Conserving Our Resources, Ensuring our Future

In a recent column, I wrote about the Colorado River’s importance to Arizona.  This week, I turn to an unprecedented, joint federal and non-federal effort to protect the environmental splendors of the lower Colorado River.

Over the course of the last century, as our state grew, those who lived here began to realize that Arizona did not have enough water to meet the needs of its burgeoning population. So Arizona turned to its largest renewable water source: the Colorado River.  With the increasing reliance on the river came the need for dams and other facilities that constitute a “. . . vast, interlocking machinery-a dozen major works delivering water according to a congressionally fixed priorities for home, agriculture, and industrial uses to people spread over thousands of square miles . . .,” as the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in its 1963 decision in Arizona v. California.

There are concerns that these works may have or could adversely affect some native and endangered species and their habitat along the Colorado River such as the southwestern willow flycatcher, the Yuma clapper rail, the bonytail, a native fish of the lower Colorado River, and the razorback sucker, another native fish of the lower Colorado.

In response to these concerns, the federal government and over 50 non-federal parties, including the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, have joined forces to create the Multi-Species Conservation Program (MSCP).  The program is a comprehensive, 50-year effort to conserve wildlife and protect and maintain wildlife habitat on the lower Colorado River while simultaneously accommodating water diversions and power production on the river.

MSCP is remarkable because it strikes a balance between the water and power operations on the lower Colorado and the need to conserve and protect native species and their habitat in a manner consistent with the federal Endangered Species Act.  To achieve this balance, the program will create more than 8,100 acres of riparian, marsh, and backwater habitat and implement additional measures to protect 26 endangered, threatened, and sensitive species along the Colorado River. These conservation measures will ensure that the agencies and entities involved in ongoing and future water and power operations along the lower river comply with the Endangered Species Act.

The MSCP covers approximately 400 miles along the Colorado River in the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. The costs will be spread over 50 years, and split 50/50 between the federal government and the non-federal entities involved in the program. Arizona and Nevada will each bear 25 percent of the non-federal costs and California will bear 50 percent.

Implementation began in April 2005 under the supervision of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the MSCP is already showing positive results.

In order to provide more certainty to the program and to its participants, I intend to introduce the Multi-Species Conservation Program Act in the Senate in the coming weeks.  The legislation, among other things, authorizes funds to cover the federal share of the program costs, directs the Secretary of the Interior to manage and implement the MSCP in accordance with the underlying program documents, and provides a waiver of sovereign immunity so that the non-federal participants would be able to hold the U.S. government accountable for its obligations under that plan in court, if that became necessary.

This is an instance where the legislative process can serve many interests, and in a fair and reasonable way.  Animal and plant life are protected at the same time that Arizona, Nevada, and California can continue to draw upon the body of water that has been called “the lifeblood of the West.”

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