Op-Ed: Basin Governors need to accept Water-allowance reductions
by JAMES A. MARPLES
******************************
I read in the news about the meeting of seven Western Governors (or their representatives) for a discussion with US Secretary of the Interior over the impasse over Colorado River water allocations.
It is obvious that all those States: New Mexico, Utah, California, Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming and Nevada each have something at-stake by these talks. Everybody needs water. Everybody wants water. Unfortunately, “Mother Nature only bestows a limited amount of precipitation; plus human activities of dams or channels often jiggers the amount other humans can utilize downstream.
The article clearly noted that the federal-allocations of 7.5 million acre-feet of water was formulated using a poor math formula based on years that were overly wet years. It doesn’t take a statistician to deduce that the 7.5 million acre-feet quota MUST be reduced across the board to perhaps 6.5 million acre-feet. I further believe that Upper Basin States should also see an additional reduction of say 0.5 million acre-feet to compensate those States downstream who literally suffer adversely from a literal “trickle-down effect”.