Negotiations continue between the seven Colorado River basin states over new rules dealing with use of the overallocated river, and the clock is ticking. But one area of those talks that’s not getting a lot of attention is the idea of setting some water aside, and the details of how that might happen.
Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, has been thinking and writing about this and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Kathryn, as you’ve written, this is not a new concept, right? This is something that’s been going on for a while.
KATHRYN SORENSEN: It is, the idea of sort of setting aside pools of water and holding them in Lakes Powell or Mead is not new. It's actually something we've been doing since 2007, and it's, it's an attempt to sort of separate certain amounts of water from the prior appropriation system, which is the system through which we generally allocate water here in the arid West.
A lot of people are familiar with the prior appropriation system. It's basically the first in time, first in right system. It's the reason why tribes and then farmers tend to have the highest priority water rights. They were here first.
But there are some real drawbacks to the prior appropriation system. The main one is that it really doesn't incentivize saving water, because whatever the highest priority water user doesn't use, it just goes to the next highest priority water user, right? So, no one really has an incentive to save water on the system.
These sorts of pools, special pools of water in Lake Power and Lake Mead, are meant to sort of subvert that priority system and save some water that wouldn't otherwise be saved.
BRODIE: Is it kind of, and please pardon the pun here, kind of like a “rainy day fund” for water?
SORENSEN: It is actually that's a really good way to think about it. A prior appropriation system is really meant to squeeze every last drop out of a river system, and you know, you think back 100 years ago, that was important for us to do.
We wanted to put all this water to use, but it's a different day now, right? And we don't want necessarily to put every drop of water to use. We want to save some for times when we really need it for that rainy day.
BRODIE: Right. So part of the problem is there haven't been enough rainy days, right? And the Colorado River, there are some shortages and there's renegotiation between the Upper and Lower Basin states and the federal government about what to do with it. Where do these conservation pools fit into those negotiations?
SORENSEN: Well, I think they're going to be really foundational to them, and if we can achieve an agreement, and and I think we all hope that we can do that, if we're going to achieve an agreement, I think that there will be some form of these conservation pools involved in that and that they will be significant and meaningful.
But the devil's in the details, right. How much water can be in these pools? What are some of the implications of water in these pools? Well, you know, does water in these pools have the ability to negatively impact others who do rely on the prior appropriation system?
BRODIE: When, when you talk about sort of taking water out of the systems, setting it aside, I know you said you don't, we don't want every drop used, but somebody would like to use that drop, presumably, right? That's being set aside in one of these conservation pools.
SORENSEN: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's really one of the fundamental problems with the Colorado River system, right, is that it's overallocated even in the best of times. So even if hydrology were kind of being a friend to us right now and it's not, but even if it were, there's not enough water to go around.
And if you add to that, you know, Mother Nature has not been kind to us over the last 20 years. We're in year 22, 23 of what is probably the worst drought in the last 1,200 years. So it's crunch time.
BRODIE: So you mentioned the devils in the details. How do you set this up fairly so that people who and entities that need a certain amount of water can get it and as you said, we're not using every drop of the river?
SORENSEN: Right. So they have to be very carefully set aside from the prior appropriation system, and that means that they have to be operationally neutral in Lakes Powell and Mead, and they also have to be water that is saved that otherwise would have been used in the prior appropriation system.
So for example, a farmer who definitely would use that water to grow hay or alfalfa. You could theoretically pay that farmer not to use that water … and set it aside, right? And, and that is a true savings because that water would otherwise have been used.
BRODIE: But I guess the question is like, how do you come to some kind of agreement? I mean, you have states that can't agree on what to do, and you have entities within states that can't agree on what to do. So how do you try to come up with something that everyone, or at least some number of entities can live with?
SORENSEN: Yeah, well, obviously that's what's really tough. Everyone has valid and important uses for water in the Colorado River system and fundamentally what we're facing is the need to just use less. Of course no one wants to do that, right?
So that, that is the problem with trying to come to an agreement and it's a very complicated system, as you know, serves 40 million people, thousands of acres of agriculture, most of the nation's winter vegetables, 30 tribes, you know, it, it's a very complicated system. So coming to an agreement is, is just a fundamentally difficult thing to do.
BRODIE: Is there an importance for, especially I'm thinking of Lake Mead, of having some of these conservation pools in there just to keep the levels high enough that you can continue to generate hydroelectricity, which so many people downriver rely on for their power?
SORENSEN: Absolutely. There's a lot of promise in these conservation pools. If they are set up carefully, if they are set up to not cause harm to those who still depend on the prior appropriation system. Then yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot that we can do with them and it and it really doesn't matter so much where they're stored. So as an example, if you need them in Powell to boost hydropower, you can keep the pool in, in Powell. If you, if you need it downstream for other reasons, you can potentially keep it there. There's a lot of flexibility inherent in the system.
BRODIE: Is there generally agreement on under what circumstances these sort of set aside pools should be used for?
SORENSEN: No, really, there's not. So there, there's not broad agreement on how to set them up, nor is there necessarily agreement on what they can and should be used for. I think there's broad recognition that they are potentially valuable and a flexible tool, but who gets them? Under what conditions do they get to be created? Under what conditions do you get to pull that water back out? All of those details are, are very much up in the air.
BRODIE: Got it. So there's been talk over the last couple of years about the potential for litigation if the states can't come to an agreement on what the sort of new rules of the river ought to be.
When you're looking at some of the real contentious issues that might lead to litigation, is this one of them?
SORENSEN: You know, I, I hope that the development of conservation pools is a way to avoid litigation, but again, if they're not set up properly, they will probably lead to litigation, right? They'll just become another source of contention.
Yeah, the, the threat of litigation on the Colorado River system is real. I think that the negotiators are working desperately to avoid that outcome. But you know, you have to really weigh the benefits of a bargain in your own state and for your own stakeholders against, you know, what are potentially the payoffs of litigation, and that's not an easy calculus.
