Word: colorados
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...water issues. "They have time and the law on their side. They have a solid case, and they're dead serious. It's like a huge bill finally coming due." Because of treaties and agreements between their tribes and the Federal Government, Native Americans living on reservations along the Colorado River have, in many instances, claims on water that date back to the mid-1800s. Thanks to the first-in-time concept, they are often the senior owners of river rights, and they have begun making their case vigorously in courtrooms. Combined, the Native American claims amount to a sizable...
MEXICO. The Colorado has long been a prickly subject between the U.S. and its neighbor, and at the moment tempers south of the border are steaming again. The current flash point is Southern California's plan to line with concrete the All-American Canal, which carries water to the Imperial Valley, to save 106,000 acre-feet that seep uselessly into the ground beneath the canal each year. On the one hand, this is an ambitious project in water conservation; on the other, Mexican officials say the loss of seepage will deplete the underground water supply around Mexicali...
Further complicating these disputes is the changing attitude in Washington toward Western water. The federal Bureau of Reclamation was principally responsible for the development of the Colorado; it planned and engineered the % big building projects, all funded by congressional appropriations. Critics say the bureau has become an anachronism, no longer able to manage the Colorado and its myriad problems. "They're a bunch of dam builders," says former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, "and there aren't any dams to build. They have been unable to adjust to the new reality...
...addition, legislators with an eye on the government's mounting deficit are taking stock of the huge federal subsidies -- amounting to billions of dollars -- flowing west to farmers for Colorado River water. Says California's Congressman Miller: "The drought and deficit have caused people from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York to reassess supporting a bad habit...
...approve and support massive development projects. They have been supplanted by lawmakers like Bill Bradley of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate's Water and Power Subcommittee, who are both cost conscious and sensitive to environmental and ecological issues. Says David Getches, a law professor at the University of Colorado: "There's a revolution in the way the U.S. Congress looks at water...