“The well is starting to get very, very empty. When water is not there, that upsets a way of life or the ability to live at all for millions of people.”
WATER IS LIFE
rights meetings as a curious onlooker, before returning home. At the suggestion of a friend, Hamby ran for the Imperial Irrigation District board against someone who had served on the board for decades and who was a swing vote on the QSA, along with two other candidates in the public election. He won in a runoff in November 2020, at 23. A few months after being sworn in, the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors nominated Hamby to serve as the District’s representative on the Colorado River Board of California. In January 2023, the Colorado River Board elected him chairman, ex officio the Colorado River Commissioner for the state of California. He’s been at work ever since.
river should be managed, the upper- and lower-basin states each submitted their own proposals to the Bureau of Reclamation, a water-management agency that oversees water resources in the American West. The upper-basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming say their proposal focuses primarily on the levels and releases of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin (and U.S.), and in doing so seeks to rebuild storage in these reservoirs. “What we’re trying to do in the upper basin is move from a demand-based operation to a supply-based operation,” says Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner in the river negotiations, emphasizing the upper-basin mantra that both basins need to think about using water based on available supply rather than using water to meet demand. “We all acknowledge that we have to live within the means of the river. I think it’s going to take big movement to do that,” she adds. “We know this because we’ve been doing it in the upper basin, and it’s not enjoyable.”
Lake Mead, on the Arizona/Nevada border, and Lake Powell, on the Arizona/Utah border, are both downstream from many of the upper-basin states, which means that upper-basin states rely on snowpack and rain when they draw from the river and cannot pull from the reservoirs once the water has flowed into Lake Powell. The lower-basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada say their proposal addresses the supply-and-demand imbalance in the lower basin by spurring reductions in water use of up to 1.5 million acre-feet per year, if and when the total system reaches certain thresholds. The lower-basin proposal takes into account levels across its seven reservoirs, rather than focusing on Mead and Powell. It also calls for basin-wide reductions if the 1.5 million acre-feet of reductions by Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico are not enough due to climate change and extended drought, Hamby says. “A key issue is, what are the levels of reductions needed in both basins?” Hamby asks. “In the lower basin, that’s reducing demands to be able to break even. Within the upper basin, that means reducing demands to ensure that there’s continued water flowing down the river and making its way ultimately to other communities.” Hamby, however, takes umbrage with the upper-basin proposal. “There is no commitment at any time for any upper-basin state to do anything other than working to evaluate policies and programs,” he says of the upper-basin plan. “The entire weight and burden of climate change falls upon the majority of the population of the [entire] basin,
lower basin and Mexico should reduce their water use by 1.5 million acre- feet a year in most scenarios moving forward, Hamby says. But what if that isn’t enough? “That cannot be borne on one basin or another,” Hamby says of the responsibility of reducing water usage. “That requires everybody to be able to contribute.”
Hamby understands the importance of access to water, having grown up in one of California’s most active agricultural regions, the Imperial Valley. Hamby’s great-grandfather arrived in the Imperial Valley from Big Spring, Texas, during the Great Depression. He tried his hand at ditchdigging, beekeeping, and pastoring at a small church and worked in land-leveling and vegetable-growing. Hamby’s father took to agriculture, and eventually started his own farming company growing produce from onions to melons. “Being from a family involved in agriculture, water is your lifeblood,” Hamby says. “And then there’s me,” he adds. “I’m from here. Growing up, checking fields and changing water at 2 a.m. was a very commonplace thing.” Although he was only 7 years old at the time, Hamby vividly remembers a water-rights issue that bore down on the Imperial Valley in what he calls “the largest movement of water from agricultural to urban areas in the country.” The Quantification Settlement
FUTURE IN FLUX
There remaining disagreements between the upper and lower-basin states on how to manage the river, though both Hamby and Mitchell are tight-lipped about what those differences are. are significant Hamby says he hopes they can come to an agreement without getting the courts involved. “There’s more certainty in being able to work together and work something out than there is tossing a coin or going to the Supreme Court,” he says. But there is so much at stake, says Sharma, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, including drinking water for millions of Americans — one- third of each glass of water in the lower basin comes from the Colorado River, according to Hamby — agriculture, and the livelihoods of farmers, farm communities, and tribal nations. Mitchell says there are senior water rights holders (those at the forefront of the line for water in times of shortage) in the upper-basin states who are part of the agriculture community and regularly have the water shut off “because it’s not there.” “We feel like there needs to be some of that across the entire basin,” she adds. What is certain to everyone touched by the negotiations is that we all have to plan for a future with less water, and it won’t be easy.
ANATOMY OF A DEAL
The seven river-basin commissioners began negotiations over how the Colorado River will be operated after 2026 in July 2023. In March 2024, after several months of negotiations and significant disagreements over how the
Agreement of 2003 saw the Imperial Valley agree to transfer a large portion of water yearly to San Diego’s growing population for up to 75 years. In the Imperial Valley, where crops like broccoli and lettuce thrive and are distributed to plates across the nation, access to water is feast or famine. The QSA was a galvanizing event for Hamby, who went on to Stanford University where he used the library to read up on the history of the Imperial Valley. When he graduated in 2019, he traveled across the Colorado River basin, visiting dams and attending water-
who produce the most economic output, produce the most agricultural output, and have the most people at risk.” The Bureau of Reclamation will incorporate the proposals, and any future agreements the commissioners make, into its analysis that’s expected to be issued in a draft environmental impact statement by the end of the year. After a public response period, the bureau will submit a final statement and the Department of the Interior will ultimately issue a record of decision with the official new guidance. It is yet to be determined how long the new guidelines will be in effect. In May, the seven commissioners met again to continue negotiations. So far, they’ve collectively agreed that the
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ISSUE 01
THE WORTH OF WATER
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