Water is for Fighting Over

by John Fleck

13.California State Water Resources Control Board, “Imperial Irrigation District Alleged Waste and Unreasonable Use of Water, Water Rights Decision 1600,” 4.

  14.Gottlieb and FitzSimmons, Thirst for Growth, 78–79.

  15.Erie, Beyond Chinatown, 181.

  16.California State Water Resources Control Board, “Imperial Irrigation District Alleged Waste,” 58.

  17.Gottlieb and FitzSimmons, Thirst for Growth, 81.

  18.Ibid.

  19.Boyarsky, “Imperial Valley Farmers Fear MWD Has Its Eye on Their Water.”

  20.Reisner and Bates, Overtapped Oasis, 152–58; Imperial Irrigation District, “Water Conservation Agreement Between Imperial Irrigation District and The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.”

  21.Tina Shields, author interview, September 3, 2015.

  22.Cohen, “Hazard’s Toll,” iv.

  23.Petition of Imperial Irrigation District for Modification of Revised Water Rights Order 2002-0013, California State Water Resources Control Board, November 18, 2014.

  24.Shields, “Crossroads at the Salton Sea.”

  25.US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Regional Economic Accounts, Farm Income and Expenses” (table CA45).

  Chapter 10 Notes

  1.Terry Fulp, author interview, February 24, 2015.

  2.Danielson, “Water Administration in Colorado—Higher-ority or Priority,” 298.

  3.US Bureau of Reclamation, “Lake Mead High and Low Elevations (1935–2014),” 1.

  4.Scott Balcomb to Herb Guenther, personal correspondence, October 7, 2004.

  5.Schiffer, Guenther, and Carr, “From a Colorado River Compact Challenge to the Next Era of Cooperation among the Seven Basin States,” 217.

  6.Fleck, “Abandoned Marina a Sign of Major Drought.”

  7.US Bureau of Reclamation, “Colorado River Basin Consumptive Uses and Losses Report 2001–2005,” Table UC-9, 32.

  8.Verburg, The Colorado River Documents 2008, Tables 2-1 through 2-5.

  9.Boxall, “Running on Empty.”

  10.Statement of Leslie James (executive director, Colorado River Energy Distributors Association), “Opportunities and Challenges on Enhancing Federal Power Generation and Transmission,” hearing before the House Subcommittee on Water and Power, Committee on Resources, 109th Congress (2005).

  11.Ostler, “Upper Colorado River Basin Perspectives on the Drought,” 18, 29.

  12.Scott Balcomb to Herb Guenther, October 7, 2004.

  13.John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010.

  14.Anne Castle, author interview, June 18, 2015.

  15.Ostrom, “Social Capital: A Fad or a Fundamental Concept,” 176.

  16.John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010.

  17.Terry Fulp, author interview, April 23, 2010.

  18.John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010; Tom McCann, author interview, February 20, 2015.

  19.McKinnon, “Arizona Fights Changes in Colorado River Plan.”

  20.John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010.

  21.David Donnelly, author interview, October 12, 2015; Terry Fulp, author interview, April 23, 2010; John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010.

  22.Fleck, “Arizona Water Managers Warn Lake Mead Could Be Sorta Unusable in Five to Eight Years.”

  Chapter 11 Notes

  1.Darryl Vigil, statement to US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, July 16, 2013.

  2.Fleck, “Whitehorse Lake Sees Flowing Water at Last.”

  3.US Census Bureau, “American Community Survey”; Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, “Draft Water Resource Development Strategy for the Navajo Nation,” 49–53.

  4.Western Regional Climate Center, “Cooperative Climatological Data Summaries.”

  5.Wilkinson, Crossing the Next Meridian, 219.

  6.Chee Smith Jr., author interview, January 2014.

  7.Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564, 28 S. Ct. 207, 52 L. Ed. 340 (1908).

  8.Amy Cordalis, Tribal Reserved Rights and Settlements in the CRB, Clyde Martz Summer Water Conference, Boulder, CO, June 5, 2013.

  9.Rifkind, Special Master’s Report, 262.

  10.Ibid., 263.

  11.Price and Weatherford, “Indian Water Rights in Theory and Practice,” 103.

  12.Pollack, “Navajo Nation v. Department of the Interior,” presentation, Continuing Legal Education Law of the River Conference, Las Vegas, NV, May 1, 2015.

  13.US Department of Agriculture, “National Agricultural Statistics Service CropScape Cropland Data Layer.”

  14.Cordalis and Cordalis, “Indian Water Rights,” 333; Kuhn, “Managing the Uncertainties of the Colorado River System,” 23.

  15.Fleck, “Navajos Stand to Gain Water Windfall.”

  16.Verberg, The Colorado River Documents, 5–26.

  17.King et al., “Getting to the Right Side of the River,” 78.

  18.Dibble, “Calderón Stands Firm against Lining the All-American Canal.”

  19.King et al., “Getting to the Right Side of the River,” 79.

  20.Pacific Institute comments on Colorado River Interim Surplus Criteria Draft Environmental Impact Statement, included in: US Bureau of Reclamation, “Colorado River Interim Surplus Critieria Final Environmental Impact Statement,” B-42.

  21.Schlimgen-Wilson et al. to David Hayes, February 15, 2000, Attachment G in US Bureau of Reclamation, “Colorado River Interim Surplus Critieria Final Environmental Impact Statement.”

  22.Michael Cohen, author interview, August 19, 2015.

  23.US Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado River Interim Surplus Criteria Final Environmental Impact Statement, 2–3.

  24.“Environmental Suit Filed on Colorado River Plan,” New York Times, June 30, 2000.

  25.Jones et al., “Valuation in the Anthropocene,” 1–47.

  Chapter 12 Notes

  1.MacDougal, “The Delta of the Rio Colorado,” 10.

  2.Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 141–42.

  3.Mueller and Marsh, “Lost, A Desert River and Its Native Fishes,” 2.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Cohen et al., “Water to Supply the Land,” 55; Brun et al., “Agricultural Value Chains in the Mexicali Valley of Mexico,” 5.

  6.Brun et al., “Agricultural Value Chains in the Mexicali Valley of Mexico,” 6.

  7.Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, author interview, February 10, 2015.

  8.Peter Culp, author interview, March 23, 2014.

  9.McKinnon, “New Yuma Reservoir Is a Water Saver.”

  10.US Bureau of Reclamation, “Colorado River Accounting and Water Use Report Arizona, California, and Nevada Calendar Year 2009,” 23; Kara Gillon and Defenders of Wildlife, comments on Drop 2 Reservoir Environmental Impact Assessment.

  11.US Bureau of Reclamation, “Name Change Approved for Drop 2 Storage Reservoir.”

  12.John Entsminger, author interview, October 19, 2010.

  13.US Department of the Interior, “Secretary Kempthorne Announces Joint US-Mexico Statement on Lower Colorado River Issues,” August 13, 2007.

  14.Fradkin, A River No More, 319–41.

  15.International Boundary and Water Commission, Minute No. 306.

  16.Culp, “Minute 319 Negotiations.”

  17.Jenkins, “New Hope for the Delta.”

  18.Ibid.

  19.Jennifer Pitt, author interview, September 2014.

  20.Garcia et al., “Irrigation Engineering in Seismic Zones, Mexicali Valley, Mexico”; US Geological Survey “Earthquake Summary, Magnitude 7.2—Baja California, Mexico.”

  21.Sanchez and Cortez-Lara, “Minute 319 of the International Boundary and Water Commission between the US and Mexico.”

  22.US Department of Interior, “Salazar, Elvira Announce Water Agreement to Support Response to Mexicali Valley Earthquake.”

  23.King et al., “Getting to the Right Side of the River,” 90.

  24.Terry Fulp, author interview, August 21, 2015.

  25.The most detailed publicly available account of the
final steps of the negotiations is Matt Jenkins’s article “New Hope for the Delta,” High Country News, January 17, 2014; see also International Boundary and Water Commission, Minute 319.

  26.John Entsminger, author interview, February 25, 2015.

  27.Bob Snow, personal communication, December 5, 2015.

  Chapter 13 Notes

  1.Statements of Senator Jeff Flake and Deputy Interior Secretary Michael Connor, Hearing on S. 1894, California Emergency Drought Relief Act, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (2015).

  2.Phillips et al., Reining in the Rio Grande, 141.

  3.Statement of John H. Bliss, Upper Colorado River Commissioner for State of New Mexico, Hearings before the House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation on H.R. 2494 and H.R. 2352, San Juan–Chama Reclamation Project, and Navajo Indian Irrigation Project; Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 86th Congress (1960).

  4.Falk et al., Estimated 2008 Groundwater Potentiometric Surface, 2011, 1.

  5.Oswald, “How Much Is Abiquiu Lake’s Desert Shoreline Worth?”; Stomp, “Water Resources Management Strategy Update.”

  6.Sorensen, “Water Resources Drought Update”; Fleck, “Phoenix, Lake Mead, and ‘the Anticommons’”; Fleck, “Priority Administration and Arizona’s Colorado River Allotment.”

  7.Getches, “Competing Demands for the Colorado River,” 420; Colorado River Governance Initiative, “Rethinking the Future of the Colorado River,” 13.

  8.This chapter owes significantly to ideas sketched out by Brad Udall, then at the University of Colorado, in a series of talks in the summer of 2013.

  9.Fleck, “Brad Udall on the Colorado River and ‘the Reality of the Public.’”

  10.Michael Connor, author interview, March 28, 2014.

  11.Herbert, “Southland’s Water Safety Margin Place at 10 Years.”

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