Ups and Downs: Colorado River Update by Brian Brady, Imperial Irrigation District

The following is speaking text from a Colorado River water panel discussion moderated by Reclamation’s Lorri Gray-Lee on December 1 at the ACWA convention in Indian Wells, Calif.

In keeping with the general theme of today’s panel, I want to offer, from the perspective of the Imperial Irrigation District, what we consider to be the ups and downs of implementing the Quantification Settlement Agreement:

Up: This is the eighth year of QSA implementation, which has to be considered as an “up,” since it includes the nation’s largest agricultural-to-urban water transfer that enables the district’s urban partners to accommodate growth and California to live within its 4.4 million acre-feet annual entitlement to the Colorado River.

Up: Up to 70,000 acre-feet of water previously lost to seepage has been permanently recaptured and made available annually to the coastal plain through the All-American Canal lining project, which was completed last year.

Up: This is the third year in which the district’s seepage recovery project has generated and delivered conserved water to the Coachella Valley Water District. We estimate this efficiency-based conservation project will ultimately produce 30,000 acre-feet per year.

Up: Implementation of the district’s system conservation program will begin in earnest in 2011. This sweeping program will include the enhancement of IID’s SCADA and communications systems, system-wide automation, the construction of dozens of operational reservoirs and the reconfiguration of the district’s 100- year-old gravity-flow delivery system.

Up: With the financial backing of various water agencies and through the leadership of Reclamation, the Warren H. Brock Reservoir has been constructed and is now being integrated into the district’s operational system. An estimated 600,000 acre-feet in lost flows will be conserved via this project.

But along with the ups have come downs, a few of which pose significant challenges to IID and the QSA itself: Among them are …

Down: The QSA has been found to be invalid by a California Superior Court judge. This invalidation was based on one sentence in a single agreement in a document that includes some 36 separate agreements. While a stay of this decision has been obtained and an appeal filed, the uncertainty that has attached to the QSA undermines isn’t helpful, particularly within the Imperial Valley, where public sentiment has never been in its favor.

Down: Complicating the litigation question, is the uncertainty surrounding the Salton Sea, a deeply troubled body of water that the QSA took into account but the state of California has been slow to address. The federal government and non- California water contractors take the view that the state’s largest inland lake has no water right, but the state regards it as roughly akin to the Everglades. The QSA Joint Powers Authority is charged with mitigating the transfer’s impacts, chiefly through land fallowing in the Imperial Valley, through 2017, but continued dithering by the state in meeting its own restoration and/or mitigation responsibility under the agreement contributes to this pervasive uncertainty and places IID between a rock and a hard place.

Or between the devil and the Salton Sea.

Down: Elevations at Lake Mead and Lake Powell continue to decline and shortage triggers are ominously close. Reduced supplies will invariably increase pressure on IID and will be met with reflexive opposition in the Imperial Valley, which is also not helpful to an elected board.

Down: IID’s use of early mitigation water to the Salton Sea through the release of its own entitlement water, not through fallowing, has been met with opposition by one of its urban partners, the Metropolitan Water District. By temporarily storing this water in the sea for future environmental mitigation, IID reduces the financial impact on the JPA by an estimated $6.3 million through the first half of 2012. By challenging this approach, MWD undermines the basic peace provisions contained in the QSA and makes it harder for the district to maneuver through this uncertain period.

There are other downs, but I want to end on an up note.

IID continues to perform according to the milestones and precepts of the QSA. It also believes, as it did in 2003 when the deal was signed, that its water users and the communities it serves are better off with the agreement in place than without it. Also, the QSA partners are continuing to participate in direct talks being led by Reclamation, and that is a positive sign, I think, for the future.

Because chaos is no substitute for collaboration.