Water: The Lifeblood of the West

The story of Arizona is in many respects the story of our effort to secure adequate water for our future.  Figuring large in this effort is the mighty Colorado River, long considered to be the “lifeblood of the West.”

The river rises in the mountains of Colorado and flows for about 1,300 miles through Colorado, Utah and Arizona and along the Arizona-Nevada and Arizona-California boundaries, after which it passes into Mexico and empties in the Mexican waters of the Gulf of California, as detailed in the case of Arizona v California.  On its journey to the sea, it gathers water from tributaries in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, sustaining the lives of over 25 million people. The Colorado River basin covers 242,000 square miles in seven states (Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming). Although it is not the largest river in the United States, the Colorado is the most legislated, most debated, and most litigated river in the entire world.

The Colorado River Compact of 1922 divided the seven Colorado River basin states into lower and upper basins and apportioned each basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year. (One acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons, the amount used by a family of four in one year.)  Six of the seven states took only a few years to ratify the compact, but Arizona did not ratify it until 1944, largely due to a dispute over its share of the river.

After over a decade of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona v. California ruled that Arizona has rights to 2.8 million acre-feet of mainstream Colorado River water a year; California, 4.4 million acre-feet; and Nevada, 300,000 acre-feet.

Although Arizona scored a major victory in Arizona v. California, it did not have the ability to divert and use its full allocation of Colorado River water.  Instead, it had to rely on groundwater and some surface water reservoir storage.  But, as the state continued to grow, Arizonans realized that the Salt River Project’s storage system and groundwater supplies alone would not be able to sustain the ever-expanding population, business, and industry.  In fact, Arizona’s heavy reliance on groundwater created an annual overdraft (the difference between pumping and natural replenishment) of some 2.2 million acre-feet per year.  The problem was so severe that parts of Pinal and Maricopa County literally began to subside as the water below was pumped out and aquifers collapsed.  Senator Carl Hayden warned at the time that “the survival of our dear state is at stake.”

The solution was the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a 336-mile canal designed to bring approximately 2.2 million acre-feet of Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona. The project began construction in 1973 and was mostly completed by 1994. The CAP now manages Arizona’s single largest renewable water supply, serving approximately 1.8 million people in Arizona.

Although the benefits of the CAP to Arizona are immeasurable, it has not been without controversy.  Indeed, by the time the project neared completion, a $500 million dispute had arisen between the entity that operates the CAP, and the U.S. government, over the way the CAP costs were allocated and the amount that this Arizona entity was obligated to repay the federal government for the project’s construction costs.

The Arizona Water Settlements Act, which I authored and won passage of in 2004, resolved this and several other related disputes concerning water.  The law also gives a number of Arizona cities additional CAP water that is vital to ensuring their sustainable growth and development.  Like the CAP, the legislation is a major component of Arizona’s water plan for the future and brings long-sought certainty to Arizona and its cities regarding their water supplies.

Ultimately, it is hard to overstate the importance of the Colorado River to Arizonans.  In a future column, I will write about a new joint federal-state effort to protect the water and surrounding environment of the river.

Sen. Kyl serves on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees and chairs the Republican Policy Committee.  Visit his website at www.kyl.senate.gov.