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Blue Gold: Have the next resource wars begun? Article covers transboundary water issues, including the All-American Canal

Posted by: Maven on March 31, 2009 at 11:22 am

Here’s an article written by AlterNet’s Tara Lohan, posted over at The Nation, which covers some transboundary water issues. This is an excerpt on the section regarding the U. S. and Mexico, specifically the Colorado River and the All-American Canal:

Most people in the United States have the luxury of not worrying about the right to water–it simply comes out of their tap, and it is clean and plentiful. The idea of a “water war” would likely conjure places like the Middle East or Africa. But in the last few years there has been some real tension between the United States and Mexico.

The source of strife is the long-arbitrated Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles, and whose watershed spreads across seven US states before dipping into Mexico and exiting at the Gulf of California. Just about every drop of it is allocated (and overallocated). Its water serves over 30 million people and 2 million acres of farmland, and via canals and aqueducts, it helps to quench thirsty cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Under the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 the United States agreed to ensure its southern neighbor 1.5 million acre-feet of water a year. However, for many decades those south of the border often got more than the treaty allotment if the flow on the river exceeded the water farmers could use. Mexico and the river ecosystem came to greatly appreciate that water, as well as goundwater that was replenished from water seepage draining from the All-American Canal–an eighty-two-mile ditch that runs just north of the border and diverts water from the Colorado River across the desert of Southern California to feed farms in the Imperial Valley.

But nearly a decade of drought in the Southwest has prompted Colorado River states to find ways to squeeze more water out of the river. They devised a plan to line twenty-three miles of the All-American Canal with concrete to prevent water seepage and also to build a reservoir just north of the border to catch those “excess” flows.

Read the full text of this article from The Nation by clicking here.

March 31, 2009 · Filed Under Imperial Valley

Comments

One Response to “Blue Gold: Have the next resource wars begun? Article covers transboundary water issues, including the All-American Canal”

  1. WaterSource on March 31st, 2009 2:09 pm

    Let’s see … in addition to

    1. keeping Lake Mead ( 28.5 million acre feet ) reasonably FULL rather than going dry,

    2, providing for instanteous releases to restore the Colorado River Delta ( 2.4 $Billion/year),

    3. providing Southern California with an back-up / alternative fresh water Source in the event of a major earthquake and

    4. providing a million acre feet (325,900,000,000 gallons) of fresh water a year from a non-tributary Source that does not harm the environment or the water rights of anyone, anywhere,

    5. A measly 70,000 acre feet a year from the Source could be made available into the old All American Canal for recharge purposes to keep 1.3 million Mexicali residents from going without water in exchange for Mexico’s cooperation with the drug and immigration issues…

    Squeeze one hand and fill the other with water …see which one fills up the fastest !

    Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com

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