Seven States Deadline Tuesday

[Jr B]

Interesting read on the continued negotiations across the states on the river basin which looks like this will end up in the courts deciding the water management of Lake Powel:

Amid ‘a transparency desert,’ states look likely to blow past Colorado River deadline. What’s next?

“It’s easy to weigh in from the sidelines,” a legal observer says. “But I think what’s not being talked about is the real lives that are going to be implicated — you’r…

www.denverpost.com

 

[Dr. Love]

Interesting read on the continued negotiations across the states on the river basin which looks like this will end up in the courts deciding the water management of Lake Powel:

Amid ‘a transparency desert,’ states look likely to blow past Colorado River deadline. What’s next?

“It’s easy to weigh in from the sidelines,” a legal observer says. “But I think what’s not being talked about is the real lives that are going to be implicated — you’r…

www.denverpost.com

Looks like an advertisement for a Denver Post subscription. That's all my browser will open.

 

[KMartin]

Free summary from Calmatters has most of the same info. Colorado River talks hit crunch time. What's at stake for California water?

 

[flowerbug]

Sadly, it looks like with no agreement the laws will likely end up with California being given the full allocation of their water rights and that means the upstream states will lose. It is very unlikely that the feds and Supreme Court will upend the historical water rights. At least that is my take on how things are going. We hope for something different, but we're not seeing that at the moment. We also hope for change coming that improves things for everyone or at least a large majority of concerned peoples (of all types) and also the wildlife and plantlife and scenery and ...

 

[Jr B]

Looks like an advertisement for a Denver Post subscription. That's all my browser will open.

Tried to save as PDF but these newspapers make it difficult to cut and paste or print in PDF in smaller file format to upload... Hopefully you can google other sources and get the update..

 

[KMartin]

To my mind, it just makes sense to proportion the river based on the actual flows. Each state gets a set percentage - not a set amount of acre feet. And that percentage can be set by priority. We need to take a lesson from what is happening in Iran.

 

[ndscott50]

Sadly, it looks like with no agreement the laws will likely end up with California being given the full allocation of their water rights and that means the upstream states will lose. It is very unlikely that the feds and Supreme Court will upend the historical water rights. At least that is my take on how things are going. We hope for something different, but we're not seeing that at the moment. We also hope for change coming that improves things for everyone or at least a large majority of concerned peoples (of all types) and also the wildlife and plantlife and scenery and ...

Hopefully we start to get some snow or nobody is getting their full allocation soon. The current situation is bleak. I read somewhere that we are very close to the lowest snowpack ever recorded for this time of year. At least its early but we really need some storms.

 

[RichieW13]

It is very unlikely that the feds and Supreme Court will upend the historical water rights. At least that is my take on how things are going.

Why do you feel that way? My understanding is that the current administration does not like California and wouldn't mind hurting California if given the opportunity.

 

[Ryan]

Why do you feel that way? My understanding is that the current administration does not like California and wouldn't mind hurting California if given the opportunity.

It’s not an executive matter. It’s judicial.

 

[RichieW13]

It’s not an executive matter. It’s judicial.

The article says "Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ...[has]... the power to declare the river in shortage and call for cutbacks in the lower basin. "

 

[Ryan]

The article says "Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ...[has]... the power to declare the river in shortage and call for cutbacks in the lower basin. "

The way I read it, the one time the feds got involved before (2002) it still ended up in court.

 

[flowerbug]

The way I read it, the one time the feds got involved before (2002) it still ended up in court.
View attachment 34417

Note that that deal was rather horrible for the Salton Sea (as no promised water to make up for what has been lost has ever arrived).

https://www.iid.com/water/library/qsa-water-transfer/history-of-the-qsa-related-agreements

The lack of any progress on that issue is putting the various parties to that area on the hook for potentially billions of dollars in remediation costs (see what they've had to pay for Owens Lake).

 

[flowerbug]

The article says "Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ...[has]... the power to declare the river in shortage and call for cutbacks in the lower basin. "

If they don't come up with something we'll see what happens... It will still likely end up in the courts and the courts will use existing precedents unless there are some new laws enacted.

 

[Cheef Baconator]

It really does seem like the only way we're going to learn our lesson about carefully managing and conserving our limited water resources (if we learn that lesson at all instead of continuing to shove our heads deeper in the sand to avoid uncomfortable truths) will be the hard, painful way.

I'm personally not looking forward to my seat on this wild ride, but here we are.

 

[Marina Bum]

It really does seem like the only way we're going to learn our lesson about carefully managing and conserving our limited water resources (if we learn that lesson at all instead of continuing to shove our heads deeper in the sand to avoid uncomfortable truths) will be the hard, painful way.

I'm personally not looking forward to my seat on this wild ride, but here we are.

I couldn’t agree more. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”

The river is now and has always been over allocated. BOR can’t give more than they have. It’s going to get real now that these shortages against promised deliveries is the new reality which should force some type of reallocation (maybe partially based on actual inflow) but it’s going to be a knife fight between the states and it could take years. Lake Powell may not have that long.

I think that if it really comes down to it that until laws change or the government takes over under emergency powers of some kind that BOR would have no choice but to send every drop they can down to Mead. Mead can’t deliver water downstream other than through its turbines. (It does not have internal bypass tunnels like GCD) So it must be kept above dead-pool or nobody gets any water down stream. If ever we are releasing water through our internal bypass tunnels here at Powell with the lake below dead power pool that would be a hard new reality to get used to, a nightmare scenario. Of course a couple of years of good inflow would be a game changer but then that just allows everyone to keep kicking the can down the road and gives the states time to litigate for years more.

I was at Lake Powell in June of 1983 and stood in the visitors center where they had roped off 10 feet back from the windows. The spillways and bypass tunnels were wide open. The floor of the building was vibrabriting and you could feel it in your knees, there was a resonance, a dull roar you could feel. The power of all that excess water dropping was truly awesome to see, I will never forget it! I was 15 years old and It’s hard to imagine the some 40 years on we have the exact opposite problem, not enough water behind the dam. It’s hard to get my mind around just how different things are