[HN Gopher] Feds cut Colorado River allocation to Arizona, Nevad...
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Feds cut Colorado River allocation to Arizona, Nevada as talks fail
Author : AftHurrahWinch
Score : 13 points
Date : 2022-08-16 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| > "Over the last 20 years, there's been several years where there
| were opportunities to not take all the water from the system, but
| we still did," said Christopher Kuzdas, a senior water program
| manager with the Environmental Defense Fund. "So we kept drawing
| down our water supplies in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. And so
| those water supplies in those lakes, almost roughly 60 million
| acre-feet of water, that's been our buffer that has allowed us to
| keep going forward using more water than actually provided by the
| river each year."
|
| Almost a textbook tragedy of the commons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
|
| > ...the federal government on Tuesday announced new water
| allocation reductions, including nearly 25 percent in cuts to
| Arizona.
|
| > In a news conference Tuesday, federal Bureau of Reclamation
| officials announced cuts to the yearly water allocation to
| Arizona and Nevada, as well as Mexico, which is also party to the
| compact. The bureau will withhold about 21 percent of Arizona's
| yearly water allocation next year, as well as 8 percent of
| Nevada's.
|
| In context, Arizona's population is expected to increase by 26.1%
| by 2040. Given that population increase, if their water
| allocation remains the same, then the average Arizonan in 2040
| will have access to 62.6% as much water as the average Arizonan
| did yesterday.
|
| https://www.thecentersquare.com/arizona/how-arizona-s-popula...
| eesmith wrote:
| This empharically _isn 't_ a tragedy of the commons situation.
| Your link starts:
|
| > In economic science, the tragedy of the commons is a
| situation in which individual users, who have open access to a
| resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules
| that govern access and use,[1][2] act independently according
| to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of
| all users, cause depletion of the resource through their
| uncoordinated action
|
| Note the _unhampered by shared social structures or formal
| rules that govern access and use_?
|
| The formal rules which govern access and use were put into
| place 100 years ago.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
|
| > The Colorado River Compact is a 1922 agreement among seven
| U.S. states in the basin of the Colorado River in the American
| Southwest governing the allocation of the water rights to the
| river's water among the parties of the interstate compact.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| Good point! Thanks for taking the time to explain that to me.
| [deleted]
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| This article is not worth the time to read. It is effectively
| devoid of facts and relies on two interviews to provide some
| shallow commentary.
|
| However, it is quite an interesting fact that the current
| democratic administration has just dumped money on this problem
| and the favorable outcomes seem to lean toward California. Which
| has overburdened their allotment of water from the Colorado River
| by over 20% since at least 2012.
| Geonode wrote:
| This article doesn't really say anything. It doesn't say who did
| what. So there's no real info except that there will be cuts. But
| not to California, how come?
|
| Who takes more than they're alotted? What are the possible fair
| reductions?
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| I appreciated Roerink's description of negotiations. A
| transcript would have been nice, but based on my own experience
| when everyone must make concessions, it's easier if they can
| compromise behind a closed door.
|
| > "Everything blew up" in negotiations last week, Kyle Roerink,
| executive director at the Great Basin Water Network, told The
| Hill in an interview.
|
| > "You had some parties bringing a good chunk of water to the
| table. Others didn't even want to be bothered with coming to
| the table with anything meaningful," Roerink said. As a result,
| as of Monday evening, the states had not reached an agreement
| "as the nation's largest reservoirs rapidly deplete
| themselves."
|
| > Roerink called the breakdown a microcosm of the poor
| relations among stakeholders on the river. The major players,
| whom he dubbed the "water buffaloes," have "touted their
| ability to collaborate and coordinate and negotiate in a
| civilized manner, but if the last week is any indicator, folks
| are not singing 'Kumbaya,' they are sharpening their knives,"
| he said.
|
| > Rather than negotiate towards a mutually beneficial
| agreement, he said, parties have been focused on reaching an
| arrangement that benefits them at the expense of others.
|
| > "What we are seeing is a situation where folks are talking
| about for legislation, litigation, other tactics to try and get
| the best deal, they believe, for their respective
| constituencies," he said. "But I think one way to describe what
| we're seeing so far is that there are entities out there that
| think this is a zero-sum game."
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(page generated 2022-08-16 23:02 UTC)