The Family Farm Alliance participated in the
The role of enhancing Western water supplies and the importance of
developing local solutions were key themes that arose in several of the
panel discussions that took place in
Other relevant links about the conference include a summary of
Wednesday’s events – “Resolving Western water conflicts will take
collaboration" – which can be viewed on The Idaho Statesman website,
at: http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005504210338.
The solution to every water problem in the American West is the same
thing.
Whether it's a debate over a new dam, a fight over the dwindling water due
to drought or the wrangling over the ever-growing needs of cities like Los
Angeles and Las Vegas.
The solution is this: Get everybody at the table and start making
sacrifices.
Hey — no one said it was an easy solution.
The consensus from the slate of experts, policy makers and water users at
the Andrus Center on Public Policy and The Idaho Statesman's Troubled Water
conference is just that: Find a consensus.
"If we do that, we're going to relieve a lot of heartburn,"
said former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus at the end of the two-day event at Boise
State University.
The discussions touched on water issues all over the world and even looked
back
in time to the development of the West and ahead to possible scenarios in
2015. Some of these could force farmers to sit down with big-city water
officials and leaders from all the Northwest states to find compromises on
how to best use the Columbia River.
As Los Angeles and Las Vegas continue to grow, their water demands will grow
with them, and they'll be looking up the Colorado River for solutions.
Washington and Oregon may see their water needs increase, too, and have to
come upstream to Idaho and Wyoming to find compromises.
Whatever the conflict, just about every speaker said the same thing:
Everyone will have to work together.
"We must focus on developing collaborate- and consensus-based
decisions," Sen. Mike Crapo said over a satellite connection Wednesday
morning.
If the federal government has to buy off on an agreement, locally driven
deals like the Nez Perce agreement may be the only way to get something
through Congress, Crapo said. That $193 million deal settles the tribe's
claims to all of the water in the Snake River with cash, land and
protections for salmon.
The Senate, Crapo said, is too politically split for either side to ram
something through. Only a true compromise will stand up to filibusters or
vetoes. And if any legitimate groups are left out, their opposition can kill
any deal, he warned.
Crapo wasn't the only one who mentioned the Nez Perce deal as a good
example.
Federal Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys talked about it. So did
Native American Rights Fund Director John Echohawk.
But Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb warned that the Nez Perce deal —
worked out over almost a decade with the state, the feds, the tribe and
interest groups — was not an easy thing to put together. Talks broke down
at least once, and they took "a lot of effort and a lot of
heartache."
"People who think that's a quick solution are not really looking at it
in reality," Newcomb said.
Meanwhile, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's former attorney, Michael Bogert,
pointed out that Idaho's water users knew the consequences of failing to
agree to something, because they watched those in Klamath Falls, Ore., and
elsewhere be "led to slaughter." The federal government dried up
some 240,000 acres of Oregon farmland in a 2001 drought to keep enough water
in the river for endangered fish.
Still, agreements like the Nez Perce deal may be the only way to get water
to big cities, allow industry to develop and maintain Western agriculture.
No single part of the water industry can do that by itself, Keys said.
Andrus gave a further challenge.
Lawsuits and the federal government forced the action in both the Nez
Perce agreement and a water deal on the Lemhi River that several people
talked about Wednesday. But Andrus said local and state decision makers need
to make sure they're talking while all the options are still on the table.
"It's time (we) do that good job that we brag about before we're forced
to," Andrus said.
Also, a positive article about Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys Wise ‘”Wise, well-liked water official talks at conference" - can be seen on this same website at: http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005504210346
Wise, well-liked water official talks at conference
John Keys gives bureaucrats a good name. The commissioner of the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation since 2001, Keys returned this week to Boise where he
spent 18 years as the No. 1 and No. 2 regional official for the agency that
waters and powers the West with more than 600 dams.
The boom days of big government dams like American Falls, Grand Coulee and
Hoover are past. But with the West growing faster than any other region, the
Bureau of Reclamation must deliver water to 31 million people and 10 million
acres of farms producing 60 percent of our vegetables.
"It's really hard to build new dams," Keys said. "The
challenge is to manage the ones we've got to meet expanding demand. We're
trying to stretch 'em just as far as we can."
Keys was the center of attention at "Troubled Water," the
latest conference at BSU sponsored by The Idaho Statesman and the Andrus
Center for Public Policy. He's an oracular presence, partly because of his
vast knowledge from 38 years at the Bureau of Reclamation, partly because of
his integrity.
Keys inspires trust on both sides of the stream.
"We knew we were dealing with someone who would listen to us and
when he said something, he would follow through," said Pat Ford,
executive director of the Save our Wild Salmon Coalition.
"John is one of those people everyone likes," said Norm Semanko,
executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association. "He's been a
good friend to the water user community."
"People are called 'honorable,' but he's earned the title," said
House Speaker Bruce Newcomb. "A handshake from him is better than a
contract with most people."
Keys' prophecies at BSU included:
• Drought is an alarm that must be heeded.
"We don't know whether we're in the fifth year of a five-year
drought or the fifth year of a 10-year drought or even a longer cycle, but
the fear is that when the thing breaks, we're still short of water."
• Reservoirs have kept drought from becoming a crisis that cripples a
region, as the Dust Bowl remade America in the 1930s.
"The thing that keeps us off the knife's edge is the storage
system."
• The federal role in new storage will be limited and require
investment by states, cities, farmers, wildlife advocates and power
producers.
"If we don't have that balance, it will not be successful because we
have pitted one vs. the other."
• Solutions lie in local consensus, conservation, and judicious
development of new storage.
"There is no single part of the water industry that can do it by
itself. Every one of us has to honor the involvement of other
participants."
Keys' career has been marked by collaboration in tough circumstances. He
engineered the 1990s move to buy water from Idaho farmers to carry salmon to
the sea. In 2001, he was thrust into a near-shooting war when he took over
the Bureau of Reclamation, which had let 200,000 irrigated acres go dry to
help endangered fish in the Klamath River basin.
"He inherited a hornet's nest and took some very constructive
measures to get things moving in the right direction," said Dan Keppen,
who represented Klamath farmers.
Keys' wisdom is delivered in a home-spun fashion reflecting his Alabama
birth and adoption of the West as home. He has a daughter, Robin Fisher, in
Boise, a home in Moab, Utah, and a master's from BYU. Explaining why it's
been hard to convince consumers to accept recycled wastewater for home use,
he said, "Toilet to tap is not sexy." Keys' bluntness has served
those who have the good sense to listen. He advised Idaho politicians like
Speaker Newcomb to take the lead on dealing with irrigation shortages in the
Upper Snake River, or risk having outsiders impose a solution.
Former Gov. Cecil Andrus was Keys' boss as secretary of Interior from
1977-81. Andrus lobbied for Keys' appointment by President Bush. Keys knows
the law, seeks solutions and doesn't get partisan, Andrus said. "He
understands the Reclamation Act of 1902 so well he's probably got it
stenciled on his shorts."
As a pilot, a backcountry enthusiast and rafter who's handled the oars on
rivers across the West, Keys grasps Western values that depend on water.
"That is a balance that is hard to come by," Andrus said.
"And he understands there has to be change."
Few of us can appreciate the complexity water presents to public
policy-makers. All most of us know is we must have it to live.
Having someone as competent and honorable as Keys as the nation's watermaster should give everyone in the arid West comfort.
A look into the future
April
21, 2005
The
experts, water users and policy makers assembled at
In an elaborate hypothetical discussion, the year was 2015 and "It's damn, damn dry in the West, and the reservoirs behind the dams are dry as well," Andrus Center President Marc Johnson said.
The
talk focused on weighing the needs of
Farmers and cities may cut deals to
ensure water
Kay
Brothers, a
"I
think we'd have to have agriculture recognize that cities have to have water
first if they're using it well," she said.
But
she wouldn't rely on good will.
First,
cities would have to show that they are being responsible and conserving
water. But they could pay farmers to be more efficient — even in wet years
— but the understanding would be that in dry times, the city would get the
water, and the farmers would have gotten enough money to get through without
it.
"When
you get to the bad years you have to exercise those options," she said.
Without agreements, some experts warned, Western agriculture may be left behind anyway.
Former
Bureau of Land Management leader Patrick Shea, now a
And
San Francisco attorney John Leshy said irrigated agriculture — which took
much of the industry from naturally watered fields in the east — may lose
in a shift back if water becomes so precious.
The dams of the future (and yes, there
may be some)
Bureau
of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys said the era of dams in the West —
maybe even big dams in the West — is not over.
"I
think the days of the large federal projects are gone," he said.
But
they'll be replaced with cooperative agreements between public and private
groups — paid for with money that isn't necessarily coming from the
federal coffers.
The
dams may look the same, he said, but it's likely that all the water gathered
behind them will be paid for and parsed out before they're even built.
Family
Farm Alliance Director Dan Keppen agreed that new water storage facilities
— reservoirs — are still needed. Keppen, who represents farmers and
other water users in 17 Western states, said his group asked its members for
new ideas recently and along with canal lining and better management, many
suggested both off-stream and on-stream storage.
Even
Save Our Wild Salmon Director Patrick Ford said he could foresee drought
conditions so bad that he could see the need for a dam, but the needs and
jobs the dams would help would have to outweigh the "in-stream
values" of wildlife and ecology and the economic benefits of the fish
and wildlife the rivers sustain.
"I
suspect we would see very few opportunities for large dams, maybe
none," he said. But there may be new solutions that don't involve old
strategies, he said.
Some unusual ways of securing more water
•
Tapping the oceans: Keys noted that part of the current long-term water plan
in
The
process exists now, but costs more than many alternatives. (Though they're
being used in places like
Keys
suggested a foreseeable future where the city of
•
Water banks: One way to make sure water goes where it's needed is to set up
a marketplace —
Keys
said strengthening water banks could help to make sure both crops and cities
will get water when they need it.
•
Underground reservoirs: Shea laid out a scenario in which the reservoirs of
the future aren't above ground behind dams and over miles of habitat, but
instead in depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs under the earth.
Already,
water is intentionally banked in naturally occurring aquifers — recharging
the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer is part of the way
Water
stored underground doesn't evaporate as quickly —
Shea
also mentioned cloud seeding (already used but controversial) and icebergs
(already bottled by some entrepreneurial Canadians).
END
of ARTICLE
CRAPO:
DROUGHT, POLITICS NECESSITATE LOCAL WATER SOLUTIONS
Senator
warns Congress, outside interests can step in
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April
20, 2005
CONTACT:
Susan Wheeler (202) 224-5150
Lindsay
Nothern (208) 334-1776
Washington,
DC – Idaho residents must continue to work together to find solutions to
ongoing water issues or risk the threat that the federal government or
interests from out of state will step in to override local interests, warned
Idaho Senator Mike Crapo. Crapo spoke by satellite this morning to attendees
at the Idaho Statesman and
“The
federal government now offers the ‘carrot and stick’ of landowner
incentives and water regulatory authority under laws like the Endangered
Species Act or Clean Water Act,” Crapo said. “But the federal government
has also recognized state water authority. Proactive planning must continue
so that states retain water control.” Crapo said. “With the drought, we
will see increasing pressure regarding water allocation issues. We must
focus on collaboration and consensus-driven decisions at the local level,
which can then be brought to the Congress for ratification.”
Crapo
held water talks between irrigators and salmon advocates in September 2003.
He has also spearheaded collaborative efforts related to elk recovery, the
Owyhee Initiative, and, most recently, reducing litigation and improving
recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act.
He
said locally-driven consensus planning improves state water control issues
before the Congress. “The dynamics surrounding the close voting margins in
the United States Senate mean that the proposals with the most success will
come from local collaborative efforts agreed to by all sides of an issue.
The more we can agree at the local level, the better the chance that local
agreement will survive a vote in a divided Senate,” Crapo added.
Crapo
also commented briefly on his efforts to improve the ESA in response to
questions from participants at the conference. He said a bipartisan
coalition of both the U.S. House and Senate are working to reduce litigation
which robs resources that could better be spent recovering species. Crapo
noted the group is focusing on what is politically and legally achievable to
repeat the problems of lawsuits which stop progress under the ESA.
Source: Family Farm Alliance