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The Wild West of Water in Times of Scarcity

Published onAug 29, 2023
The Wild West of Water in Times of Scarcity

Abstract:

Since the turn of the 21st century, drought and water shortages have increasingly plagued the American West. With multi-state dependency on the same water source, these droughts and shortages spotlight individual states’ usage policies and amplify the need for interstate collaboration to avoid crises. The use of interstate collaborative agreements by states, with little federal oversight over the past century, however, has instead contributed to the current water crisis. Language ambiguity exploited by all parties and difficulties updating agreements to reflect changing environmental conditions represents the main challenges to effectively addressing water shortages. A historical analysis of the Colorado River Compact, the foundational interstate agreement that has governed many Western states’ water allocations for the past century, shows how these challenges became entrenched and prevail today throughout the Colorado River Basin. To begin successfully addressing these problems in the basin and beyond, changes including the creation of a federal-interstate compact commission that can provide oversight and expertise to stakeholders and the implementation of flexible, percentage allocations instead of current fixed quantity allocations are necessary to ensure water is available to meet the needs of all the basin’s stakeholders without sudden, detrimental disruptions to the local and national economies and residential well-being as will happen if this crisis remains unaddressed. 

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