Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
December 6, 2024
State water officials lobbed pointed criticisms at each other on Thursday during successive programs at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference. J.B. Hamby, California’s lead river negotiator, said his state and Arizona won’t keep reducing what they take from the river simply to watch upstream states increase their diversions “and building pipelines to more golf courses.” Brandon Gebhart of Wyoming responded by calling such positions “saber-rattling,” “distractions” and “bullshit.”
[…]
After listening to the back-and-forth on Thursday, a former Interior secretary and Arizona governor said the talks may require a high-level mediator appointed by the White House. That’s what it took to get the states to agree to their initial water-sharing compact in 1922, Bruce Babbitt told The Arizona Republic, and it would help now…Officials from Arizona have begun discussing the option of triggering a “compact call” if that happens, referring to language in the compact that they believe should cause the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation to enforce the compact on behalf of the Lower Basin. Central Arizona Project board members began the week by passing a resolution calling on federal officials to analyze the option of such a compact call…The Rocky Mountain states upstream from Lees Ferry say they already take their share of cuts in low-snow years. Instead of reducing releases from the big reservoirs that the Lower Basin uses, the Upper Basin has to cut back according to what’s flowing down headwater streams. Those reductions average more than a million acre-feet a year, according the New Mexico’s [Estevan Lopez]. The upper states have never approached using their full half, New Mexico compact Commissioner Estevan Lopez said, and aridification has force reductions from a high point of 5.1 million acre-feet.
“It’s highly likely that we in total won’t be able to develop much more than that based on hydrology,” he said.