Bennett Raley

Bennett Raley, a slow-talking Coloradan in cowboy boots, has his hands on the faucet that sends water from the Colorado River to Southern California. He seems ready and willing to shut it off, which is scaring the cities and infuriating the farms that are competing for the precious resource.

Bennett Raley, architect of the Bush administration's Western water policies for the last three years, announced Wednesday he was leaving his job as assistant secretary of the Interior for water and science. Raley oversaw federal policy during a particularly challenging time, when the demands of a fast-growing region collided with drought.

Bennett Raley, architect of the Bush administration's Western water policies for the last three years, announced Wednesday he was leaving his job as assistant secretary of the Interior for water and science. Raley oversaw federal policy during a particularly challenging time, when the demands of a fast-growing region collided with drought.

Bennett Raley, a slow-talking Coloradan in cowboy boots, has his hands on the faucet that sends water from the Colorado River to Southern California. He seems ready and willing to shut it off, which is scaring the cities and infuriating the farms that are competing for the precious resource.

SACRAMENTO -- Ushering in what could be another long, hot summer of wrangling over the Klamath water crisis, 100 members of the Yurok tribe protested here Thursday what they consider the Bush administration's embrace of farmers at the expense of endangered fish. The impoverished tribe, which depends on salmon from the Klamath River in Northern California, marched with placards outside a hotel where a packed crowd of Western water managers met to discuss a new federal plan.

A complex deal that would restore Southern California's right to use surplus Colorado River water received preliminary approval Friday from a key federal official. Bennett Raley, an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of the Interior, told the four agencies trying to hammer out the agreement that they were on the right track but still needed to find a way to save the Salton Sea.

Ronald Gastelum announced Tuesday that he plans to retire as president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California after five years of guiding the agency through controversy, cutbacks and an ambitious search for water to accommodate the region's growing needs. Gastelum, 58, said he would leave his $297,000 a year post Dec. 31. He said he had no specific plans for the future. "It's been a good run, and now it's time to move on," Gastelum said.

Remember those annoying days of water rationing 10 years ago? We might see a return in the near future, thanks to drought, water feuds and the fact that President Bush has no love for California. The penalty for an Al Gore vote in 2000 could be that your front lawn dies in 2003. "It could be worse than it was in the early 1990s," says Gerry Zimmerman of the Colorado River Board of California.

With a federal cutback in California's water supply just days away, 22 members of Congress from the state sent a blunt letter Thursday demanding that the Bush administration do more to solve the problem at the heart of the crisis: the failing health of the Salton Sea.

The Colorado River is running at a relative trickle this drought year. Once-foaming white rapids in some sections are dribbles. The Rocky Mountain snowpack that recreates the river every year was scant last spring. Colorado and other states are understandably stepping up pressure on California to begin cutting back its excessive use of the river's water. California has less than five months to put its water thrift plan in place or face a dramatic cutback by the Department of the Interior.

Officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the regional agency that supplies water to 17 million people in six counties, said Friday that the district could avoid shortages, even if new predictions of continued drought along the Colorado River proved accurate. "We believe we can more than manage the circumstances" if drought forces an end to "surplus" allocations from the river, said MWD Vice President Adan Ortega.

Even as the U.S. Department of Interior pushes California to rein in its use of Colorado River water, agency officials said Thursday that they may boost water supplies to farmers in the state who depend on the river to irrigate their crops. The plan, if approved by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, would likely send between 150,000 and 225,000 acre-feet of water from Lake Mead on the Colorado to farmers in the Imperial Valley and southeastern California.