This week's guest on Report from Santa Fe is John Fleck, Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance at the UNM Department of Economics, writer in residence at the Utton Center at the UNM School of Law, and author of "Water is for Fighting Over.
This week's featured guest on Report from Santa Fe is John Fleck, Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance at the UNM Department of Economics, writer in residence at the Utton Center at the UNM School of Law and author of "Water is for.
Fixing the Flawed Colorado River Compact eos.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eos.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Colorado River’s current crisis traces its roots back to 1922. That’s when leaders from the rapidly-growing southwestern states that rely on the river traveled to a swanky Santa Fe mountain retreat to divvy up the river’s water. Growing populations in some of the West’s burgeoning cities and sprawling farmlands, and the anxieties tied to that growth, pushed leaders to the negotiating table. The Colorado River Compact was the result of those talks. This attempt to manage the dynamic river system was fraught from the very beginning. To get a deal passed the men overestimated the river’s flow, and ignored warnings from scientists they were setting the stage for a sprawling plumbing system bound to be short on water. Today we’re still grappling with the decisions made during those negotiations. This episode features an interview with Eric Kuhn, former Colorado River District general manager, and co-author of Science Be Dammed, How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained The C
<p>The Colorado River Compact is based in an egregious exaggeration of how much water flows through the river—and how much downstream farms and cities have been entitled to use. </p>