An Interview With Dr. Doug Kenney

What led you to develop this report?

This is a report I've been wanting to write for 15 years, going back to my experience with the Severe Sustained Drought Study that was done back in the early 1990s, asking what would happen to the basin if it were to experience an extended drought, an event on the order of 20 years or so. It pointed out some of the institutional shortcomings, but it was largely ignored. The thinking at the time was that a drought that large could not happen - instead, most of the arguing among policy-makers in the 1990s was about who would have the right to surplus flows. But of course, a severe drought has happened, and it may foreshadow the new status quo. There is still an urgency to the problem that isn’t widely appreciated. So I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the problems are significant, because we need to get started talking about solutions.

Q: Your report predicts some pretty dire consequences for Colorado River users if the river continues to be managed the way it is now. Do you think solutions are available that would enable the basin to avoid those consequences?

DK: Yes. If we continue on the current path, the consequences do get pretty dire. But there's no reason to think it's impossible to change that path. The key is that we need to act before we reach a crisis. If annual demand continues to exceed supply, there's a point at which it becomes a lot more costly and complicated to deal with the problem. We need to remember that, one way or another, demand on the river will be brought down to the level of supply. The only question is, will we be proactive enough to choose the pathway that imposes the least suffering? In my report, I argue we need to do some proactive problem solving.

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Two Perspectives

Taylor Hawes, Director of the Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River Program, and John Entsminger, Assistant General Manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, were both on the panel that responded to Dr. Kenney’s presentation at last month's CRWUA meeting. We’ve asked them for additional thoughts.

Q: At the CRWUA panel, you argued that creating truly sustainable solutions would require expanding the negotiating table beyond just the seven basin states and the federal government. Wouldn't adding more parties make any future negotiation process even more difficult, at a time when the need for action is urgent?

TH: I see two main reasons to expand the negotiating table. First, while I agree the situation is urgent, we probably have a few years and maybe even a decade before things really get dire. Our task is to change the way we manage the River in a time of changing climate, to meet the needs of both people and nature. That's a hard task, and it's worth taking the time to do it right. The 2007 Accord was negotiated in 3-4 years, which demonstrates that when the states are motivated by a common interest, they can come together in a relatively short time frame. Adding a few key interest groups may add a little more time, but it will be worth it in the long run.

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Q: As you look back to Doug Kenney's presentation to CRWUA, and his report, are there any key points that jump out at you?

JE: I'll give you a point of strong agreement and a point of disagreement. On the one hand, where Doug says in his report that any changes in the Law of the River should be designed by the states and enacted only by unanimous agreement, and not imposed by other levels of government or academics or NGOs, I think that is spot on. I'm not saying that academics and NGO's don't have a role in the process. They do - we saw that in the case of the 2007 ROD, where the principle of conservation before shortage was incorporated into the final decision, and that came from the NGOs. But as for trying to impose solutions on the states other than within the framework of the Compact, I think anything resulting from that approach would be dead on arrival.

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