December 13, 2007--Water conservancy board blasts efficiency rules (Pueblo Chieftain)
The Lower Arkansas Water Conservancy District board Wednesday continued to heap scorn on proposed state agricultural efficiency rules for the valley. However, the board stopped short of a proposal to actively oppose the rules, instead agreeing to try to work with the Division of Water Resources as it drafts the rules and attempt to soften the blow to valley farmers. Wayne Whittaker, Otero County director and an officer of the Catlin Canal said "the rules are being proposed even though Kansas has not yet raised the issue of agricultural efficiency, cited as the primary reason for the rules." Although Kansas prevailed on the issue of well pumping in its 1985 Supreme Court filing over violations of the Arkansas River Compact, Kansas claims of depletion from new storage at Trinidad Reservoir and the Fryingpan Arkansas Project reservoirs, all built or enlarged after the 1949 Arkansas River Compact, were rejected, Whittaker said. “The supposition that irrigation efficiency would reduce native flows is wrong. The water doesn’t all return to the river,” Whittaker said. “The amount of water that comes back is not 50 percent. In the drought there would have been water in the river. . . . the rules are way off-base.”
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