“Water in the West:” From an admitted novice

By Michelle Truly

(Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a three-part series exploring some of the ins and outs, whys and hows of water regulation that impact everyone in the valley….)

Part III – A few more tidbits about water in the West

Let’s talk about the Bureau of Reclamation. Established in 1902 the Bureau’s mission is “to manage, develop and protect water and related resources in an environmentally and economically sound manner in the interest of the American public.”

This “strangely named” federal agency has constructed over 600 dams, and a multitude of power plants and canals in the West. I say, “strangely named” because I am still struggling with the term “reclamation.” I understand that the Reclamation Act was put in place for “reclamation of arid and semiarid lands,” but to me that sounds like re-architecting what Mother Nature designed. Regardless, this agency under the direction of Congress, became a large force in the West and put in place the large infrastructure needed to execute the Colorado Compact (think Hoover Dam/Lake Mead, Lake Powell and locally, Blue Mesa reservoir).

Incidentally, the dams and their associated hydroelectric power plants in the Pacific northwest were actually instrumental in helping the United States win World War II. Their cheap and abundant electricity was used for the aluminum production for aircrafts and ships and at the Hanford Nuclear facility where plutonium bombs were made – both very electricity-intensive manufacturing processes.   

You cannot talk about water in the West without mentioning its complex set of laws. In the western United States, water law primarily operates under the doctrine of prior appropriation, which is often summarized as “first in time, first in right.” This system grants water rights based on who first diverted water from a source and put it to beneficial use, rather than on land ownership along a water body (“riparian rights”) which is primarily in place east of the Mississippi River. So even if a body of water (river, creek, canal, etc.) passes through my property, unless I own a water right in that river, creek, canal, I cannot use that water as it likely has already been spoken for by a downstream user. So here in Crested Butte, we shovel 200-400 inches of snow each winter but legally and physically we cannot store it all. After we use our legal allotment, the snowmelt flows down the Gunnison River to the Colorado River so someone in L.A. can flush their toilet.

Have I piqued your interest in learning more about water in the West? If so, below is a list of the real authorities in water in the West.  Check them out.

—Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (https://ugrwcd.org/)

—Colorado Water Conservation Board (https://cwcb.colorado.gov/)

—Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

—Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law, Water Education Colorado (https://watereducationcolorado.org/

Written by Michelle Truly, a Crested Butte resident and retired aerospace engineer, who readily admits that she has no business writing about water in the West but is fascinated by the subject.