U.S. Water News Online
LAS VEGAS -- In a victory for California, Arizona and Nevada, Interior Secretary Gale Norton rejected a plea by four other states to cut releases of Colorado River water from drought-depleted Lake Powell.
In letters to governors and water officials in seven Colorado River basin states, Norton said melting snow is projected to be slightly above average for the rest of the year and reservoirs have more water now than had been projected last year.
"We have concluded that an adjustment to the release amount from Lake Powell during the next five months is not warranted," she said.
However, Norton also declared her authority over managing water flow on the river; said she wants another review next April to see if adjustments should be made; and instructed the states to start meeting this month on a long-range plan to share river water during drought.
Questions about how much water should be released from Lake Powell have split the states that rely on the river for drinking water and power.
Upper-basin states Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico argue that heavy winter rains raised Lake Mead downstream enough to justify an unprecedented reduction in water released from Lake Powell, now at 34 percent capacity.
"I'm disappointed, no question about it," said Don Ament, Colorado agriculture commissioner and member of the state water conservation board. "It's always been my feeling that you store water as high as you can because you can always release it later."
Tammy Kikuchi, spokeswoman for Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, said it wasn't all that Utah and the other upper-basin states had asked for, but it's what was expected.
"The one thing we can be encouraged by is that Secretary Norton did say she wants to do another midyear review next year," she said.
Lower-basin states California, Arizona and Nevada maintain that holding water back at Lake Powell would threaten their ability to draw water and power from Lake Mead, now at 62 percent capacity.
"This is a good thing for us. This is exactly what we would have wanted," said Bob Barrett, spokesman for the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona.
Lakes Powell and Mead are the largest of the more than 40 reservoirs capturing Colorado River basin water in wet years. A 1922 agreement allocating Colorado River water does not specify how water should be divvied up during drought. Last fall, Norton asked the states to find a way, but states failed to reach agreement last week.
Tom Weimer, acting assistant Interior secretary for water and science, called Norton's decision "fairly balanced."
"The severity of the drought and length of the drought has forced people to look at everybody's self-interest," Weimer told reporters by conference call from Washington, D.C. He said lower-basin states lost a bid to get Norton to say she had no authority to change water allocations.
Gerald Zimmerman, executive director of California's state Colorado River Board in Glendale, Calif., and Russell George, director of the Colorado state Department of Natural Resources in Denver, welcomed Norton's call for continued talks.
"Hopefully, the states will ... determine a way to operate the reservoir system in a period of low-water conditions," Zimmerman said.
Don Whipple, of the Interstate Stream Commission in New Mexico, said New Mexico hoped Norton would keep more water in Lake Powell as a hedge against continued drought.
"One year of average runoff doesn't break the drought. It might slow it down but it doesn't break it," he said.
The lower-basin states want the Bureau of Reclamation to keep water flowing from Powell to Mead at a minimum 8.23 million acre-foot per year set in 1970, several years after the Glen Canyon Dam was completed near Page, Ariz.
"The lower basin wasn't the asker for a change," said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas. "We were protecting the status quo."
Systemwide, Colorado River storage dropped to 50 percent of normal last summer, but is projected to increase to 57 percent this September.
Norton said melting snow in the Rocky Mountains is expected to raise water flow into Lake Powell to 106 percent of average this year.
That relieved some pressure to cut water flow, which Weimer said would set a legal and policy precedent.
Although the snowpack has increased, Ament said warm, windy weather could reduce the amount of runoff making into the waterways.
"It's just like counting your chickens before they're hatched or counting your wheat harvest before it's in the bin. All kinds of things can happen," Ament said.
There also were concerns that withholding 500,000 acre feet of water in Lake Powell would decrease power production by up to $10 million at the Glen Canyon and $2.5 million at Hoover dams.
Even without cutting flows, Lake Powell could rise to 48 percent and Lake Mead could drop to at 57.5 percent capacity by Sept. 30 -- with Lake Powell rising to 54.3 percent and Lake Mead dropping to 52.2 percent by the end of next year.
"We will essentially equalize the reservoirs," said John Keys, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner.
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