Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

McCain’s Water Woes

By Joan McCarter, 8-19-08

McCain set off a firestorm last week when he suggested that the 86 year old agreement that allocates the scarce resource of the Colorado River among the seven states of the Colorado Basin “obviously needs to be renegotiated” because of “new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource,” he didn’t mean it should, you know, be renegotiated, really, to make sure that the high growth states of California, Nevada, and Arizona got more of that scarce resource. But that’s sure how it sounded to the people of Colorado.

So here comes the McCain campaign with what he “really” meant:

Tom Kise, the McCain campaign’s Colorado spokesman, said McCain was not proposing that the 2007 agreement be reopened or any immediate talks on the compact.

“He’s talking about ongoing conversations, conversations that happen this year, next year, 10, 20, 30 years down the road,” Kise said.

Kise said McCain knows global warming is changing water conditions in the West, and that means the states need to talk. “As long as water is going to be an issue in the West, there should be an open conversation among all parties,” Kise said.

Frankly, that’s hard to buy. There is no other reasonable interpretation of his statement that the Compact should be reopened because of the reality of growth in the Lower Basin.  Certainly he is not suggesting that the Lower Basin states should cede some of their rights. And as to the states needing to talk, well, they have.

Considering he’s a Senator from one of those seven states in the compact, you think he’d have somewhat of a better grasp of the actual policy making on the issue in his state. See, the seven states’ governors came together last year to address current changing water conditions. In fact, they came up with an agreement:

The agreement was signed April 23 in Las Vegas by representatives of the Colorado River basin states of Colorado, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The agreement proposes reducing deliveries of Colorado River water to Arizona and Nevada when storage in Lake Mead drops below certain set levels, thus reducing the risk of shortages in Colorado. The agreement would reduce the risk of shortages in the lower Colorado River by coordinating Hoover and Glen Canyon dam operations. The agreement also proposes a system for storing in Lake Mead water saved through conservation efforts or the development of new water sources.

That new agreement was not a renegotiation of the compact. It only deals with a subset of all of the issues that would have be addressed in a full renegotiation. As Colorado water expert John Orr argues

It took 18 months to get the agreement. Seated at the table were the basin states, of course, but unlike the days when the Colorado River Compact was hammered out, there were many more groups present, all with legitimate concerns. Native American tribes, Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, power authorities, water utilities, irrigators and more all wanted a say, and many were allowed input. The landmark agreement — signed by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in December 2007 — dealtonly with the issues during dry years. Environmentalists didn’t get any relief from the agreement regarding water for endangered species or for the protection of the riparian environment. Attempts to simulate natural river flows were also not part of the agreement....

A renegotiation would probably require prioritization of water uses, perhaps a hierarchy of needs. What crops to grow? Irrigation, industry or suburbs? Continued unbridled growth or restraints on growth? Would a new compact eliminate out-of-basin transfers? The drying up of farms will continue — in Colorado and Arizona — to provide water to the cities and suburbs. What do we do for rural farming communities? The issues are legion.

Into the middle of all this stumbles McCain, ignoring--or completely ignorant of--the fact that the seven governors (including California’s, Nevada’s, and Arizona’s) decided that those states needed to work on how to find some of their own water in periods of drought and water emergencies, and ignoring the fact that this was a complex and difficult set of negotiations.

His campaign is in full damage control over the issue now. We’ve seen that before, when McCain tried to reverse his long support for using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. In May, he campaigned in Nevada, telling Nevadans implausibly that he was now all for some sort of “international repository.” But plenty of Nevadans, including the Las Vegas Sun don’t buy it.

McCain is an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power and a fervent backer of Yucca Mountain as a suitable storage site. The evidence is plentiful:

• In 2002, when final approval was assured after 20 years of debate, McCain told his home-state newspaper, The Arizona Republic, that the Nevada dump site would help the federal government resolve “one of the most important environmental, health and public safety issues for the American people.”

• Just over a year ago, he was described as adopting a mocking tone when he told the Deseret News in Utah: “Oh, you have to travel through states ... I am for Yucca Mountain. I’m for storage facilities. It’s a lot better than sitting outside power plants all over America.”

• Less than three weeks ago, Reuters ran a piece that said McCain “supports the Yucca Mountain storage facility and believes opposition to it is harmful to U.S. interests.” And the piece quoted one of his advisers as saying, “The political opposition to the Yucca Mountain storage facility is harmful to the U.S. interest and the facility should be completed, opened and utilized.”

So in the past few weeks, McCain has experienced an epiphany and decided there should be some sort of international repository for the fuel that he had so long wanted to come here? This is believable?

It is believable? Any more believable than when he says he didn’t really mean that the growth in Lower Basin states means they should be getting more water out of the Colorado, even though that’s sure what it sounds like he was saying. Given that McCain has also said that he’s wouldn’t be comfortable with Yucca Mountain waste traveling through Arizona one gets the feeling that he’s gotten so used to pandering to the voters of his home state that he’s forgotten he’s running for President.

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