Challenge to River Compacts

Re “The Law of the River May Meet Its Match,” Opinion, July 19: Tom Wolf makes note of the historic fact that contemporary environmental law followed the signing of the river compacts by more than 20 years and calls this an “unfortunate sleight-of-hand.” It isn’t clear how rules written in the 1930s were supposed to presume environmental laws in the 1960s and beyond.

While free-flowing rivers are wonderful, so are the electricity, food, clothing, flood protection and economic well-being that most dams provide. What’s missing in Wolf’s piece are the good things accomplished on the Colorado River, including the environmental mitigation and repair and the costs for those advancements that have been borne by those living in the river’s seven basin states.

The Colorado River Compact isn’t perfect yet, and likely never will be if the standard of perfection is no dams and no development. The standard should be one of balance and if the teeter-totter is off-kilter, let’s all work to bring it back to level.

Those responsible for providing water to more than 20 million people along the Colorado River are working toward that balance. Those who want to drop a 20-ton boulder on the other side of the seesaw, thereby launching more than 70 years of water law instantly into space, will surely induce more destruction than they can understand.

JAY W. MALINOWSKI

Chief of Operations

MWD, Los Angeles