In the last stretch of its current legislative session, Utah passed a bill to create a 6-member Colorado River Authority toadvocate for Utah s interests in water from the Colorado River. The bill faced opposition from environmental groups throughout its journey to law but sailed through the process with little resistance from Utah s elected representatives.
The bill passed in the Senate on Wednesday with 24 members in favor, 2 absent and 3 opposed. The three votes against all came from Democratic senators representing the Salt Lake County area: Luz Escamilla, Derek Kitchen and Kathleen Riebe. Sen. Jani Iwamoto, a Democrat from Holladay, who had previously expressed concern that the bill did not adequately represent the water interests of the Navajo Nation, experienced technical difficulties during her remote attendance and was not able to register a vote.
| Updated: March 6, 2021, 12:35 a.m.
Citing decades of conflict with the state over water, the Ute Indian Tribe is upset with a freshly passed bill that would set up a new state agency to advance Utah’s interests in the Colorado River, potentially at the expense of the tribe’s more senior rights.
On Wednesday, tribal Chairman Luke Duncan sent a letter to Gov. Spencer Cox, insisting on guarantees that the newly proposed Colorado River Authority of Utah wouldn’t take steps that would diminish the tribe’s water rights.
“We were a tribe long before Utah was a state and controlling law prevents Utah or its Colorado River Authority from taking any action that would impact our water rights,” the Ute Indian Tribal Business Committee said Friday in a statement. “After more than a century of broken agreements and attacks on our waters, state laws like HB297 must be clear that the state cannot diminish or impact our Indian reserved water rights. Respecting the tribe’s rights
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John Wesley Powell is famous for his explorations of the Colorado River in the late 19th century. Scholars today are discussing what he would think about the river and its use.
Renegotiations around the use of the Colorado River are on the horizon for seven western states, including Utah. On Thursday, scholars in the state held a panel to discuss how explorer John Wesley Powell would think about water and land policies today.
Powell is seen as a utilitarian, according to Robert Keiter, a law professor at the University of Utah. He along with U professors Robert Adler and Daniel McCool are contributing authors to a book about Powell, “Vision and Place.”
Described as the most overworked river in the West, the Colorado River is the lifeblood of seven states, including Utah which wants to safeguard its interest in its unused allocation. A bill before the Utah Legislature would establish the Colorado River Authority of Utah to do just that.