Arizona and Nevada are claiming their rights to water from the Colorado River, but there simply isn\u2019t enough there to meet their demands.<\/p>\n
No one interested in pondering what looks like an intractably difficult conflict need turn their attention to Iran or Israel. We have one much closer to home. It\u2019s the riddle of how to divide up the ever-dwindling supply of water from the Colorado River.<\/p>\n
Seven Western states depend on that water impounded by Hoover Dam at Lake Mead, with Arizona, Nevada and California \u2014 the downstream basin states\u201d \u2014 facing harsh steep supply cutbacks through 2028 and even harsher cuts over the following eight years under a scheme set forth by the U.S. Interior Department. So it\u2019s not surprising that the fight has begotten a new cycle of litigation in federal court. <\/p>\n
Nevada sued to block the plan<\/a> in late August. Last week, Arizona moved to join Nevada\u2019s lawsuit<\/a>. But it warned that its fight isn\u2019t only with the federal government, but with Nevada too: Arizona\u2019s interests in the case are \u201cunique,\u201d it told the court, and it can\u2019t entrust them to \u201canother State that has sued to protect its own unique, state-specific interests.\u201d<\/p>\n Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.\n<\/p>\n \u2014 John Wesley Powell (1893)<\/p>\n California hasn\u2019t expressed an interest in joining the lawsuit, as my colleague Ian James has reported<\/a>. But as the largest consumer of water from the Colorado River, it\u2019s not going to escape the fray.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the basic fact underlying the conflict. These three states are heavily dependent on water from the Colorado River, and there simply isn\u2019t enough there. Already, the reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at their lowest levels since they first began filling. As they fall further, Hoover and Glen Canyon dams could lose their capacity to provide water and power downstream and even become vulnerable to physical damage.<\/p>\n Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik <\/p>\n Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.<\/p>\n By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n The government got the three lower basin states to agree to reductions over the next two years. Through 2028, California is to cut its use of Colorado River water by about 12%, Arizona by 31% and Nevada by 28%.<\/p>\n After that, the spigot will only tighten. The total allotments to the three downstream states could be cut by as much as 40% through 2036, menacing their economies and communities. <\/p>\n The root of the conflict is the Colorado River Compact, negotiated in 1922 among the seven states of the Colorado watershed under the supervision of the then-Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. <\/p>\n This interstate treaty dictated how the waters of the Colorado would be allocated to the seven states, with the lower three guaranteed at least 7.5 million acre-feet annually, measured as an average of 75 million acre-feet over rolling 10-year time spans. Absent that guarantee, Hoover Dam could not have been built. (An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, or about enough to supply one to three single-family households for a year.)<\/p>\n The guarantee derived from a calculation by Hoover\u2019s engineering deputy, Arthur Powell Davis, that so much water flowed down the river that there would always be enough to meet every state\u2019s needs. This calculation is often described as a \u201cblunder\u201d<\/a> or \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/a> It was nothing of the kind; it was a lie. <\/p>\n Hoover and Davis connived at an estimate that would meet the guarantee. Davis estimated that the river\u2019s annual flow averaged out to 16.4 million acre-feet a year, based on gauge data from 1899 through 1921. But he surely understood that this was an incautiously brief period of measurement, for the river\u2019s annual flow was wildly variable, ranging from about 9.1 million to 25 million acre-feet during the 20-year sampling. <\/p>\n In truth, the river was incapable of meeting the guarantee. The sample period proved to be among the wettest in the river\u2019s known history, so Powell\u2019s estimate was way out of line. Indeed, since the dam\u2019s completion in 1935, the river\u2019s 10-year flow has reached or exceeded the 16.4 million acre-feet annual average only four times<\/a> \u2014 and never since 1978.<\/p>\n From the start, Arizona played a dog-in-the-manger role in efforts to allocate the water. The state initially refused to ratify the 1922 compact at all, provoking the other states to rewrite the document so it would go into effect with the approval of only six states rather than seven. (Arizona didn\u2019t ratify the compact until 1944.)<\/p>\n In 1934, Arizona Gov. Benjamin Baker Moeur attempted to block the construction of Parker Dam, which was designed to divert California\u2019s share of the river water into the new Los Angeles Aqueduct, by dispatching the state\u2019s National Guard to the dam site. The Times\u2019 editors mischievously assigned the story to one of their war correspondents, Chester G. Hanson, who chronicled the maneuvers of the \u201cArizona Navy<\/a>,\u201d consisting of a single ferryboat, the Julia B. <\/p>\n The foray promptly descended to a Gilbert & Sullivan level of absurdity when the ferryboat got itself beached on a sandbar and had to be dragged free by workers on the California side of the river. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes ended the skirmish by imposing a truce and persuading Congress to designate the dam as a federal project. <\/p>\n In 1952, Arizona sued in federal court to invalidate the 1922 apportionment. The case would be the third to reach the Supreme Court with the title Arizona vs. California. It would also go down in history as one of the longest and most complex cases in the court\u2019s history, staggering to a conclusion only in 1963. <\/p>\n The 5-3 decision seemed superficially to be a win for Arizona, for it deprived California of 20% of its apportionment. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, for the court also ruled that the sole authority to determine apportionment belonged to the federal government, via the secretary of the Interior. The decision elicited a blistering dissent from William O. Douglas, who objected to granting the federal government \u201ca power and command over water rights in the 17 western states that it never has had.\u201d But that\u2019s where we are today.<\/p>\n In the years since the dam\u2019s completion the stakes of a settlement on the river have increased unrelentingly. California was always the most voracious consumer; its population grew from about 6.2 million in 1935 to about 34.5 million at the close of the 20th century, with much of that growth dependent on water supplied by the Colorado. But it was also the chief driver of the dam project, which had originally been conceived to protect Imperial Valley growers from river-borne floodwaters.<\/p>\n Phoenix\u2019s population has also surged, from about 215,000 in 1940 to 5.2 million today. That has made the state far more dependent on the river than was anticipated in the 1920s and 1930s, and especially since the completion in 1993 of the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile system of aqueducts and reservoirs that initially was seen as a boon to Arizona agriculture. As things turned out, the project was more important for residential growth, which more than doubled in the Phoenix area to more than 5.2 million since the project went online.<\/p>\n Nevada, too, became addicted to the Colorado. The state was apportioned a bare 300,000 acre-feet a year in 1928, when Las Vegas was merely a dusty outpost miles from the Hoover Dam construction site. Thanks to growth based on the availability of water and power from the dam, it\u2019s now the hub of a metropolis of 2.3 million residents. <\/p>\n The fundamental problem exposed by the latest court fight is that no one has a solution to the riddle of apportionment. Neither state proposes an alternative to the Interior Department\u2019s allocation; the thrust of their case is that the Interior Department hasn\u2019t followed the law in imposing its own measures. Nevada bemoans that Interior\u2019s proposal threatens its \u201ccommunity well-being, cultural identity, and the recreational experience.\u201d That\u2019s true, but saying so doesn\u2019t create a water supply that isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n To cite a warning about shrinking water supply that experts in the West have been issuing for decades, \u201cThere is no soft landing.\u201d The 40 million residents of the Colorado River basin and nonresident beneficiaries of its water supply, including most Californians, will have to do more with less as global warming causes more and deeper droughts. <\/p>\n