all these claims to be
upheld, the lengthy period during which tribal rights were
conveniently bypassed or ignored by the white settlers seems
over for good.



    MEXICO. The Colorado has long been a prickly subject
between the U.S. and its neighbor, and at the moment tempers
south of the border are steaming again. The current flash point
is Southern California's plan to line with concrete the
All-American Canal, which carries water to the Imperial Valley,
to save 106,000 acre-feet that seep uselessly into the ground
beneath the canal each year. On the one hand, this is an
ambitious project in water conservation; on the other, Mexican
officials say the loss of seepage will deplete the underground
water supply around Mexicali.

    To make up for this loss, some feel a fair exchange would
be to compensate Mexico for the lost share of river water. So
far, the U.S. insists it is living up to its legal obligations
and that no increase is called for. But this attitude could
affect U.S.-Mexican relations on other matters requiring
cooperation, including curbing drug smuggling and illegal
immigration as well as a proposed U.S.-Mexico free-trade treaty.
Warns Al Utton, director of the International Transboundary
Resource Center at the University of New Mexico: "It does not
make sense at this point for the U.S. to stand on the letter of
the law. If we think only of ourselves on this, we may encounter
Mexico thinking only of itself on other issues."

    Further complicating these disputes is the changing
attitude in Washington toward Western water. The federal Bureau
of Reclamation was principally responsible for the development
of the Colorado; it planned and engineered the big building
projects, all funded by congressional appropriations. Critics
say the bureau has become an anachronism, no longer able to
manage the Colorado and its myriad problems. "They're a bunch
of dam builders," says former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt,
"and there aren't any dams to build. They have been unable to
adjust to the new reality."

    In addition, legislators with an eye on the government's
mounting deficit are taking stock of the huge federal subsidies
-- amounting to billions of dollars -- flowing west to farmers
for Colorado River water. Says California's Congressman Miller:
"The drought and deficit have caused people from Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts and New York to reassess supporting a bad habit."

    No longer are top seats on powerful congressional interior
committees filled by "water buffaloes" -- members of the Western
water establishment willing to approve and support massive
development proj ects. They have been supplanted by lawmakers
like Bill Bradley of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate's Water
and Power Subcommittee, who are both cost conscious and
sensitive to environmental and ecological issues. Says David
Getches, a law professor at the University of Colorado: "There's
a revolution in the way the U.S. Congress looks at water."

    However this revolution is played out, both in Washington
and along the Colorado, everyone who depends on the river is
likely to feel some pain. Every adjustment made to please one
group will inevitably have unpleasant consequences for the
others. Farmers and city dwellers cannot possibly both be
satisfied. Environmentalists and Native Americans, allies on
many issues, split over the Colorado: the tribes want more
development on their reservations, the environmentalists less.
Water conservation that is good for California turns out to be
bad for Mexico. Babbitt calls the development of the Colorado
an "extraordinary achievement" but argues that the very success
of this plan spawned the myth "that there is more water over the
next hill. But there is no more water over the next hill."

    Behind all the arguments, the claims and counterclaims, is
the river itself, a glistening thread winding through some of
the most spectacular and forbidding terrain in North America.
Nobody ever toted a barge or lifted a bale on the Colorado; it
is not that kind of river. Its gift to its surroundings has been
not transportation and commerce but life itself. There is no
more urgent task for the West than ensuring that the Colorado
survives.