An Arizona water expert was tapped to lead the federal Bureau of Reclamation, but his nomination was withdrawn earlier this year. He says it was a political decision and leaves a leadership vacuum.
Ted Cooke is the former director of Central Arizona Project and now serves on the board of Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority. He was nominated to serve as commissioner of the bureau but heard that lawmakers from other Colorado River states worried Cooke would be biased in favor of Arizona.
Now, the river states are approaching a Nov. 11 deadline with no water deal and no commissioner.
Cooke said not having a commissioner makes it far less likely the states will be able to come to an agreement in time.
“They'll be lucky if they have a commissioner by the time all of this work is supposed to be done. So that begs the question: How is it going to be done? Who's going to be leading that effort?” Cooke asked.
Cooke said he wishes he’d been given a chance to defend himself against any allegations of bias, but no one ever reached out to him directly.
Ultimately, Cooke said he was told in August there was something wrong with his background check, but he wasn’t given an answer when he asked what.
“I don't even know how to respond to that. But other folks have confided in me that that basically is a red herring. It's a distraction from what really was going on, which was that Republican senators were not willing to go along with President Trump's choice for the commissioner of Reclamation,” Cooke said.
Specifically, he’s heard he was stymied by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Lee is the chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which would have confirmed Cooke.
For the record, Cooke said he would not have acted with any bias in favor of Arizona.
Lee did not respond to a request for comment.
In ongoing Colorado River talks, the seven basin states that rely on the river have split into two camps: the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states.
The Lower Basin states are Arizona, California and Nevada. They’ve historically used more of their river allocation and are located in the bottom half of the river basin.
The Upper Basin states are Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. They’ve historically used less water and are reluctant to take any cuts to their water allocations going forward.
Because there’s less river water to go around, cuts are inevitable, but Lower Basin states don’t want all those cuts to fall on them.
Cooke does say he thinks both Upper and Lower Basin states will have to make sacrifices.
“Even making these comments to you, this gives plenty of fodder for people to point to my comments and say, ‘See, that's — he's biased against us. He's taking sides of the Lower Basin.’ No, I'm not taking sides, anybody's side,” Cooke said.
But he added that anticipating all states will have to make cuts is not skewed by his residence in a Lower Basin state, it’s just based on the dire situation the Colorado River is in.
“The fact of the matter is that there is not enough water, we all know this, in the Colorado River Basin to meet all of the needs of everyone,” Cooke said.
If the Upper Basin states are against a commissioner from a Lower Basin state and the Lower Basin states oppose a commissioner from the Upper Basin, it’s not clear what the endgame is.
Selecting a commissioner to lead Colorado River negotiations from outside the basin states could also be an issue. Cooke said an outsider would have a lot of catching up to do.
As for having interim Commissioner David Palumbo lead the negotiations, Cooke said there may be an issue of permanence. In other words, the instructions of a temporary leader who will inevitably leave are more easily ignored. States can instead stall for time rather than abiding by whatever they have to say.
That’s what’s been happening, according to Cooke.
If the Nov. 11 deadline for basin states to reach a deal passes without an agreement, the federal government is expected to step in and mandate some sort of plan. But whatever that mandate is will likely be challenged in court.
“The United States historically has not wanted to do that. They don't want to get sued,” Cooke said.
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