With help from Blanca Begert and Wes Venteicher
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off the next two weeks for the holidays but back to our normal schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 2.
WELL, THAT DIDN’T LAST LONG: It might’ve been easy to think that this week’s gathering of Colorado River power players in Las Vegas would be a pretty tame one, after last year’s wet winter and a gusher of federal funds led to a detente between California and Arizona over the West’s main water source for 40 million people.
It was anything but.
Tensions flared up again yesterday and today as the seven states that depend on the river face a March deadline from the Biden administration to come up with a long-term water-sharing deal, as Camille and Annie Snider report from Vegas.
Negotiators exchanged heated words from the podium in front of the hundreds of technocrats, tribes and farmers gathered at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino for the Colorado River Water Users Association’s annual conference.
One of the most fervent was Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator, who drew cheers from the Colorado contingent for holding firm in refusing to accept supply cuts (and who published a pugnacious op-ed Wednesday night saying so that provoked the ire of her downstream counterparts).
“Ideally this is something that all seven basin states can come up with together,” she said. “But I want to be real clear that we can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk.”
The battle lines between the seven states that share the river have shifted over the past year. Last fall, the biggest conflict was between Arizona and California, which fought bitterly as water levels at the two main reservoirs were falling fast toward crisis levels. But last year’s storms and a $4 billion pot of money from Congress has smoothed over that clash.
Now, the fight has reconfigured — pitting the lower river states of Arizona, California and Nevada against their upstream counterparts in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.
The problem is this: The Upper Basin states never fully used the water that that century-old compact assigned to them, and argue that they shouldn’t be on the hook for cuts when the arid Lower Basin states have maxed out their apportionment and then some.
Arizona, Nevada and California’s negotiators said this week they are close to a long-term deal that would stanch their use to bring it in line with the water that the river has delivered historically — a gap known as the “structural deficit.”
But those reductions will almost certainly fall short of what will be needed to deal with the pain climate change is inflicting. The Lower Basin states argue that burden should be shared by Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, as well as Mexico, which gets a slice of the river, too.
If they can’t bridge the divide soon, the issue stands to land in the lap of the Biden administration, Congress or the Supreme Court during the heat of the 2024 election season. And no one wants that.
“Russian roulette sounds like an interesting, sometimes lucrative game until it doesn’t work out for you. That’s what the Supreme Court or Congress is to us,” said J.B. Hamby, California’s lead negotiator and a director of the Imperial Valley farm district that controls the single largest share of Colorado River water.
MAKE IT REAL: Camille also sat down with the man in charge of delivering a chunk of that water to 19 million people in Southern California.
As general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Adel Hagekhalil is at the epicenter of California’s biggest water fights — and he’s got big plans for dealing with them. Chief among them is reducing demand on the river through local storage, water recycling and conservation.
“Time is not on our side,” he told Camille. “We’ve committed as part of the lower basin that we will deal with the structural deficit in the Lower Basin, but the question is beyond the structural deficit, as the hydrology and system goes down, how we’re going to share.”
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VEGAS STYLE REPORT: The technocrats, tribal leaders and state appointees who descended on Las Vegas this week to try to hammer out a way to reduce reliance on the Colorado River made their points from the podium, in exchanges over drinks and in hallways — and with their outfits.
One of the traditions of the 75-year annual conference includes wearing pins broadcasting one’s allegiance, which attendees also give out to others. Then there’s the cowboy hats, boots and belts donned to show loyalty to a Western culture, as well as turquoise jewelry made by Native Americans, whose long-ignored claims to the river are gaining prominence in the discussions.
From left, some power dressers: J.B. Hamby, wearing a turquoise bolo tie from New Mexico and a California lapel pin; Adrian Notsinneh, legislative council member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, with a black cowboy hat with a golden eagle feather (symbolic of protection); Rosa Long, vice-chair of the Cocopah Indian Tribe and chair of the Ten Tribes Partnership, wearing jewelry that was gifted to her because she likes layering; and a meeting attendee wearing a New Mexico pin. — CvK
UPS AND DOWNS: California released its Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for 2020 and 2021 on Thursday, a bit too late for us to include in yesterday’s edition. It will surprise no one that emissions went up in this period following the resumption of daily activities after an economy-wide shut down during the first year of Covid.
All told, 2021 state emissions rose 3.4 percent from 2020, but were still 5.7 percent lower than they were in 2019.
The largest increase came from the transportation sector, where emissions went up 7.4 percent in 2021 after people started driving again. Environmental advocates say this should push the state to strengthen its efforts to reduce vehicle miles traveled. Of the 12.6 million-metric-ton CO2 increase in 2021,10 million came from transportation, and most of that from passenger cars.
Electricity sector emissions increased 4.8 percent, which is partly because more electricity was generated but also because the carbon intensity of electricity increased. The report notes that while solar and wind electricity increased by 15 percent thanks to clean energy incentives, fossil fuel powered electricity also increased by about 7 percent.
We don’t have an inventory for 2022 and 2023 yet, but CARB predicts emissions will drop back down nearly to 2020 levels and continue their decline from there. In 2021 we were emitting 381 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, and the number needs to drop to 228 MMT to meet 2030 targets. — BB
GAS-X: Also breaking late yesterday: California’s natural gas hammer came down on subsidies for developers who still want to burn the stuff in new buildings.
The California Public Utilities Commission opted to stop helping developers pay (via utility bills) for electric lines to buildings that use both electricity and natural gas. The decision built on the CPUC’s nation-leading decision last year to end subsidies for new natural gas lines themselves.
Enviros and utilities liked the change, but the Small Business Utility Advocates and the Coalition of California Utility Employees didn’t. The labor coalition wants the state to put out a natural gas phaseout plan before making what it calls “ad hoc” decisions that are more specific. — WV
MR. SMITH GOES TO REGULATORY RELATIONS: Southern California Edison’s distinctively bearded lobbyist might not be as much of a regular fixture at legislative hearings next year, thanks to a recent promotion.
Adam Smith, SCE’s principal manager of state public policy, is being promoted on Christmas Day to director of regulatory relations, where he’ll lead the utility’s advocacy at the Public Utilities Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and California’s Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety. — WV
— A Canadian company will have to apply for a new gold-mining permit after Nevada County ruled its permit from 1950 is too old.
— The Onion pokes random fun at California’s chronic water shortages.
