The Water Information Program

"We view our competition for water as the state of New Mexico," said John Porter, president of the Southwestern Water Conservation District. "They get 11.25 percent of the Colorado River. Well, that all has to come out of the San Juan River." Porter was talking about the Upper Colorado River Compact of 1948, which divided the top half of the river among Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. A separate agreement, the La Plata River Compact, governs the small river southwest of Durango. Every day, Colorado has to deliver half of the river's flow at Hesperus to the state line. That's been difficult to do in dry seasons. To help meet the obligation, SWWCD wants to build Long Hollow Reservoir. It would be five miles north of the state line. The Animas-La Plata Project should resolve a long fight over water rights for the two Ute Indian reservations, but New Mexico is still solving its own Indian water problems, and they spill over into Southwest Colorado. New Mexico plans to pipe San Juan River water to Gallup to settle a dispute with the Navajo Nation. But the state was already using its share of the Upper Colorado River Basin, so it first had to get the federal government to agree that water was available. The result was the June 2006 "Hydrologic Determination" by the Bureau of Reclamation. It recalculated the amount of water available to the whole Upper Colorado Basin - Utah and Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. "Oddly enough, from our suspicious minds, the Bureau came up with 21,000 acre-feet (for New Mexico), which is exactly what the Gallup pipeline needs," Porter said. There's no question New Mexicans need the water supply, he said. But some of Porter's fellow water managers from the north side of the border are worried that New Mexico's various projects will use too much of the San Juan, he said. Overuse of the river could harm sensitive fish species. Conflicts with New Mexico are just one way that Southwest Colorado is unique. Unlike Colorado's other river systems, no one stream connects the whole area. "We have 12 rivers. We don't have one basin," Porter said.

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