Colorado River Water

A far-reaching proposal for the farmers of the Imperial Irrigation District to share surplus water with huge areas of urban and suburban Southern California in the Metropolitan Water District was approved Monday by an MWD committee. The action set the stage for votes today by the boards of the MWD and the Imperial district. Imperial provides water to prosperous Imperial Valley farms in the reclaimed desert east of San Diego.

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Bush administration from taking water away from farmers in Imperial County, while permitting a cutback of supplies to the giant water agency that supplies most of Southern California with water from the Colorado River. U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan blocked a decision by Interior Secretary Gale Norton that reduced Imperial County's allocation from the river.

In the first shot of what could become an urban vs. rural water war, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted Tuesday to ask Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to reconsider the 1931 agreement that gives farmers the lion's share of the Colorado River.

Everything has its price--unless you're wheeling and dealing in Colorado River water. Those who rule the river consider the water that gives life to an arid seven-state region more a heritage or birthright than a commodity subject to the rough and tumble of the free market. And to sell that right is sacrilege, they say, not to mention grounds for what would be a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

THE SALTON SEA is an accident of man and an insult to nature, an artificial lake so rank that its rotten-eggs odor often overwhelms its sparkle, an unnatural blunder with too much salt and too many dead fish. It must be saved. If only it were that easy. The lake, created in 1905 when a badly built canal diverted Colorado River water to a depression in the desert straddling Riverside and Imperial counties, is drying up and in danger of extinction.

Your editorial ("The Dry Years," Feb. 2) with respect to the water problem makes good sense. We should have contingency plans in the event of a fourth drought year. With or without the drought, your championing of conservation measures is a good idea. However, conservation alone is not the answer! According to L.A. 2000, by the turn of the century there will be 4 million more inhabitants in Southern California than there were in 1985. By 2010, there will be 6 million more people.

In the arid West, where local authorities used to joke that "whiskey is for drinking, water for fighting," the competition for Colorado River water is getting a bit edgy again. At the direction of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the Bureau of Reclamation is trying to reapportion the liquid bounty among the states of California, Arizona and Nevada, which now share about 7.5 million acre-feet, or 2.44 trillion gallons, of river water annually.