I'm interested to see the details of the deal. With the Supreme Court ruling on the Colorado Compact that basically lets all the other states wither up and die before California has to go from watering its golf courses every three hours to every six hours, I'd be very surprised if they're cutting the same percentage as everyone else.
Most of the water California gets from the Colorado is funneled into the imperial valley for growing food (in a literal desert, not a hyperbolic one like most of California), which has extremely senior water rights.
Imperial County receives a lubricous allotment from the Colorado River, but it is a better use than most of the claims to this water. The Central Arizona project, for instance, requires a coal plant to pump water uphill into a (even hotter) desert. Much as golf in the desert is a wasteful use of resources, golf courses generally pay market rate for their water and don't require federal subsidies to turn a profit. This is more than you can say for a lot of Colorado River water.
Navajo Generating Station, which was the largest coal-fired ppwer plant in the western U.S. and powered CAP pumping stations, closed in 2019 along with the accompanying coal mine.
Since this always comes up I feel obligated to point out golf courses don’t use near as much water as people think. They can use a lot of reclaimed and grey water for grass and ponds.
Gold courses are the equivalent of "welfare queens". They don't really matter much in the big picture but look bad and are often used for political purposes.
Which is hilarious because a real numbers look at Vegas’s water use and they’re a case study in near perfect water usage and conservation- yes, even with all their ridiculous pools.
It’s amazing what can be done with good planning and design.
Yeah but the point is they may “use” that much water, but not even close to that much is coming out of the rivers and reservoirs. Of course there may be some less sustainable golf courses which do use that much, and those should be fixed, don’t think many folks would debate you there.
Right, and the problem with water rights seniority is that the amounts were allocated based on 16.5 million acre-feet per year when the modern average annual flow is 11 million acre-feet.
In fact, I saw a source (I forget where, sorry) that said this 16.5 million acre-feet estimate was calculated a time of historically large river flow. So it's not just that the flow is going down, it's that the original projection was based on an unrealistic target, even back then!
Over allocation is not a problem with water right seniority itself. Seniority dictates that when there isn't enough to go around, the last in is first out.
The problem/challenge is that those with the least seniority don't like being cut off.
That's exactly the problem with seniority. You overallocate and the highest seniority levels get everything. Basically there is no need for allocation at all.
Keep in mind the imperial valley's massive use of water predates the Colorado River Compact.
Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?
You could look at it two ways: you should sacrifice to help everyone else. Or, screw everyone else they shouldn't be here anyways.
My general opinion is that while there's benefits to growing food in the imperial valley, they don't outweigh the benefits of not having to move tens of millions of people out of the southwest - that's like throwing trillions in development into the trash. California has access to the ocean for desalination, and other southwest states don't. The best thing for the country as a whole would be for California to ween itself off the Colorado River. But I don't think that's going to happen, at least, it won't without a fight.
My opinion that the seniority should be settled once and for all in terms of date and volume.
Once this is done, parties can work towards solutions. The southwest states and users can start buying rights from California and farmers.
One reason there is so much fighting and acrimony is that each party thinks they can get more water for free by convincing a judge they deserve or need it more.
This is further complicated by the fact that the best way to demonstrate need it to increase your dependence and set yourself up for even worse disaster if you don't get what you want.
"Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?"
There was a time when factories could pollute legally as much as they wanted. Then things change and they had to adapt. We can't have people insist on water rights that were given at a different time. They have to adapt.
Land eventually exert pressure in the form of property taxes. For water rights there's no such thing.
In general, I feel like humans should not "own" natural resources. You can rent it from society, which is how I view property taxes, even though that's not exactly what they are.
I also don't think they should be arbitrarily seized. According to the article, some of the water reductions are being compensated for monetarily. I don't know the whole story there though.
AFAIK, you can't legally just buy a farm in the imperial valley and say you're going to use that water for residents in Arizona. Rights are based upon the use case.
Let's assume I agree that it should be a shared resource by all. How do you get from the current state to the desired state.
You start from a place where the state has granted water rights by law and told people that this is yours, you can use it up to the very last drop. This has been the law for 150 years and people have built businesses and lives based on the idea that the government upholds the laws and contracts it made.
Do you just start one day and tell people with water rights that it sucks to suck, but the people have decided that they want what we previously promised was yours forever. It's your fault because you believed that the government would be consistent and uphold it's commitments.
It could have been the case where the seniors were only given their rights because it was assumed there were 16.5 million acre-feet, and not 11 million.
Or perhaps the juniors only agreed because they thought there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
Or the federal government may have allowed senior rights to continue to exist for so long because they thought there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
The idea of senior water rights, not sharing such an important resource, is inherently unfair. The senior people did nothing to earn more water than anyone else. They didn't put the river there.
It seems there are better factors to consider when deciding how to distribute the water at this point than treaties based on bad data, signed a long time ago, when things were a lot different than they are today.
Seniority doesn't and shouldn't rely any flow assumptions or the agreement of juniors.
I would argue that seniority systems are the most fair, because the junior parties are the ones that drive the scarcity and create the problem.
On a small scale, If a family has been living off a stream for 100 years, and someone wants to move in an use the stream, in makes sense that the newcomer doesn't get access if there isn't enough for both. Similarly, it makes sense that the newcomer go without if there is a shortage.
I suspect in general if 'they were here first' is the only tool in your policy toolbox, you are going to have a bad time of it with growth and resource allocation. It works pretty ok with symmetric situations, but most situations aren't.
I'm not sure what you mean by being the only tool in the toolbox. There's a long list of policy tools once you establish ownership. For example, if I want to turn your house into a public park, I can raise a tax to buy it instead of just taking it from you.
You argued that "seniority systems are the most fair" and I pointed out they often don't work that well. I'm not sure why you brought in eminent domain, but agree that it can be a more reasonable way to resolve the friction, rather than just screwing someone over.
In general water rights (even moreso than mineral, air, etc.) are notoriously hard to get "right", and nobody seems to have managed so well that it's the obvious approach to follow.
Do you have any examples a system that doesn't respect senior property rights and work better?
Most land in the united states has followed a possession seniority system since it was conquered and bought from native Americans. Decision makers don't periodically redistribute it without consideration for current ownership or compensation. The few cases where it does happen are widely considered grave miscarriages of justice.
I bring up eminent domain because it is a relevant policy tool in the toolbox that can be used given that a legal doctrine and history of water right ownership has already been established in the west.
Some people think we should just pass laws to dissolve established property ownership. Some people in this thread don't even get that far and think the state should just ignore law and history and simply seize it.
>Are you saying that the problem with seniority is that it clearly solves
Sarcastic quips like this do not promote a productive discussion. The commenter above is probably arguing that the oldest use is not necessarily the most valuable, and relying on stack allocation fails to make the most economically effective use of a limited resource.
I wasn't being sarcastic. They replied the following in a discussion about seniority causing allocation problems.
>Basically there is no need for allocation at all.
They might be saying what you did, but it was far from clear to me. If so, my response would be pretty straightforward:
Seniority settles the question of rights. Buying and selling of rights and water is a very clear and effective way of putting them to the most effective economic use.
If a potential user wants water and can put it to better use, they can simply buy it. If they are the city or state, they can even use eminent domain to force the sale.
I always found it puzzling that the distribution is a fixed value rather than a ratio.
Especially the Colorado river. An infamously volatile river. Most of the time it is a rather small desert river. but when it floods it floods something awful.
California could care less if the Colorado Compact is changed. Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA. Mostly for farming. Which they shouldn't be doing there anyway.
It's states like Arizona that will have the problem. I lived in Scottsdale. Saw the writing on the wall and we sold the Scottsdale place for an insane amount of money. Having said that, if you can get a place just inside the border of the city of Phoenix, you'll probably be good. Phoenix has been socking away water forever and has about 70 to 100 years worth of it under the city. As a matter of water availability, I'd stay away from places out in the suburban areas though. If you've been paying attention down there, you probably kind of already know that if it comes to a head, Phoenix will take care of Phoenix. Places like Scottsdale, Mesa, or Tempe would be expected to solve their own problems.
I firmly believe things are gonna get heated out in Arizona if the drought persists. No pun intended.
The small area in the South you are talking about has more than half the State's population and is the largest constituency of the Colorado Compact. While the Imperial County claim is the bulk of California's claim to the Colorado, the water finds its way to cities as well. Thus California has a very large stake in the Colorado Compact (arguably the largest in terms of people and served and dollars made). If these people don't get water from the Colorado, they will look for it in the northern half of the state. It is cheaper and easier to collectively defend the very legitimate claims to the Colorado than to try to reallocate the state's other water resources.
I live in Mesa - Scottsdale will be less impacted then the rest of the state. SRP serves Mesa and Scottsdale as well as PHX. There's an unincorporated area north of Scottsdale, that's already screwed - and people are still buying houses there! I think PHX Metro will be fine, but the rest of the state doesn't have the resources PHX does.
PS - and due to there being less agriculture in the area now, PHX metro is down to 1950s levels of water usage.
By law, anyone who wants to sell or lease land in Scottsdale needs to prove that there's a water supply for at least 100 years[0].
Is that phony or something? What was the writing on the wall that you saw that made you leave Scottsdale? Curious as a Phoenix-native who maybe one day might want to move back to the valley.
No. Anyone who wants to sell or lease subdivided land has to prove that. Not only that, but if the development gets water from Scottsdale, then it does not have to prove a 100 year reserve.
Scottsdale is confident, (or, at least, shows outward confidence), in its ability to provide water for 100 years because of its three pillars. One, that the Salt River gambit will always pay off. Two, that Scottsdale's water from the Colorado will never run dry. And three, that if all else fails, I mean, hey, Phoenix is sitting on an ocean. They can't leave us out high and dry can they?
With respect to two and three, we had zero confidence. Additionally, our faith in the ability of Scottsdale's leaders to effectively manage unexpected events with 1 was, limited.
I'm not saying move out of Scottsdale. I'm saying for us, it was too much risk and inconsistent with sustainability. I believe for a place like Scottsdale to become sustainable, somebody has to move out. Not saying who that should be, but mother nature is clearly signaling limits on our growth ambitions. Not all places in Arizona are unsustainable. Tuscon, Sedona, Phoenix proper. Etc. There are lots of places in Arizona that I think have put forth credible plans to manage their growth in the face of uncertain water security. But climate, geography and a failure to get out in front of the issue long ago has just put other areas in a precarious spot. That's just reality.
I do hold out some hope for technology in solving this problem. In theory (albeit at great cost), we could build a desalination pipeline from San Diego/Baja California to Arizona, and there's also the Source water panel[0] which pulls water out of the air, and seems like a potentially good option for residential water usage.
I looked into this and saw this as well, but Rio Verde Foothills is a tiny community far northeast of Scottsdale. It seems like more of a political issue (i.e., people who aren't paying taxes to the city are benefitting from the city's management of water resources), than a technological issue.
With the unincorporated town that... lets say "has a dislike of government" it becomes difficult for Scottsdale water district to implement the same restrictions for other areas.
> Incorporating could give the community more options for water supply in future but forming an official town or city brings requirements, such as paved roads, street lights, more taxation and rules. This would be expensive but also change the secluded, quaint feel of Rio Verde Foothills, where people own chickens, donkeys, horses and ride motorbikes straight out their doors to nearby Tonto national forest.
> And forming a new water utility district doesn’t appeal either, with residents reluctant to have another government agency overseeing their neighborhood.
> California could care less if the Colorado Compact is changed.
It's behavior everytime the issue comes up suggest you are very wrong.
> Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA.
No, its not; while most of it is used in the Imperial Valley, L.A. (by far the largest city in the State) itself also uses it for about half of its municipal supply, (as does San Diego, but I guess that could technically be considered part of the “small area south of LA”.)
>Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA. Mostly for farming. Which they shouldn't be doing there anyway.
People say this all the time, but where else do you propose this be done? Where's the empty land that can be as productive as the Imperial Valley? If you want to stop farming there, we're going to have to reduce our population or it'll happen naturally in an unpleasant way.
But again, if you can get a place in the border areas of Phoenix proper, I think that would be the ideal for the average person who lives in Scottsdale. We are from the Midwest, so.
I suspect the water under Phoenix is at least part of the reason developers got to places like Biltmore and Arcadia so many years ago. They're always one step ahead. But there is also the north Phoenix area bordering Scottsdale. I'd recommend that for the well off, but not wealthy. Still close to Kierland Commons area, and Scottsdale Rd is right there. (Although I'd bet even that area will still run you close to a mil for anything decent right now. And the prices there will only rise in the future if the water issues persist.)
SRP does a lot of interesting stuff to store it. PHX gets water from 3 rivers - salt, verde, and Colorado. The Salt and Verde contribute 52%, and the Colorado River 38%. Reclaimed water accounts for 8% of the city's water supply, and groundwater the remaining 2%.
(note: the reclaimed water is interesting - Palo Verde nuke plant uses PHX's reclaimed water for cooling the (still?) largest nuclear power plant in the country.)
SRP uses large ponds/takes to 'recharge' the aquifers under PHX, as well as maintaining reservoirs.
