Opinion: The Colorado River won’t obey our rules
The Colorado River Compact is 100 years old. A University of Arizona conference and the upcoming Colorado River Water Users Association will mark the anniversary. But there’s no reason to celebrate. Twenty-two years into a drought and with reservoirs at all-time lows, the federal government may soon intervene in the states’ management of the river. The Compact has failed. Don’t blame the river. We need a new system that manages with the river and provides all users with fair shares. In 1922, the seven Colorado Basin states used an optimistic estimate of the river’s annual flow to allocate the waters. The states chose the biggest estimate because that made it easy to agree. Everyone could pretend the river could satisfy all anticipated demands. That was the first mistake.
-Written by Karl Flessa, an Arizona resident since 1977 and an emeritus professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona.