Water - Even When It doesn't Rain - Reigns

A random sample of acquaintances (they are used to being subjected to my quirky polls) shows only the vaguest notion of where their tap water comes from. In my years publishing community newspapers I have found this to be the norm. Water is something most of us take for granted.

But water doesn't get to your tap without a mind-boggling amount of planning. In the arid western U.S., that is multiplied exponentially. Unfortunately most regular folks, if they have any notion about how cities get their water, base it on Roman Polanski's 1974 movie Chinatown. They know there is subterfuge and money involved and big spans of time - which in todays world means anything over four years.

Actually, water systems are developed over decades, quarter- and half-centuries. Years have been added to the total since the 70s addition of environmental regulations. Building a major new dam or reservoir is a 50-year project with many hurdles to clear along the way.

In the meantime people keep coming to places in the western U.S. that had precious little water in the first place. And they expect water to come out of the tap when they turn it on. (A side note: water experts, but not usually the general population, understand the water 80/20 rule of thumb: Agriculture uses, on average, 80 percent of any water supply.)

The big river systems have traditionally been original water sources. These rivers and their feeding watersheds also don't fit neatly within state borders. Even when a river itself is the borderline, feeder streams enter from both sides.

The instrument of choice to deal with this has been the "compact," a multi-state or multi jurisdictional instrument used to share the water. The compact that holds sway in the proposal to pipe water from Flaming Gorge to the Front Range cities of Colorado is the Colorado River Compact. Within that are two major subdivisions, the Upper Basin, dealing with Colorado, Utah, wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona; and Lower Basin, dealing with California, Arizona and Nevada. The Wikipedia article linked above contains reliable information in its general overview of the compact. The Bureau of Reclamation lists the various laws relating to the system's rivers.

When you walk the borderlands rest assured that anytime water crosses your path, there are a depth of stories and some very interesting people to meet.