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Nia and Aughie discuss the factors that brought about the creation of the Colorado River Compact.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Announcer: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
Nia Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
John Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
John Aughenbaugh: I'm lovely. I've had the requisite amount of coffee. Yeah, I'm ready and ready to go to discuss our topic today. Listeners, our topic today is something that probably many Westerners, Americans who live out west are familiar. But for many of us who lives along the east coast, we're probably, "What are they talking about?"
Nia Rodgers: Yeah, this isn't a thing.
John Aughenbaugh: Our topic today is the Colorado River Compact.
Nia Rodgers: First of all, one should note that the Colorado River is long and big and deep. It.
John Aughenbaugh: It flows from the North Central part of the state of Colorado, the whole way down to Mexico, it is fed by a number of tributaries and smaller rivers, as far north as Wyoming.
Nia Rodgers: some parts of California are involved in it too, what are the states that are covered?
John Aughenbaugh: The states that are recovered by the compact include Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California. Those are the seven.
Nia Rodgers: Pretty much all of the southern West of the United States.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, with the exception of Texas. We could do a separate episode just on water issues in the state of Texas.
Nia Rodgers: Which we may get to at some point.
John Aughenbaugh: Texans would be quite pleased by us dividing them out.
Nia Rodgers: I was going to say separating them, the secessionists that they are.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, because they proudly claim that they are unique, the compact, which we will dive into the details here in just a few moments, the compact divides those seven states into what they describe as an Upper Basin and a lower Colorado River basin. The upper basin is comprised of the states of Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. The lower basin is comprised of the states of Nevada, Arizona, and California. As we will discuss Nia, what's really become an issue today is the increased use of the Colorado River waters by the lower basin or lower division states.
Nia Rodgers: Nevada and Arizona.
John Aughenbaugh: Also California, let's be very clear.
Nia Rodgers: I don't want to jump the gun with my thoughts on because I lived out west, I should, by the way, disclaimer, lived in Utah for four years, the first time I tried to go to college, and the water rights out west are incredibly divisive, political. We have no idea in the east because water in the east is relatively easy. Water in the west is not, it is just not that easy. It's not as plentiful. It's not as simple. A lot of states draw their water off the same rivers and so you have a lot of competition. Now I say all that and of course, on the tributaries of the Mississippi and The Missouri, you have states like Georgia and Florida that also have similar problems, but nothing like out west. Part of that is that the west, in the middle parts of it, is a great big old desert.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: I'm getting ahead of myself, but Las Vegas is, there's carbon IV on the face of the universe because it is a place in the desert that has to be watered at such a level to make it livable that it's just incredibly well anyway. Let's start with the compact. When did the compact get signed?
John Aughenbaugh: The compact was signed by the seven states and ratified by the Congress in 1922.
Nia Rodgers: It's 100 years old.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is. This year, it will be 100 years old. Listeners please note.
Nia Rodgers: That's pretty good to hold for that long.
John Aughenbaugh: There are some tensions and pressure points that have risen.
Nia Rodgers: You think in the last 100 years?
John Aughenbaugh: Particularly in the last roughly 15-20. But listeners should note, one very important process or structural element of what I just described. This is a compact among seven states and according to the United States Constitution.
Nia Rodgers: All right, it had to go through the Congress. They could just all get together and have a beer and decide this for themselves.
John Aughenbaugh: You're right Nia,.
Nia Rodgers: It had to go through a process. Okay, that makes sense because, what if a state hadn't wanted to be involved or didn't want to share, or wanted a much bigger share?
John Aughenbaugh: Or if they got left out.
Nia Rodgers: What if all the other states got together and said, "Don't tell Wyoming, but we're going to decide what to do with the river," and Wyoming found out later, like one of those things where you have a party in high school and somebody finds out later they weren't invited, many feelings hurt.
John Aughenbaugh: You come to school on Monday and you'll find out.
Nia Rodgers: There was an awesome keger at somebody's house where their parents were gone.
John Aughenbaugh: God, yeah, and all your friends got invited and you weren't.
Nia Rodgers: That would be bad.
John Aughenbaugh: In the United States Federal Constitution, specifically, for those who like these details, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, it's known as the Compact Clause.
Nia Rodgers: Of course it is. Every single clause in the Constitution has a name.
John Aughenbaugh: It has a name. We've discussed this in previous podcasts.
Nia Rodgers: At some point, we're going to do five-part episode of just reading you the constitution and telling you all the names of all the clauses.
John Aughenbaugh: That's going to be, by the way, listeners be the follow-up episode or episodes to one that we've already have scheduled for the spring, where we're going to talk about those things that are not in the Constitution. Things that were omitted, things that Americans believe are in the constitution that aren't.
Nia Rodgers: Things that were proposed and didn't make it. Nah, we don't need that in the Constitution.
John Aughenbaugh: The compact clause basically states that no state in the country can enter into an agreement, a compact if you will, with another state or a foreign power, unless Congress approves it.
Nia Rodgers: North Dakota and Canada cannot collude in some cross border something.
John Aughenbaugh: About moose, no.
Nia Rodgers: Without running it by Congress first. That doesn't necessarily mean the Congress won't say go on which a bad selves and worry about your moose the way God intended.
John Aughenbaugh: This particular clause address a deficiency in the Articles of Confederation. After the Revolutionary War and the Articles of Confederation, you had states entering into agreements with Great Britain or France, or Spain.
Nia Rodgers: Like Texas and Spain over Mexico and the boarder of the river.
John Aughenbaugh: You had this situation.
Nia Rodgers: You can't be having that because then federal things might come into conflict with it, or the States might come into conflict with it.
John Aughenbaugh: You also had states working with other states to exclude other states.
Nia Rodgers: The state of NEA, and the state of Oregon Bar talk about the state of Newman behind their back, and decide they're going to only trade with each other.
John Aughenbaugh: We won't trade with the State of Newman. The state of Newman's like, I'm part of your nation. Well, you're except for in these particular situation.
Nia Rodgers: We don't care about you. Now my feelings are hurt. Frankly, coming back to the clause, I shall warn listeners that I've suddenly developed an interest in Lord of the Rings. I'll be watching the movies with friends over the next few weeks because apparently they're three hours each. But anyway, we needed one government to rule them all. Because otherwise the states could get exactly what you're talking about. I never even thought about that, but the idea that Texas could make a treaty or a compact, is there a difference between a compact and a treaty or they're essentially the same thing?
John Aughenbaugh: Well, the compacts like treaties, are considered the supreme law of the United States.
Nia Rodgers: Is a compact, the same thing as a treaty, another different word, so probably they're not exactly the same.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, understand that treaties by definition are one nation-state entering into an agreement with another sovereign nation-state.
Nia Rodgers: Between states you have compacts, and between nations you have treaties?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Got you. Okay.
John Aughenbaugh: That's a good shorthand way to understand the difference between a compact, and a treaty. Now, most of the compacts in the United States, pre 20th century, pre 1900's, were about border disputes.
Nia Rodgers: We, two states agree that this is where the border is?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: We have made a compact to make a square State, Wyoming, I'm looking at you in the middle of everything. That makes sense. I know that out West a lot of the lines are drawn ridiculously straight. There were just drawn on a map that way they may or may not take into account the running of a river or a mountain in the middle of that straight line, half the mountains in one state and half the mountains in another state, whereas in the East, you get a lot more craggy. The states are more craggy except that weird line between North Carolina and Virginia, that's utterly straight for no apparent reason.
John Aughenbaugh: If you've ever driven on Route 58 in Southern Virginia, you will recognize how done straight the border is.
Nia Rodgers: It makes no reasonable sense.
John Aughenbaugh: We move into the 20th century, and that's where you begin to see more states, having disputes and then entering into agreements about the use of resources, particularly water or public transportation infrastructure. You even have some compacts early in the 20th century in regards to coal mines, oral wells, and reserves. They change nature, and the Colorado River Compact really reflects it. It was the seven states coming together because they all recognize the importance of that river to their states.
Nia Rodgers: Sorry.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
Nia Rodgers: Just a minute. I'm hung up on the territorial dispute. I would think that that would need to be settled and done. Do you live in Nevada or do you live in California? You need to know. Because government structures, because of the way we structure things like voting and distribution of welfare, and those kinds of things.
John Aughenbaugh: Political culture is different in states.
Nia Rodgers: You would want to know where. Once that gets settled, I'm imagining that, for instance, if Virginia right now decided, we're really still pretty annoyed about this West Virginia thing, so we're just going to take it back. You can see earlier episodes we talked about, during the Civil War, West Virginia was like, no, we don't want to be part of Virginia and they cracked off and went off to be on their own, craggy, special state, shaped wise. But if Virginia was like, no, we want to go all the way to the Ohio border, we're going to take West Virginia back. West Virginia will be like no, thank you. We don't want to be part of Virginia. That would cause huge dramas. I can understand why once the borders get settled, they stay settled. But I think it alludes to your earlier illusion, because you hadn't yet made the full point, that development is what drives the resources issues. If we just stopped growing all cities in the United States, that's it. Birth rate, zero, death rate, zero, which I don't know how you'd do that, but if you did do that, you wouldn't have resource issues. It's the way the resources are currently divided would be fine.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because many scientists will go ahead and tell you that scarce resources, yes, there might be exploration, you might find new resources. But by and large, we're at a point in regards to what is available on Earth. We pretty much know. We know how much water there is. We know how much fossil fuel exists. We know how much we can go ahead, and extract in terms of energy from non renewable sources like the sand or the wind. We know, for instance, with studying accuracy, how much food we can actually produce in most land on Earth. We're at that point now.
Nia Rodgers: Other climate changes is going to alter that and affect that.
John Aughenbaugh: That's one of those variables we're going to get to Nia, in regards to the Colorado River College.
Nia Rodgers: I'm jumping all ahead.
John Aughenbaugh: When the compact was agreed to, basically, what the compact did was make sure that the states in the upper basin, again, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming.
Nia Rodgers: And New Mexico.
John Aughenbaugh: And New Mexico.
Nia Rodgers: But the Arizona's are struggling.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. At one point, Arizona was considered in the upper, now it's considered part of the lower. Arizona has created a number of issues with the compact, and we can touch upon those if you want. But the explicit promise underlying the compact was the upper basin states would not overuse the Colorado River.
Nia Rodgers: They wouldn't use it up before it got to the lower basin.
John Aughenbaugh: To get to the lower basin.
Nia Rodgers: They wouldn't damn it up. They wouldn't do all the things that you would do to prevent waterflow. The flow of the river is measured in what?
John Aughenbaugh: They go by a million acre per foot every year, is how they measure it.
Nia Rodgers: In acre feet.
John Aughenbaugh: Acre feet per year. But Nia, you actually get to again, and I know you're not intending to do this, you're actually getting to one of the more significant issues today. The compact is written in regards to the amount of available water in 1922. There is less available water.
Nia Rodgers: I was going to say, is it more or less than what's available now?
John Aughenbaugh: It is less available now. But you have more uses of the Colorado River today. In terms of population, land development, farming. This is a big one. Again, for those of us on the East, you might be like, whatever, recreational sports needs.
Nia Rodgers: I was just going to ask you about that because I'm assuming that in 1922 not a lot of rafting, not a lot of tubing, not a lot of people having boats on the various lakes.
John Aughenbaugh: Jet skiing.
Nia Rodgers: Probably not a lot of that because first of all, 1922, most of that had not been engineered yet. I think people have no idea how much wealthier even the poorest Americans are now, than the poorest Americans in 1922?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Just in terms of acquisition of goods. Like in 1922, you're talking about most people not owning things the way we own them now, most families, if they owned a car, had one. Many families did not own a car. They did not motorized tractors, they didn't own all the things that we have. Then if you're talking about just regular people, people didn't do the leisure things that we do now because they were busy scrapping out a life.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: The vast majority of people in that time that lived out West lived on farms. You're talking about a daily grind. That is one of those things where if you don't do it, you don't eat. This idea that you would have days of leisure time that you could pop off to the lake and hang out on your boat is completely foreign concept to 1922.
John Aughenbaugh: You don't see the rise of the leisure sector of the American economy until well after World War II.
Nia Rodgers: I was going to say, wouldn't it have been in the boom of the late 40s and 50s?
John Aughenbaugh: I mean, there was so little of that before World War II that the federal government didn't track it as a sector of the nation's economy. Now, I mean, with the exception of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. But even with the pandemic, the leisure economy has taken a hit, the leisure sector of the economy. But it's still, I mean, historically from the 1940s and 50s until today, it was one of the fastest growing sectors of the American economy. To your point, Nia, again, we have very short memories in the United States because what poor people or lower middle-class people today can do in regards to leisure, is greatly expanded compared to what we saw pre-World War II. Greatly expanded. But let's get back to the compact. The compact by enlarge worked pretty well. According to most of the historical accounts I read and I read well over a dozen throughout the 1930s, 40s and, into the 1950s. What begins to change-
Nia Rodgers: Wait. Before we go away from him. Can we just mention the name of the attorney that came up with his idea because his name is Delph Carpenter, D-E-L-P-H, Delph Carpenter, which I just want his name to go down in history because one, that's an awesome name.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: But two it was basically one guy who was like, what we ought to do, we ought to manage this dang thing.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Parameter role in almost every historical account I read in doing the research for this episode.
Nia Rodgers: If you're wondering if one person can affect huge change turns out, yeah they can, because this isn't water for millions of people. He was like we need to find a way to manage this fairly so that everybody gets a share in the good years and bad years. Even then they had recognized that there are good years and bad years as far as drought and that thing, although we're entering a lot more bad years, I think.
John Aughenbaugh: In one of the more important features of the compact is the measurement of the water usage in each of the states is based on a 10-year average. The states in the lower basin, for instance, can put pressure on the states and the upper basin if the 10-year water amount available in usage figures change. Well, that's become again, a significant issue in the last 20 years because of two variables. One, climate change leading to drought conditions in the West. Then two, until this most recent census, some of our fastest growing states are actually part of the compact.
Nia Rodgers: California.
John Aughenbaugh: California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are all or were fast-growing states. Wyoming, not so much, Utah not so much. Colorado, pretty fairly consistent population growth. But the other states, particularly the lower basin states, in the post-World War II, 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Again, until the most recent census, because California is actually lost some people.
Nia Rodgers: They moved to Texas.
John Aughenbaugh: By the way, it wouldn't surprise me in 2030, if Wyoming actually gained a seat or two in the house. But nevertheless, but think about Nevada. I mean, you described it Nia. Post-world War II. Nevada and parts of California were viewed as places for returning GIs. Particularly those GIs who served in the Asian theater, the Southeast Asian Pacific theater of World War II. They returned to the United States. The thought was, let's give them some place to go as they returned from the war. As you pointed out, there are parts of Nevada, huge parts of California, huge parts of for instance Arizona that are desert. I mean, remember folks, Arizona is the home of The Grand Canyon.
Nia Rodgers: Which in case you haven't seen it in pictures is deserty. I'm just going to side note here was something that I'm only going to take a couple minutes, but I'm going to bitterly state that Las Vegas would not exist except for the complete human intervention and contravention of nature. It is watered into existence and if it was cut off from its water supply or cut down in its water supply, it would dry up and cease to exist. Those giant fountains at the Bellagio are beautiful and they are an abomination in terms of.
John Aughenbaugh: Environmentally, they're a huge waste of water.
Nia Rodgers: Las Vegas is a huge environmental hole into which lots of things are thrown because the amount of power that it uses, the amount of water that it uses and it is literally a city in the middle of a desert, like it just doesn't and I know I get it. Everything that happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas and people of Vegas.
John Aughenbaugh: I was just going to say that, Nia, I have gone to Vegas a number of times, which I had gone for gambling but just heating and cooling. Most parts of Nevada is a huge drain environmentally.
Nia Rodgers: Because what people in the East don't know if they've never been to a desert is in the middle of the day, it's quite hot and you need to cool things down. In the middle of the night it is quite cool and you need to warm things up because that's how deserts work. It's because there's no tree coverage to hold that. We can talk about that forever, but we're not going to. But all I'm saying is that if the river begins to dry up, the first thing that needs to happen is Vegas needs to shut down, which will never happen because Americans love Vegas because they've romanticized Vegas.
John Aughenbaugh: Listeners also, you might want to consider this, one of the reasons why Nevada was considered important for inclusion as one of the 50 states was because of the projection that it was the home of a lot of minerals. The idea of Las Vegas does not occur until after World War II. Why else would you go ahead and create a state that was basically a pie in the sky utopia for dreamers who thought, if I moved to Vegas, I might find X mineral and I might be able to strike it rich.
Nia Rodgers: Which is why Carson City is the capital and not in Las Vegas, Las Vegas arena or the capital there are not. Carson City is the capital and then part of it is because of where mining is done in Nevada and other things. I'm sorry, I just had a moment there, but I'm not saying that Nevada doesn't deserve water.
John Aughenbaugh: No.
Nia Rodgers: It does. Phoenix is another city that is created out of the desert and those are things that you have to decide, how much human intervention? That was great idea when there was plentiful water in the river but now, as I think you are getting ready to tell us, there is not so plentiful water in the river. It's water amounts have dropped.
John Aughenbaugh: Before the West began to suffer what many scientists are referring to as historic drought conditions. The way scientists frequently distinguish drought conditions is, is this a short-term drought, even if it's severe versus a long-term drought, which has cumulative effects. What's going on out West in the last roughly 15-20 years is the latter not the former.
Nia Rodgers: Because every year your crops get drier, it's not your land gets drier. It's not like one year where it's just terrible but then you get rainfall and it replenishes. It's 10 years of incremental drying out which we'd take a 10 year rainfall to fix.
John Aughenbaugh: Even though this winter, the West Coast has had a number of drenching winter storms. Now, short-term, that's a positive but the West is going to need easily another 5,6,7 years. That drenching winter weather to make up for what they've encountered over the last 15-20 years,.
Nia Rodgers: Because what you get is runoff, what you get is when you have extreme rain, it doesn't soak into the ground because the ground is too dry so it runs off. You need several years of rain to soften the ground so it will accept more water and then bring it back.
John Aughenbaugh: Water table rises. It better allows those states to be able to accommodate future needs, future droughts, etc.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly.
John Aughenbaugh: It's a very delicate balance and you and I are probably not doing.
Nia Rodgers: The environmentalist who listened to this are screaming and crying right now and we apologize, because we're not doing anywhere near justice to what the entire cycle does. But what we were trying to get across to you listeners is as the amount of water goes down in the river, if that's a one-year thing everybody can adjust and it's fine. Well, it's not fine, but it's livable. But as a 10 or 15 year cycle, that's damaging the river in ways that it may never fully recover because you at one point were mentioning that when you don't have enough water in the river, you change the ecosystem of the river. Like you change the temperature of the river, you change the living things in the river like fish and turtles and whatever else. All the things that depend on that, all of that ecosystem changes.
John Aughenbaugh: There you just mentioned another one of the concerns about the Colorado River Basin. Environmentalist have chronicled all changes to the ecosystem. There are species that used to be plentiful that are now scarce or are now endangered, if not non-existent. You're also beginning to see some states contemplating some rather drastic measures to stay in compliance with the compact. California basically, in the compact, relied upon surplus Colorado River water. Because again, if you look at a map of the Colorado River basin, the Colorado River doesn't flow directly into the state of California. Again, if you pull up the map, you will go ahead and see that the Colorado River basically goes through Colorado, what's the southern portion of Utah, is in Arizona for a long period of time, and then it flows down to Mexico. The two states that really rely indirectly on the Colorado River are Nevada and California. Unfortunately, as we've already discussed, the two states whose development has drained the most water from the Colorado River are Nevada and California. In California, in the 1940s, '50s and '60s were frequent targets for complaint and even lead to a lawsuit that went the whole way to the Supreme Court because Arizona was complaining that California was taking too much water from the Colorado River basin and it lead to, not a lot of creativity in the name of the case, the name of the case was Arizona versus California, and it was decided in 1963. But nevertheless, you're talking about, and I'm going to try to summarize this, the issues or the variables affecting the Colorado River Compact. One, a compact that had fixed assumptions about the amount of water in the Colorado River basin. Those fixed assumptions are no longer accurate because of development, farming, population growth.
Nia Rodgers: Changes in the river.
John Aughenbaugh: Changes in the river.
Nia Rodgers: I mean the amount of flow.
John Aughenbaugh: Climate change.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah.
John Aughenbaugh: Put this all together right now, Nia, and the Colorado River Compact. If this was
Nia Rodgers: A rubber band?
John Aughenbaugh: A rubber band is very apt if you will.
Nia Rodgers: I'm sorry, listeners cannot see, but Aughie is moving his hands the way you would move them if you were stretching a rubber band which is what made me think. I'm assuming that it was, at some point, snap because there's only so much give in a rubber band.
John Aughenbaugh: That's right. In almost every, if you will, current piece of scholarship I read in preparation for this episode it said, "The compact is beginning to stretch well beyond what it's probably capable of being able to maintain."
Nia Rodgers: When it breaks, somebody's going to lose an eye. One of the states is going to lose an eye, I'm just saying. That's what my mom used to say to us when we were trying to stretch our wrist too much, be careful.
John Aughenbaugh: Somebody might lose an eye, right?.
Nia Rodgers: Somebody might lose an eye. I'm going to ask you because you're a poly guy.
John Aughenbaugh: Okay.
Nia Rodgers: Can Colorado just say, "Yeah, we don't care, we're not sharing the river. We're going to use as much as we dang well please and the rest of you-all can eat dirt?"
John Aughenbaugh: Because of the terms of the compact and other federal laws, international treaties, court decisions, etc, Colorado does not have that authority.
Nia Rodgers: That's too bad. We're going to take our river and go home.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, right. We're at a playground, I don't like how you're playing the game or you're winning, so I'm going to go ahead and take my bat and ball home.
Nia Rodgers: I'm taking my river and I'm going up in the mountains and I'm going to hide it.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. See how well you like the Colorado River basin when you no longer have access to it. What I'm referring to is the Law of the River. Again, if you've ever lived out west, they talk about the Law of the River. It is this huge conglomeration of compacts, federal laws, international treaty. I mean, let's face it, folks.
Nia Rodgers: Because this ends in Mexico and Mexico depend on the river too.
John Aughenbaugh: Particularly the Western part of Mexico, which again, much like the Western part of the United States is dry.
Nia Rodgers: You had something in your notes, which I wanted to mention before we wrap up, which is that, or I know, the flow of the river has dropped 20 percent since this compact was negotiated, sorry. That strikes me as it's time to renegotiate the compact. I assume that that comes up on a regular basis. "Hey, we need to renegotiate this thing because it's not serving people's needs."
John Aughenbaugh: Some states, particularly in the upper basin, have called for it. Not surprisingly, the states in the lower basin, particularly California, Nevada are like, "Yeah, we're not interested."
Nia Rodgers: Because they might be cut lower.
John Aughenbaugh: They might have to impose draconian water conservation measures in those states.
Nia Rodgers: Nobody wants to do that politically.
John Aughenbaugh: Oh my goodness, no.
Nia Rodgers: Can I just mention Lake Powell and Lake Mead?
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
Nia Rodgers: When you see pictures of them right now, they are sad. What happens for people who have never been to a lake that is surrounded by cliff, basically, is that you can see the line of where the water normally is. Because water does this thing with cliffs where it cuts in a little bit and it changes the color of the rock. You can physically see the drop in the lakes because you can see the distance of water that is no longer covering where it was covered before. It is scary, and it's not just a little bit, it's a huge drop.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: They're trying to conserve it as much as they can, but this is a real problem. If you want to know how scary this is, go right now and look up a picture of Lake Powell or Lake Mead, because everywhere on the Internet you will find what it was 20 years ago and what it is now, you'll be able to see those pictures easily.
John Aughenbaugh: For our listeners here on the East Coast, I caution you not to go and think about this in terms of well, that's just something that's going on out West. You got to remember a huge amount of our agricultural output comes from California.
Nia Rodgers: More and more Arizona. Arizona is doing a lot of our lettuces and spinach. A lot of our greens.
John Aughenbaugh: If those folks don't have access to water, if you're not liking the increase in grocery prices because of the pandemic
Nia Rodgers: Just wait, it gets better. For all of you people who want an excuse not to eat salad, you're about to have one.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right.
Nia Rodgers: It's not a joking matter, but it is [inaudible] to keep in mind, what is it? Something like 80 percent of the world's almond crops come out of California.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Almonds are very thirsty crops.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. They are a great source of protein and other nutrients. I don't know about your primary care physician, but mine has for years gone ahead and said, "Aughenbaugh, you need to eat more almonds." I'm just like, "What? Am I supposed to have them in every single meal?" He goes, "Well, it's not a bad idea. But, hey three or four times a week." I'm like, "Really doc?" But they are a thirsty crop. They are thirsty crops.
Nia Rodgers: So are avocados.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Which are an exceptionally good fat for people in diet wise. There's lots of good reasons to have those things, but they are thirsty crops. Then there's of course, greens and the washing of greens and all that other stuff.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: Do you think that it will be renegotiated? Now I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you a political thing. Will it be renegotiated at some point. Will somebody sue and they go to the Supreme Court?
John Aughenbaugh: I don't know if they will sue. But I think at some point in time, the congressional delegations of the states that comprise the compact will probably make a whole bunch of noise in Congress about how the compact needs to be renegotiated. If state officials can't agree to make some significant changes, it would not surprise me to see the delegations in the House and the Senate, in particular from the upper basin states. Because the upper basin states are, we have to comply with the compact, but the compact assumed a certain amount of water, and we're not the ones who are draining the water from the Colorado River basin, it's the states in the lower part who are.
Nia Rodgers: To give listeners a quick note here, the current allotments were established in 1948?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: They are, that the upper basin gets 7.5 million acre feet per year and the lower basin gets 7.5 million acre feet. It's divided between the upper basin and the lower basin.
John Aughenbaugh: Lower basin.
Nia Rodgers: The upper basin, Colorado gets 51 percent of that and Utah gets one percent, and Wyoming gets 14 percent, and New Mexico gets 11 percent [inaudible] of the upper basin. But then when you look at the lower basin, now remember that is 1/2 of the river, that's only three states, California, which gets 58 percent of it, Arizona gets 37 percent of it, and Nevada gets 4 percent of it. I shouldn't pick on Nevada because [inaudible].
John Aughenbaugh: No.
Nia Rodgers: But if you're thinking about 1/2, California gets 1/2 of 1/2 of the river. That's a lot of the river, they get a quarter of the river just by themselves.
John Aughenbaugh: Not surprisingly, Nia, the arguments made by Colorado and Nevada, for instance, for resisting any renegotiation of the compact is, we'll look at all the economic activity regenerate.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah, because lots of people ski in Colorado. But now, lots of people go there on vacations. Sorry, your target is 23 percent, not one percent, it's 23 percent.
John Aughenbaugh: Twenty three percent, yes.
Nia Rodgers: California is getting roughly 25 percent of the river. That is something that people in the East need to think about. Because if that goes down enough, that will affect food supply in the United States.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Here to scare you, but also to give you hope, because there have been improvements in agriculture, that over the years have made thirsty crops less thirsty. There are ways that people are managing the water better and using the water better and now environmentalist are all over it about trying to figure out how to fix the ecosystems in the river.
John Aughenbaugh: Remember too, listeners, I know the last part of this episode, we've been a little bit sober in our discussion of the compact, but just as these seven states came together to negotiate the compact, it is possible for them to come back together and say, "What do we need to do to maintain the river in the river basin?" A lot of this stuff was man-made. It's not easy to change, but because human beings perhaps caused some of the problems, perhaps human beings can come together and say, "Well, how do we change our behaviors?" I know that sounds a glass half full, but I remind students all the time in my classes, if we pass the law that created unanticipated consequences, we can do what?
Nia Rodgers: Fix it.
John Aughenbaugh: We can fix it.
Nia Rodgers: You know how we do that? Through civil discourse.
John Aughenbaugh: Of course, you come together and you talk.
Nia Rodgers: You workout.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you work it out.
Nia Rodgers: You complain and you get grumpy with each other and then you work it out in the end.
John Aughenbaugh: [inaudible] occasionally you point fingers across the table, but afterwards you sit down and you say, "How do we maintain this?" Because this is a valuable scarce resource. Water out west is like gold. I know listeners have heard me and Nia say this in other episodes, but water
Nia Rodgers: It's more valuable than anything else.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: Really, it's more valuable than oil, it's more valuable than gold. It's just undervalue in terms of your family.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: That's how that works. But you know what, The Rolling Stones have a song, You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. That's what they may have to do with reworking this compact. Thank you, Aughie. This is an interesting thing for people in the East Coast to just think about and be aware of and be aware of the stressors of our friends in the West and what they go through. I will link the compact and I will do my best to find a good map and link to that so that people can actually get a really good idea of what's covered here. We'll talk to you soon.
John Aughenbaugh: Sounds good.
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