Agencies fail to reach agreement on river water

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

A conference of Colorado River water agencies ended Tuesday without resolving issues that could cut both California and Nevada's use of Lake Mead water.

Instead, agencies in both states are preparing for the cutoff of "interim surplus" water unused by the Upper Colorado River Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming.

The surplus is a surplus on paper only since three years of drought have cut the usual river flow in half. In reality, the surplus is a supply of water that the region was counting on. But that supply will be reduced or eliminated Jan. 1 unless four California water agencies reach a long-term deal to wean themselves off the "surplus."

Federal and state officials hoped that the annual meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association would provide a forum for working things out. They also hoped it would provide California and Nevada with a 15-year "soft-landing" to stop using the surplus.

But the conference left the agreement undone.

The three days of nonstop meetings were "very interesting, but there have been no breakthroughs ... Nothing," Bennett Raley, the Interior Department's point man for western water issues, said as he left the conference Tuesday.

A breakthrough would have required the support of a California water agency that uses about 4 million acre-feet of water annually, about 10 times what Southern Nevada uses, for agriculture. An acre-foot is about enough water for a typical family for one year.

The Imperial Irrigation District, one of the four California agencies, has refused to sign on to a deal that the agency's directors say has too many long-term uncertainties. The deal unfairly saddled the district's farmers with decades of responsibility for supplying urban water users and keeping the environmentally troubled Salton Sea alive, Andy Horne, the district director, said.

Attendees tried to put the best face on Las Vegas conference. Officials from the Southern Nevada Water Authority took solace in the fact that U.S. Interior Department officials, including Secretary Gale Norton, promised to do what they could to keep the surplus flowing locally even if California loses its access to the water.

"The disappointing thing is that it appears that there has been no substantial progress made by the four California agencies on this issue," Southern Nevada Water Authority spokesman Vince Alberta said. " The encouraging thing is that the secretary left the door open to at least considering separating Nevada from California."

That would keep the surplus, enough water for about 30,000 families, flowing to Southern Nevada.

But John Keys, commissioner of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation, said he doesn't know if officials can find a way to keep the surplus coming to Las Vegas while cutting it for California.

"We'll do everything we can within the law of the river," Keys said.

And Interior officials said they continue to hope that the California agencies can work out some solution that would keep the pact, dubbed the Quantification Settlement Agreement, in place.

Officials from several of the California agencies echoed that hope, though they sounded far less optimistic than they did a week ago.

Dennis Underwood, vice president of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said he still believes the agreement is the best way to serve all parties in the complex tangle of river-water law and use. His agency serves 17 million people throughout Southern California.

Underwood said his district is ready to carry out the agreement because "it is the best course of action for California and the other states."

He said the agencies still have 14 days to come up with an agreement that all parties will accept.

But officials with the Imperial Irrigation District are sticking by their rejection of the deal last week. They believe they have little to lose.

Under existing practice, the farmers of the Imperial Valley would be least impacted by the loss of the surplus because they receive "priority issues." They receive the bulk of California's basic allotment of 4.4 million acre-feet. The surplus is used mostly by urban consumers in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

Nonetheless, "we in the Imperial Valley share that disappointment (with the urban water agencies)," Horne said.

"We expected to have a deal by now," he said. "No one should question the commitment of the Imperial Valley or the (Imperial Irrigation District) to this process."

He said adding the Salton Sea to the process two years ago threw a monkey wrench into the deal.

"If the deal that we had at the table today bore the slightest resemblance to the deal with negotiated in 1998, we would be celebrating today," Horne said. "We are all affected by the fact that we need a long-term solution to the environmental issues surrounding the Salton Sea.

"If we didn't have endangered species at the Salton Sea, we would be going ahead with the deal," he said.

Horne shrugged off the carefully worded suggestions by Interior Department officials, including Norton, that the farmers of the Imperial Valley might feel some bite if they do not sign the agreement.

"We will continue to hear about these kinds of threats and will have to address these as they develop," he said. "We will do everything we need to do to protect our water rights."

Raley said any reduction to the Imperial Valley farmers would be "in no way, shape or form retaliation," but would be needed because of a drought that has caused Lake Mead's water level to plummet. "Part of limits is dealing with difficult questions."

Possible cuts in the water supplied to the farms in Central California was not part of the discussion while the agreement was expected to be signed, however.

While Norton has pledged to cut off the surplus Jan. 1 if an agreement is not in place, officials in both Southern Nevada and Southern California say the action will not put a sudden crimp in the showering habits of urban users.

Throughout the conference, they repeated that they have enough water stored underground and elsewhere to keep the resource flowing for at least several years.

But both the loss of the surplus and the effects of a three-year drought, described as the worst in modern Colorado River history, had the program participants worried about the future water supply for the region.'

Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said at the conference that higher prices for heavy users and restrictions on use among Clark County consumers are likely. The drought, she explained, is likely to bring Lake Mead to the point where releases of the so-called surplus are suspended anyway.

But some Southern California officials are, for now, focused on Interior's promised Jan. 1 action and the threatened agreement.

With or without the agreement, "we are talking about fundamentally changing the way water flows in California for the next 75 years," said Maureen Stapleton, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, which had hoped to receive water transferred from the Imperial Irrigation District as part of the agreement.

"We cannot look to the future of water and utilize the thinking of the past," Stapleton said. "In 2003, water life will be different for all four California agencies and possibly for California as a whole."

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