By Michael Weissenstein
Oct. 31, 2000 (www.lvrj.com)—Six environmental groups have protested a Bureau of Reclamation plan to release water stored in Lake Mead for use in California, Arizona and Nevada.
The bureau has proposed declaring the Colorado River in a surplus condition next year. Such a declaration would allow the bureau to release water through Hoover Dam, regardless of actual river conditions, for use in the three states in the river's lower basin.
But the river's flow and the lake's level are well below normal this year and could easily remain below average in 2001, the groups said. Declaring a surplus where none exists would give the demands created by farms and cities a higher priority than the environment, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, the Sierra Club and Southwest Rivers argue in an Oct. 27 letter to the Bureau of Reclamation.
In years when the reservoir is full, excess water can flow to Mexico's Colorado River Delta, an ailing wetlands in need of extra supply. The interstate compact governing the operation of the dams on the river gives the secretary of the interior, who oversees the Bureau of Reclamation, nearly absolute discretion to declare a surplus even in years of drought. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is currently reviewing administrative rules that would formalize the declaration of surpluses for 15 years, meant to act as an interim grace period for California to use surplus water as it reduces its historic overuse of the river.
The environmental groups have been long concerned with the health of the delta, a vast wetlands in Mexico where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf of California. Diversion of water to farms and cities upstream have destroyed 95 percent of the wetlands and imperiled the Vaquita porpoise, the Totoaba fish and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, an endangered bird, they said.
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