Science Be Dammed by Eric Kuhn & John Fleck

Author:Eric Kuhn & John Fleck [Kuhn, Eric & Fleck, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780816540433

Perhaps because Colorado agreed to further reduce its request to 51.75 percent, Wyoming dropped its opposition to Tipton’s definition of consumptive use and his inflow-outflow methodology allowing an agreement among all of the parties.21 Article VI of the 1948 compact provides that “the Commission shall determine the quantity of the consumptive use of water, which is apportioned by article III hereof, for the Upper Basin and for each Upper Basin state by the inflow-outflow method in terms of man-made depletions of the virgin flow at Lee Ferry, unless the Commission, by unanimous action shall adopt a different method of determination.”22

There was also consensus on how to determine each state’s Lee Ferry obligation in the event of a curtailment. The problem was how to draft the provision. Further, the commission decided that overuse was not a problem except when an overuse by one state would impact another state, such as when that overuse was the cause of an actual curtailment.23

Article IV, which addresses the subject of a curtailment, provides that if a state or states exceeded its consumptive use apportionment percentage as measured by the total use over the preceding ten years, then that state (or states) has to deliver at Lee Ferry the aggregate of its total overdraft before any demand is made on any other state. If all four states were using their actual apportionments for the previous ten years, or once the overdrafting states have paid back their ten-year penalty, then each state has to provide an amount of water based on its post-1922 compact uses in the year prior to the curtailment.24

To implement these last two provisions, the compact created the Upper Colorado River Commission, charged with making decisions required by the compact, such as reservoir evaporation accounting and formally determining the amount of any deficit at Lee Ferry needed for compliance with Article III of the 1922 compact and dividing water deficits up among the four Upper Division states.25

Arizona’s allocation in the final agreement was small, but it came away from the deal with something much more important. The state’s representative, Charles A. Carson Jr., had come to the negotiations with two goals. Obviously, he wanted to obtain a bit of water for Arizona’s Upper Basin lands. More importantly, he wanted to maintain Arizona’s close working alliance with the upper states. In the few short years since Arizona had ratified the compact, it had transformed its relationship. It had gone from Delph Carpenter’s nightmare rogue state bent on undermining the 1922 compact to a close ally of Upper Basin leaders Clifford Stone and Royce Tipton, helping obtain Senate ratification of the 1944 treaty with Mexico. Carson knew that maintaining this alliance was essential to Arizona’s future plans, and the final deal did that. By coming to agreement on a method for accounting water depletions that was mutually beneficial, he had created an alignment between Arizona and the Upper Basin states that would have lasting impact.

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