States in talks to end water impasse

Monday, April 18, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

A standoff dividing the upper and lower basin states of the Colorado River over how much water to send to Lake Mead continues, although state and federal officials hope that meetings today and later this month will end the impasse.

The states of the upper basin -- Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming -- want to keep more water stored in Lake Powell than originally agreed to last year. The lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada are holding the line at the 8.23 million acre-feet included in the annual operating budget last year. The lower basin states are meeting today in Las Vegas.

The upper basin states, which are looking at a half-empty Powell, want to modify the operating plan to send down less than 7.5 million acre-feet of water over the last six months of the water year, which ends in September. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.

The ultimate decision maker will be the Interior Secretary Gale Norton with advice from the Bureau of Reclamation. The federal officials want the states to come up with a unified recommendation on how much to send from Powell, the upper reservoir, to Mead. The question is complex because of five years of drought, and even a relatively wet winter failed to solve the shortage or related questions.

When the federal officials ultimately resolve the question at the end of April, the decision will affect how much water is available for use in the upper basin's Powell and how much is available for use in the lower basin's Mead.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, earlier had indicated some flexibility in terms of recommendations on how much to send down river from Powell. However, last week she said the lower basin states are united in keeping the upper basin states to the 8.23 million acre-foot amount.

"We have a standoff," she said. "They (the upper and lower basin states) are at loggerheads."

Because of the relatively high flows into Lake Mead and "average" flows into Lake Powell, there is no need to revise the annual operating plan, Mulroy said.

"There is no extraordinary circumstance that would lead us to change what we had agreed to in September," she said. "There is no crisis and there is no reason why in this particular year we need to do a course correction."

Herb Guenther, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, uses very similar language to describe the situation.

"We agreed and the secretary (of Interior) agreed to do a mid-year review to see whether we needed to do an adjustment," Guenther said. "Now it's April and we're ready to do the mid-year review. ... The whole purpose was to see if conditions worsened. In fact they have improved significantly.

"There's no need to change it."

But upper basin users of the Colorado River, of the water, hydroelectric energy and recreational uses in Lake Powell, see the dwindling rings of water in Powell and fear that the upper basin could fall to the "dead pool," unable to sustain those uses.

Dave Merritt, chief engineer of the Colorado River Water Conservation District in Colorado, said cutting back the amount going to Lake Mead would help the two lakes come closer to equalization. Now Powell stands at about a third of capacity. Mead, on the other hand, is just short of 60 percent full.

Merritt noted that if Powell goes dry, the impact on Lake Mead, which supplies about 90 percent of Las Vegas' drinking water, would be dramatic and quick.

"There are real concerns," Merritt said. "We're trying to protect the water resource for everybody. Powell is the buffer.

"The lower basin had a very good six months in terms of runoff. They gained much more than we did. We're still coming out of the drought."

Kip White, a spokesman for Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, said there is still hope that the two sides can bridge the gap and come up with a unified recommendation. He said Interior will give the states until the end of the month for the recommendation.

"We're still hopeful that the states will come up with some sort of a consensus plan that everybody can agree on," White said.