Water official sees fight brewing in West

Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy thinks restricting California to 4.4 million acre-feet a year of Colorado River water will be the biggest debate in the West in the coming year.

Although Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming are willing to sit down with California and develop a plan, no one can agree on a way to cut California's dependence on the river, Mulroy said.

The issues are fluid, and the states are meeting again next week, she said.

California receives the most river water from the 7.5 million acre-feet shared by the Lower Basin states that include Nevada and Arizona. Nevada gets the smallest portion, 300,000 acre-feet, under the 70-year-old law of the river.

Every year except 1982 and 1983, when the Colorado River flooded, California has taken more than 5 million acre-feet a year to grow crops and supply its growing population, David Donnelley, the water authority's deputy general manager, said.

Southern California's Metropolitan Water District Operations Director Jay Malinowski defends the state's penchant for gulping extra river water.

Each year the Interior Department secretary can declare a surplus on the river if other states don't use their full portion, he said. "That is the water we have been using" under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, Malinowski said.

"We certainly agree that California should not take more water than we should take," Malinowski said. "Too many people rely on lore instead of law on the river."

The panic among the three Lower Basin states came when Arizona's water take climbed from about 1 million acre-feet a year to 2 million acre-feet annually during the 1990s, Donnelley said. The Central Arizona Project drew the extra river water into that state's interior for use by cities and farmers alike.

More than a year ago, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt warned California that it had to curb Colorado River use.

The intent of Babbitt's warning is a shift in who uses the water. As the Southwest continues to urbanize, the river will flow from farmers to cities, Donnelley said.

But fighting among four Southern California irrigation districts ended an in-state solution this year. Farmers in Palo Verde, Yuma, Imperial and Coachella valleys have no idea how much each of them uses of the 3.85 million acre-feet they get from California's share of the river each year.

Part of California's plan includes lining the All-American and Coachella canals to save 94,000 acre-feet a year, conserving 106,000 acre-feet and letting the Imperial Valley send 200,000 acre-feet of its unused irrigation water to San Diego.

The solutions all require keeping Lake Mead full to supply downstream users.

Neither the federal government nor California has approved any of the proposed water cuts.

Whatever rules apply to surplus water years on the Colorado will apply to every state, Maliniowski said. "California is not looking for special treatment for California," he said.

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