I came away from a week in Las Vegas more hopeful about a deal to prevent a Colorado River crash than I have felt since the ominous day last March when Lake Powell dropped below elevation 3,525. The annual meeting of the Colorado Water Users Association is a bit like the shadow puppets of Java …
Continue reading ‘At CRWUA, inklings of a Colorado River compromise’ »
LAKE MEAD – The Park Service has cut a raggedy new dirt road (“4×4 recommended”) north of Hemenway Harbor along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline so you can still get in to go fishing and do the beach thing. Mead was at elevation 1,043 and change as I rode it on my bike yesterday afternoon, with …
Continue reading ‘If elevation 3,490 is Lake Powell’s new “dead pool”’ »
Thanks to a helpful wizard here at the Utton Center, we’ve now got all the Eric Kuhn/John Fleck Colorado River Compact Centennial posts gathered in a single spot.
The Bureau of Reclamation folks haven’t posted the slides yet from last week’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement briefings. In the meantime, some of us in the Colorado River nerd world have been passing around our screenshotted copies like some sort of precious mimeographed ’60s ‘zine. It was a remarkable affair. Buried in the tables and …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck After signing the Colorado River Compact on Friday, Nov. 24, 1922, the commissioners and their advisors returned to their home states. The compact would not become effective until it had been ratified by the legislatures of each of the states and the United States Congress. It was now time …
Continue reading ‘A century ago in Colorado River Compact negotiations: Heading Home’ »
By John Fleck and Eric Kuhn As the Colorado River Compact’s negotiators trekked home in the final week of November 1922 following the completion of their task, the rhetoric soared. Newspapers across the basin published the text of the Compact in full, and the leaders of the negotiation effort fanned out to praise the effort …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck The final day of the Colorado River Compact negotiations seemed almost anticlimactic. Wordsmithing “unperfected rights”? Unable to reach a final agreement on Article VIII on Thursday evening, the Commission met again on Friday morning, Nov. 24, 1922, at 10 AM. They began with a discussion of “unperfected rights.” The …
Continue reading ‘A century ago in Colorado River Compact negotiations: the Compact is signed’ »
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck It was snowing like crazy at Bishop’s Lodge outside Santa Fe as the Colorado River Commission Chairman Herbert Hoover called the 24th meeting to order at 9:45 AM on the morning of Nov. 23, 1922. The Commission had only about 30 hours left before its Friday afternoon target for …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck When the Colorado River Compact Commission adjourned two days previously, on Nov. 20, 1922, two major Colorado River Compact issues had been left unresolved; the amount of water that would be apportioned to the Lower Basin and how the compact would address the need for storage to protect the …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck As Chairman Herbert Hoover gaveled the 21st meeting of the Colorado River Commission to order on the morning of Nov. 20, 1922, they faced two big issues: Arizona’s concerns that the proposal on the table would not provide enough water for Lower Basin water users, and the question of …