The Grand Valley Water Users Association stands firmly with our commissioner and our water users.

The Colorado River is governed by law. By the 1922 Compact. By federal statutes and operating guidelines layered over more than a century. It is governed by infrastructure built to store, move, and deliver water across seven states under an agreed framework of rights and responsibilities that distributes water, risk and economic security.

That framework matters. The Colorado River Compact was not a suggestion; it is an executed contract. It divided the basin into Upper and Lower divisions and promised each an equitable apportionment of use. That agreement enabled the massive public works system that transformed the American Southwest, allowing cities to rise and irrigated agriculture to flourish and the Grand Valley to grow into the thriving community it is today. The legal foundation of this system is not who is largest or most politically influential, the foundation is a contract that allows each basin to develop its share of water as it sees fit.

This week, the Lower Basin governors released a joint statement regarding failure to reach a seven-state agreement by a February 14th deadline. Their statement emphasized the scale of their populations, economies, and agricultural output. But Compact apportions water equitably between geographic regions, not based on population, economic scale, or political influence. The Lower Basin’s statements seem to make an assumption that mismanaging this vital resource has somehow made them entitled to more of that same resource from Colorado while we have coveted, protected, and managed our water appropriately.

It was Colorado that first proposed the 1922 Compact, recognizing that only a binding agreement would allow our economies, our farms and our cities to prosper. And it is Colorado that finds itself defending that same agreement as the lower Basin governors call for “shared contribution” from all seven states.

When the Lower Basin states call for collaboration and shared contribution, they are asking Colorado to move beyond the Compact’s allocation framework, to absorb economic risk and uncertainty that would constrain our ability to farm, to grow our economies, and to use the water apportioned to the Upper Basin, of which only 60 percent has been developed.

Fortunately, Colorado’s lead negotiator is the bulldog we need in this moment. Becky Mitchell understands what is at stake and has refused, under pressure from environmental groups, from other states, and even from a few within Colorado, to acquiesce to demands that will injure Colorado and the Grand Valley.

GVWUA has participated in past pilot projects exploring voluntary, temporary and compensated conservation and been willing participants in numerous water-saving endeavors. The determined and nimble producers in the Grand Valley understand the importance of conservation, living within what the river provides, and they acknowledge a drier and hotter climate will bring changes to their operations and to our communities. However, the Lower Basin states need to recognize these hydrologic realities and make the changes necessary to correct the system they have failed through chronic and continued overuse. GVWUA will not ask our producers to bear the burden of Lower Basin mismanagement and their continued denial of the realities in front of them.

When we are confident that true conservation efforts are being discussed; programs that support not only the Lower Basin producers, but the Upper Basin’s users as well, we will be ready to support our commissioner and be part of the real work of supporting our neighboring Lower Basin states while they fix what they have broken.