Walcher: The “sky is falling” water narrative doesn’t hold water
By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com
Every year for the past 25, at least, negotiating teams for the seven states on the Colorado River have worked to overcome a new crisis, invariably driven by two entities: the State of California and the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR).
For a quarter-century, those teams have responded to federal pressure based on the dubious theory that an ongoing drought, and a resulting decline in the river’s flow, somehow changed the law and gave BOR authority to ignore the Interstate Compact.
Not once has the federal agency ever acknowledged the government’s own role in reducing the river’s flow, by neglecting to manage thirsty invasive species like tamarisk, and especially by allowing national forests to become so overgrown that much of...