COVER STORY
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT: How Farmers Have Long Respected— and Fought to Save—the Mighty Colorado By Kara Timmins I f the history of the Colorado River were to be presented as a work of fiction, the depth of plot and complexity of the story would read like a great American classic. The churning, cutting power of the water that passes through the terrain of the West parallels the complicated human effort that goes into wrangling it. For over 100 years, a growing
and varies from location of one farm to another. A solution for water sequestration for one operation isn’t the same for another. But all farmers along the path of the Colorado know one thing: they live or die by the natural and man-made flow of the river. Conserving water is paramount, as it has been for generations. Robert Medler, Arizona Government Affairs Manager at Western Growers, summarizes the approach to finding solutions to current water availability realities: “Everybody’s looking for the silver bullet and you really need the silver buck shot. It’s going to be a whole bunch of little things that are all going to be great and that are all going to make a difference and make an impact.”
*** The wide-shot bird’s eye view begins with the Colorado River Compact signed in 1922. The collective enforcement of the Compact is commonly referred to as the Law of the River. In the early 20 th century, representatives from the seven basin states came together to set a standard for allocation of the water flowing through the states: 7.5 million acre-feet per year to the Upper Basin states—Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico—and 7.5 million acre-feet per year to the Lower Basin states— California, Arizona and Nevada. The allocation was later changed in 1944 to allocate 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico.
civilization has utilized the river to irrigate agriculture and sustain large populations. But climate, the geography of the West and the Colorado River are reminders that the environment is a complicated and dynamic force, and the variance of water availability is a pressing reminder that adaptability has long been the key to sustainability. Farmers have known that accessing the Colorado River and the human-manned systems that branch from it is fractal in its complexity. Every water agreement has finer details that reveal themselves on closer inspection, and every detail connects to another discussion, its nuance fine and delicate. Navigating successfully within the body of the system is surgical
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MARCH | APRIL 2023
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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