Delta a Snag in Babbitt’s Plan for Colorado River

The final stretch of the Colorado River is a mere sliver of what it used to be, leaving nature to make do with what water remains.

Migrating Canada geese and cormorants join native flocks in a marsh that once was part of the river but now is fed mainly by farm runoff.

Snowy egrets and great blue herons stand guard at a lagoon formed on desert terrain by six years’ worth of runoff. Raccoons, coyotes and foxes prowl the edges of these wetlands, bright spots in a troubled delta that is less than a tenth of its size a century ago.

But now, after attracting scant interest historically from Washington and Mexico City, the delta’s woes are the focus of new attention by government planners on both sides of the border. Environmentalists, however, say the newfound concern has not produced much action and they are threatening litigation.

Lawsuits are not uncommon in matters of water, but environmentalists have unprecedented leverage in this case because suing would disrupt efforts by the Clinton administration in its final days to finalize a plan for dividing the Colorado River’s water among seven thirsty states.

Their argument is based on a zero-sum calculation: Diverting more water for California, Arizona and Nevada, as the administration wants to do, will strangle the delta, where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf of California.

Once the size of Rhode Island, the delta receded after the 1930s as the Colorado’s southward flow was diverted to coastal Southern California and to grow crops in the desert.

The vast farms of wheat, cotton and onions on the Mexican side of the border presented still more competition for water as the river coursed southward.

Natural flooding north of the border and a series of measures, such as capturing agricultural runoff from both countries, have helped resuscitate parts of the delta and its wildlife habitat during the last 20 years. Still, the delta is nowhere near what it once was.

The diminished flow of fresh water over the decades dried up what was once the largest desert estuary in North America and a productive nursery for fish and shrimp.

So little of the river’s flow reaches the delta--almost none during dry times--that the area is now largely a vast and arid belt of cracked mud and desert shrubs.

The Cienega de Santa Clara, wetlands accommodating more than 150 bird species, large-mouth bass and endangered desert pupfish, is nourished not by the Colorado River but by irrigation runoff, routed by canal from Arizona.

“If the [U.S. government] decided to use this water for some other purpose, the cienega would likely disappear. There’s no other source,” said Jose Campoy, a biologist for the Mexican federal government who manages a 2.3-million-acre protected natural area called the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve. It got official protected status in 1993.

“It’s important for both countries--you can’t deny that,” Campoy said of the delta, which sits about 45 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. “Even though the delta and cienega are in Mexico, we can manage it in a binational way.”

The two governments have signed agreements to upgrade the ecological health of the delta region.

A local peasants’ cooperative, or ejido, is embarking on a small business guiding bird-watchers and fishing enthusiasts through the Santa Clara wetlands, whose most lush portion measures about 13,000 acres. The villagers own five skiffs and six canoes and have trained a dozen members as guides.

One of the guides, Jose Juan Butron, said ecotourism could offer community members an alternative to working in the fields or at a shrimp packing plant on the gulf.

“More and more people are coming,” said Butron, steering his boat through a maze of 6-foot-tall cattails. “The first year we had one group, the next year two.” This year, the guides led 20 groups through the marsh.

Reviving Wetlands a Priority

The river, which accommodated steamships chugging upstream to Yuma 200 years ago, now wends a much tamer path south. The stands of willows and cottonwoods lining its banks are thinner than those that existed when the river was at its grandest. Animal life, too, dwindled as the river did.

Campoy, the reserve manager, and a ranger are always on the lookout for ways to revive former wetlands. Recently, they surveyed a bone-dry expanse that they hope to convert into a 500-acre swamp by using small dams to corral farm runoff.

U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in his final speech about the Colorado, said that fixing the delta’s problems “may be the single most important piece of unfinished business on the Colorado River.”

Speaking to 700-plus water wonks from the seven states that depend on the Colorado River at their annual meeting in Las Vegas, Babbitt warned them gently not to turn their backs on the delta.

Politics Muddy Water Issues

Babbitt, the most water-activist interior secretary in a half-century, concedes that he had given little attention to the delta and other binational water issues until his final year.

Much of the final year has been spent fashioning a truce among the seven states over the issue of so-called surplus flows from the Colorado River. By reasons of politics and history, California has been drawing far more than its legal entitlement, more than 800,000 acre-feet, enough for 6 million people.

Under the Babbitt plan, California would get another 15 years of surplus water as it trims back to its legal entitlement of 4.4 million acre-feet. Arizona and Nevada would also get surplus water from behind Hoover Dam.

To provide that water, the level of Lake Mead, the enormous reservoir behind Hoover Dam, would be lowered.

Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico gets 1.5 million acre-feet a year, diverted at Morales Dam southwest of Yuma and shipped west through an unlined aqueduct.

Mexico also can get more than 200,000 acre-feet of surplus water from Lake Mead when, because of rainfall or snow runoff, the reservoir needs to be lowered as a flood-control measure. In dry years, like the prolonged drought of the 1980s, such measures are not needed and there is no surplus for Mexico.

“The only way the delta gets water is when Lake Mead is full or close to full,” said David Hogan, the desert rivers coordinator with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

Hogan and others fear that lowering Mead to provide surplus for California, Arizona and Nevada will leave nothing for the delta.

Babbitt insists that the environmentalists are being alarmist and not giving the United States credit for binational agreements signed this year pledging greater cooperation.

Increasing Concern Among Activists

Still, environmentalists can scarcely restrain their rage at what they feel is the government’s lack of action toward the Colorado River delta. They note the government’s multibillion-dollar attempts to save wetlands in various spots in the United States--including the imperiled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in Northern California.

“I think the issue of [saving] the delta would be a no-brainer if it were in the U.S.,” fumed William J. Snape III, attorney for Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife.

With George W. Bush set to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, Babbitt hopes to sign the surplus plan on Jan. 17. The plan was posted in the Federal Register on Dec. 17 for the legally required 30-day comment period.

Talking to the same set of officials at the Las Vegas convention as Babbitt, Snape warned that his group is prepared to sue unless the surplus plan is modified.

The tight deadline--and Babbitt’s high hopes to complete a Colorado River truce during his tenure--could provide an opening for the environmentalists to demand changes beneficial to the delta in exchange for not filing a lawsuit.

Advocates for the environment want more water to make it to the delta. But even upping Mexico’s share of the Colorado River is no guarantee that the water will get there.

Environmentalists are concerned that Mexico will instead steer it to fast-growing border cities, where water shortages loom, and to the important agriculture industry.

Campoy said concern for the delta must come from both sides of the border.

“The river is not just urban and agricultural use,” he said. “The river can be used in so many other activities. We need to recognize that--especially in Mexico.”