Western Water: Solutions to Overallocation
By Hal Rothman, 2-12-06
Editor's Note: This is part two of a series on Western water from Hal
Rothman. Click here
for the part one.
The world of water has changed of late and it is about time. For almost 20
years, a gradual shift has been ongoing: water that was historically used
for agriculture and ranching is increasingly going to western cities.
Called reallocation, this process has become common throughout the West.
It is so pervasive that the real question is no longer whether water will
be transferred from rural to urban use. The debate concerns the terms of
the transfer, how rural communities that cede water will derive fair and
valuable benefits from it.
Although this process first gained momentum in California, the Southern
Nevada Water Authority gets a good portion of the credit for its
systematic implementation. Out of necessity, SNWA reinvented water in the
Southwest. Nevada had received such short shrift from the original
Colorado River Compact that the Silver State found itself backed against a
formidable wall when growth in southern Nevada, began to outstrip
groundwater supplies. Forced to rely on federal dollars to ferry its
trickle of the Colorado from Lake Mead to Las Vegas, southern Nevada faced
a crisis in the 1980s.
The solution was remarkable: change from local water districts that
competed with one another like baby pigs fighting for a sow's nipples to a
region-wide model that put everybody on the same side and let them sort
out their problems among themselves. Rivals became partners, changing a
nastily competitive situation, the famed “whiskey’s for drinkin’,
water’s for fightin’” of legend, into a cooperative model in which
everyone has a seat at the table and people negotiated like grown-ups
rather than squabbling children.
In Nevada, this shared solution has already put an end to the travesties
of yore, when communities opened up fire hydrants and spilled water into
desert streets to maintain their claim to their “share.” This
century-old pattern of wastefulness had been common practice, the legal
requisite for maintaining a place at the table. That situation bred bad
behavior. Better planning and an original way of thinking about the
distribution of resources has already led to significantly better
outcomes.
Stunningly, Las Vegas has produced substantive changes. The city that
everyone loves to deride has developed a powerfully effective water
conservation program. Since 2003, the community has added more than
150,000 people. In 2005, the Valley used 15 billion gallons of water less
than it did in 2003, roughly 52,000 acre feet. While such an
accomplishment is always subject to backsliding, Las Vegas has saved 1/6
of Nevada’s annual share of the Colorado River while adding a midsized
city to its population. No southwestern city can match that
accomplishment.
Such farsighted thinking is happening all over the region. The Salt River
Project (SRP) in Phoenix has been a leader. 20 years ago, 80% of the
project’s water went to agriculture and ranching. In 2003, SRP’s water
use was more than 65% urban. Phoenix’s economy has carried the state,
and SRP’s leadership is a crucial part of Arizona's success.
In February 2006, the river states agreed to reshape the way the river is
managed, with all seven states signing on. This step, which is based
around drought management, has created administrative rules that put all
the river states on the same side of the table. This is unprecedented, an
extremely valuable step forward. But it alone is not enough.
Let's scrap the existing Colorado River Compact and write a new one for
the 21st Century. A new law of the river could take into account
environmental legislation, the shift of population and income to cities,
fluctuation in water quantity, water quality, and countless other
contingencies that didn’t exist 80 years ago. It could create a Colorado
River for the needs of today and tomorrow, not one beholden to a flawed
and long gone past.
A real “law of the river” could begin by taking the federally
legislated allocations of water and assigning those on the basis of
existing law. Prior commitments and legislatively mandated uses would come
first. This would allow for the fulfillment of federal mandates, make
allowances for environmental and other kinds of legislation, and guarantee
water for wildlife refuges, Native American communities, and others who
depend on the river for survival. After these mandatory allocations, the
rest of the water could be divided by participating stakeholders, who
would decide the economic viability of proposed uses according to locally
determined standards set in a regional, state-wide, and ultimately
interstate framework.
Once this water was divided, it would begin to generate income. The funds
from it could be split between those who gave it up and the entities that
administered the process. In that way, two social goods would occur: the
people who gave up the water will be fairly and justly compensated and be
able to go forward with their lives. We would also have the resources to
maintain existing infrastructure and to expand it to meet new demand,
allowing economic growth to continue.
Nobody should be forced to give up their water. Nor should anybody be able
to stymie economic progress for their own selfish purposes. There is a
happy medium and we can achieve it. We must sit at the table and negotiate
with a clear understanding of every stakeholder’s needs and wants. As
the region grows, this question will become more acute. Attacking the real
issue now rather than later puts us ahead of the game.
The solution is simultaneously revolutionary and painful: a fundamental
reallocation of the river’s resources must take place. We are an urban
society that produces its wealth in cities and enjoys its leisure in open
spaces. The water that once irrigated cotton outside Yuma now figuratively
powers the Schlitterbahn, an attraction at a New Braunfels, Texas,
waterpark.
These changes will not take all the water in the rural West. In fact, what
I propose will probably take less water from farmers and ranchers than the
existing process. Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt once
remarked that he believed that administrative changes were more permanent
than statutory ones. If he's correct, then the rural West is in greater
danger now that it would be if a new Colorado River Compact was
implemented.
In any reallocation, there will be winners and losers and those who give
up their water must be treated fairly and compensated in a uniquely
generous manner. The long-delayed agreement between California’s
Imperial Valley and San Diego can serve as a model. The deal could not be
completed until the residents of the valley received safeguards for their
economic future.
By centralizing water in an economically inefficient way, the existing
Colorado River Compact impoverishes the future. It slows job growth in
urban areas, making it harder for the middle-class of the future to
thrive. It even hurts democracy, for it makes it harder for people to find
their way to a vested interest in the system. That water could create good
jobs that led to new mortgages, to prosperity for people until now left
out of the American dream.
The economic realities of the 21st-century scream for a new Colorado River
Compact. American demography has long ago shifted south and west; national
politics are inherently a Sunbelt strategy; the last American president
elected without claiming Sunbelt origins was John F. Kennedy. Even in its
worst moments, California is the world’s fifth largest economy.
The result might very well be a kind of economic expansion we have not yet
seen as well as better safeguards for nature, plants, and animals that we
currently have. Not only can we erase nearly a century of bad policy, we
can create a more efficient, fairer, more environmentally sound, and more
productive system that lets more people have a shot at middle-class life.
This revolution is already underway. We’re really discussing its terms.
The West deserves a better distribution of its most precious resource.
Hal K. Rothman is Professor and Barrick Distinguished Scholar at the
Department of History at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Considered
the one of the nation’s leading expert on tourism, travel, and
post-industrial economies, he is the award-winning author of countless
books, including the widely acclaimed Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas
Started the 21st Century (2002), Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the
Twentieth Century American West, (1998 ), Saving the Planet: The American
Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century (2000), which
received the 1999 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Contemporary
Nonfiction, and many others.
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