Dear HCN,
I read with interest
Michelle Nijhuis’ fine piece on the Colorado Delta. As HCN so aptly
puts it, the issue is really whether or not environmentalists can
find the means to change the Law of the River. While I support and
applaud the legal efforts of the Delta coalition (Southwest Center
for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, et al.) to tip the
balance a little so as to sustain a trickle to the Delta, it seems
to me it is high time to shore up some of the basic institutional
architecture sustaining the current imbalance that so much favors
development over ecology.
One of the linchpins of
the present allocation system is the 1944 Water Treaty which, by
the way, trumps the 1922 allocation agreement if push comes to
shove. The Water Treaty has been untouchable for half a century and
has so been avoided by the environmental community, many of whom
regarded treaty-tinkering a waste of time and funds. On the other
hand, it has been “amended” from time to time, as Nijhuis so
delicately put it, and the time is ripe for another amendment, this
time to the Treaty’s Article 3 – an antiquarian brief if ever there
was.
Article 3 specifies the order of priorities
for allocating water under the treaty and does so in this order of
uses: domestic and municipal; agriculture and stock raising;
electric power; other industrial uses; navigation; fishing and
hunting; any other beneficial uses.
Nowhere is
ecology or environment referenced, relegating the lot to last
priority in the treaty system.
It is high time to
change this. My suggestion, frankly, is to reach a binational
agreement through the International Boundary and Water Commission
that technically incorporates ecology and environment in the
categories of either navigation, or fishing and hunting, or both.
If this was done, it would provide environmentalists with greater
manuevering room under the Treaty, and the Delta would be better
off.
We’d be better off, of course, if the two
countries decided to pump life into the anachronistic “navigation”
provision, but I’ll save that for another
missive.
Stephen P.
Mumme
Fort Collins,
Colorado
The writer is a professor at the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Delta water treaty needs amending.
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