Living Rivers - Colorado Riverkeeper
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Living Rivers Currents
February 1, 2002

Ten Reasons for Renegotiating the Colorado River Compact

LIVING RIVERS is calling for renegotiating the Colorado River Compact. This would make possible a number of needed changes and innovations, including the following:

  1. 1. Indian tribes participating as sovereign nations, protecting and defending their own rights and interests in the river;
  2. 2. Making protection of the environment and the river’s ecosystem top priorities in management decisions;
  3. 3. Equitably apportioning among all the basin’s stakeholders, including the environment, the actual amount of water in the river—to ensure that even in drought years stakeholders receive a proportional allocation;
  4. 4. Applying the public trust doctrine in apportionment and river management decisions, in recognition that the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries are to be held in trust for the enjoyment, benefit and welfare of all the basin’s inhabitants;
  5. 5. Creating a basin-wide water trust fund to accept and protect from appropriation donations of voluntarily conserved water to benefit the environment;
  6. 6. Establishing and enforcing mandatory water conservation measures, and providing incentives for implementation and penalties for wasteful use;
  7. 7. Harmonizing state water laws basin-wide, and removing legal barriers to ecologically sound river management;
  8. 8. Encouraging appropriate (sustainable) agricultural practices by imposing reasonable restrictions on irrigation technologies and cropping patterns;
  9. 9. Establishing strict limits on interbasin transfers including prohibition of new out-of-basin diversions; and
  10. 10. Providing mechanisms for ongoing dialogue and negotiation among the interested parties to address new information and changing circumstances.

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    Last Update: October 30, 2007

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