Here’s a guest column about the east-west chasm in water planning in Colorado, from Jack Flobeck writing for The Colorado Springs Gazette. Here’s an excerpt:
OK, so it’s your water, but the $64 million question is: Are you willing to really face up to the responsibilities of those water rights, and what do we mean by responsibilities? We were taught years ago that if you were a citizen, you had rights, but also responsibilities.
Solomon said, “There’s nothing new under the sun,” and wouldn’t you know, someone thought this problem through, over 4,000 years ago. I am indebted to local law historian, David Griffith, for suggesting my research into this subject.
The Code of Hammurabi was written in stone on an 8-foot black diorite column in what is now Baghdad and contains several concepts worth considering in 21st-century America. Consider:
No. 53 – If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it, if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money, and the money shall be paid to replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.
No. 54 – If he be not able to replace the corn, then he and his possessions shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he has flooded.
No. 55 – If anyone open his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he must pay his neighbor corn for his loss.
No. 56 – If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the plantation of his neighbor, he shall pay ten gur of corn for every ten gan of land.”
Did Hammurabi nail responsibility; and are our irrigators with ‘first in time and first in right,’ ready to accept the consequences, which follow from most favored ownership? Is it now time, with imminent water shortages; to open the debate to include discussion of private, public, or combined public/private efforts to construct catch basins, rain harvesting culverts, and efficient localized storage for drought relief as well as for fire mitigation.