A Delta in Repair: Restoration, Binational Cooperation, and the Future of the Colorado River Delta

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. A. Leopold, "The Green Lagoons," in A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1970), pp. 150–151. 2. G. Sykes, The Colorado Delta (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1937). 3. F. Zamora-Arroyo, K. W. Flessa, "Nature's Fair Share: Finding and Allocating Water for the Colorado River Delta," in L. L. Hoffman, E. D. McGovern, R. G. Varady, and K. W. Flessa, eds., Conservation of Shared Environments: Learning from the United States and Mexico (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009), pp. 23–38. 4. P. L. Fradkin, A River No More: The Colorado River and the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 5. D. F. Luecke, J. Pitt, C. Congdon, E. Glenn, C. Valdes-Casillas, M. Briggs, A Delta Once More: Restoring Riparian and Wetland Habitat in the Colorado River Delta (Washington, DC: Environmental Defense Fund, 1999), p. 10. 6. J. Waterman, "Where the Colorado Runs Dry," New York Times, February 14, 2012. 7. International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico, Commission Signs International Agreement on the Santa Clara Wetland and Yuma Desalting Plant Pilot Run, June 10, 2010, http://www.ibwc.gov/Files/PressRelease_061010.pdf. The agreement was formalized in Minute No. 316 to the International Water Treaty between the United States and Mexico. The Yuma Desalting Plant, constructed by the United States to treat agricultural drainage and produce approximately 100,00 acre-feet per year of freshwater, operated only briefly in the early 1990s. Because of the high costs associated with operating the plant, the United States has relied on other means to meet water commitments in the Lower Basin and with Mexico. But after a protracted drought in the southwest, Congress in 2003 passed report language in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill for 2004 instructing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to ready the plant for operation. Operation of the plant would reduce the quantity and increase the salinity of water flowing into the Ciénega de Santa Clara, located at the eastern edge of the Colorado River Delta in Mexico. At 40,000 acres, the Ciénega de Santa Clara is the largest remaining wetland and functions as an essential component of the delta ecosystem. For a fuller description of the Ciénega. see: E. P. Glenn, R. S. Felger, A. Borquez, D. S. Turner, "Ciénega de Santa Clara: Endangered Wetland in the Colorado River Delta, Sonora, Mexico," Natural Resources Journal 32 (1992): 817–824; and J. P. Cohn, "Colorado River Delta," Bioscience 54 (2004): 386–391. See also R. C. Archibold, "Eyes Turn to Mexico as Drought Drags On," New York Times, September 13, 2009, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/us/14drought.html. 8. International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico, Minute No. 318. Commission Signs Colorado River Agreement in Response to April 2010 Earthquake Damage in the Mexicali Valley. December 20, 2010, at http://www.ibwc.gov/Files/Press_Release_122010.pdf. Under Minute 318, Mexico can temporarily defer delivery of up to 260,000 acre-feet of its annual allotment while repairs are made to the irrigation system in the Mexicali Valley of Baja California as a result of an April 2010 earthquake. Mexico can then recover its allotment of water, after repairs are made, beginning in 2014. 9. International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico, Commission Signs Colorado River Agreement, November 20, 2012, at http://www.ibwc.state.gov/Files/Press_Release_112012.pdf 10. S. Dibble, "U.S.-Mexico Boost Collaboration on Colorado River," San Diego Union-Tribune, February 6, 2011, p. A1. At http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/06/us-mexico-boosting-collaboration-colorado-river; and I. Lovett, "US and Mexico Sign a Deal on Sharing the Colorado River," New York Times, November 20, 2012. The agreements are signed by the International Boundary Water Commission and its Mexican counterpart, CILA, or the Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas. 11. P. L. Nagler, E. P. Glenn, K. Hursh, C. Curtis, A. Huete, "Vegetation Mapping for Change Detection on an Arid Zone River," Environmental Monitoring & Assessment 109, no. 1–3 (2005): 255–274. See also Luecke et al., note 5 above; and M. J. Cohen, C. Henges-Jeck, G. Castillo-Moreno, "A Preliminary Water Balance for the Colorado River Delta, 1992–1998," Journal of Arid Environments 49 (2001): 35–48. 12. A group of researchers led by Dr. Carlos Valdés-Casillas, then director of Centro de Conservación de Recursos Naturales (CECARENA), and Professor Edward Glenn of the University of Arizona's Environmental Research Laboratory began to assess vegetation distribution, presence of wildlife, hydrology, and water quality in the delta. They quickly became convinced of its potential for restoration. The conservation organizations Pronatura Sonora of San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, Mexico, and the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, Arizona, then initiated a joint community outreach program. J. Marcos, S. Cornelius, "Mapping the Organizational Landscape in the Colorado River Delta: The Big Picture on Binational Collaboration," Southwest Hydrology, January/February (2004): 22–24, at http://www.swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V3_N1/feature6.pdf 13. Luecke et al., note 5 above, p. 4; G. Pitzer, "Just Add Water? Restoring the Colorado River Delta," Western Water, September/October (2008); and J. Pitt, O. Hinojosa-Huerta, Y. Carrillo-Guerrero, Getting Ahead of a Water Crisis: Binational Collaboration in the Colorado River Basin (2010), at http://www.atl.org.mx/coloquio/images/stories/curricula/Osvel%20Hinojosa-Jennifer%20Pitt%20ponencia%20ingl%C3%A9s.pdf 14. Interestingly, the total storage capacity exceeds four times the river's annual average flow. J. Morrison, S. Postel, P. Gleick, The Sustainable Use of Water in the Lower Colorado River Basin (Oakland, CA: Pacific Institute for Studies in Development and Environmental Security, 2006). These projects prompted the creation of large irrigation districts such as the Imperial Valley in California and the Mexicali Valley in Baja California. Major urban areas in both the United States and Mexico, like Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, Tijuana, and Mexicali, owe their existence to these projects. 15. D. T. McDougal, "The Delta of the Rio Colorado," Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 38 (1906): 1–16. From his travels in the Colorado River Delta in 1922, naturalist Aldo Leopold described what he observed in the Delta: "A verdant wall of mesquite and willow separated the channel from the thorny desert beyond. At each bend we saw egrets standing in the pools ahead, each white statue matched by its white reflection. Fleets of cormorants drove their black prows in quest of skittering mullets; avocets, willets, and yellowlegs dozed one-legged on the bars; mallards, widgeons, and teal sprang skyward in alarm. As the birds took the air, they accumulated in a small cloud ahead, there to settle, or to break back to our rear. When a troop of egrets settled on a far green willow, they looked like a premature snowstorm." A. Leopold, "The Green Lagoons," at http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Gorge/5604/aldoleopoldgreenlagoons.htm. See also Sykes, note 2 above; and E. P. Glenn, C. Lee, R. Felger, S. Zengel, "Effects of Water Management on the Wetlands of the Colorado River Delta, Mexico," Conservation Biology 10 (1996): 1175–1186. For a good discussion of the various ecozones in the delta, see E. P. Glenn, F. Zamora-Arroyo, P. L. Nagler, M. Briggs, W. Shaw, K. Flessa, "Ecology and Conservation Biology of the Colorado River Delta, Mexico," Journal of Arid Environments 49 (2001): 5–15. 16. J. P. Cohn, "Resurrecting the Dammed: A Look at Colorado River Restoration," Bioscience, 51, no. 12 (2001): 998–1003. 17. C. Bergman, Red Delta: Fighting for Life at the End of the Colorado River (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2002). 18. Zamora-Arroyo and Flessa, note 3 above, p. 24. 19. Pitt et al., note 13 above, p. 4. See also F. Zamora-Arroyo, J. Pitt, S. Cornelius, E. Glenn, O. Hinojosa-Huerta, M. Moreno, J. García, P. Nagler, M. de la Garza, I. Parra, Conservation Priorities in the Colorado River Delta, Mexico and the United States (2005). Prepared by the Sonoran Institute, Environmental Defense, University of Arizona, Pronatura Noroeste Dirección de Conservación Sonora, Centro de Investigación. On p. 24, they note that the wetlands survive today on "inefficiencies" in the water system—inadvertently released water that is not used by agriculture or cities. 20. C. Bergman, note 17 above. 21. B. C. Bates, Z. W. Kundzewicz, S. Wu, J. P. Palutikof, Climate Change and Water, Technical Paper of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Geneva: IPCC Secretariat, 2008), p. 105. 22. T. R. Karl, J. M. Melillo, T. C. Peterson, eds., Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 51, 129. 23. Bates et al., note 21 above, p. 65. 24. Karl et al., note 22 above, p. 130. 25. K. G. Wheller, J. Pitt, T. M. Magee, D. F. Luecke, "Alternatives for Restoring the Colorado River Delta," Natural Resources Journal 47 (2007): 917–967. 26. Luecke et al., note 5 above. 27. O. Hinojosa-Huerta et al., "Hovering Over the Alto Golfo: The Status and Conservation of Birds from the Río Colorado to the Gran Desierto," in R. S. Felger, B. Broyles, eds., Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves of the Sonoran Desert (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007), p. 383; Hinojosa-Huerta, personal communication, July 25, 2009. 28. J. García-Hernández, O. Hinojosa-Huerta, V. Gerhart, Y. Carrillo-Guerrero, E. P. Glenn, "Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii) Surveys in the Colorado River Delta Wetlands: Implications for Management," Journal of Arid Environments 49 (2001): 161–169; E. Mellink, V. Ferreira-Bartrina, "On the Wildlife of Wetlands of the Mexican Portion of the Río Colorado Delta," Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences 99 (2000): 115–127; M. A. Patten, E. Mellink, H. Gómez de Silva, T. E. Wurster, "Status and Taxonomy of the Colorado Desert Avifauna of Baja California," Monographs in Field Ornithology 3 (2001): 29–63. 29. Hinojosa-Huerta et al., note 27 above. 30. M. Kowaleski et al., "Dead Delta's Former Productivity: Two Trillion Shells at the Mouth of the Colorado River," Geology 28 (2000): 1059, 1062. 31. Some of the earliest efforts of binational cooperation in the delta can be traced to the 1988 United States–Mexico Agreement on Migratory Birds, which led to funding from the U.S. North American Waterfowl Conservation Act. This in turn funded many inventory projects, and established the delta as an important habitat on this continent. Luecke et al., note 7 above, p. 10. 32. For a discussion of some of the key historical agreements and the diversity of early plans to get water to the delta, some of which challenge the current legal framework and others which find ways to operate within it, see R. G. Varady, K. B. Hankins, A. Kaus, E. Young, R. Merideth, "…To the Sea of Cortes: Nature, Water, Culture, and Livelihood in the Lower Colorado River Basin and Delta: An Overview of Issues, Policies, and Approaches to Environmental Restoration," Journal of Arid Environments 49 (2001): 195–209. 33. See U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation to Conduct Yuma Desalting Plant Pilot Run, November 9, 2009, at http://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/newsrelease/detail.cfm?RecordID=30721 34. Luecke et al., note 5 above, p. 10. 35. M. Jenkins, "The Efficiency Paradox," High Country News, February 5, 2007. 36. W. (Gwynn) Laird-Benner, H. Ingram, "Sonoran Desert Network Weavers: Surprising Environmental Successes on the U.S./Mexico Border," Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 53, no. 1 (2011): 6–16. 37. T. Heikkila, A. K. Gerlak, "The Formation of Large-Scale Collaborative Resource Management Institutions: Clarifying the Roles of Stakeholders, Science and Institutions," Policy Studies Journal 33, no. 4 (2005): 583–612; M. Doyle, C. A. Drew, Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration: Five Case Studies From the United States (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008). 38. See B. Gray, Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multi-Party Problems (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1989); and S. E. Daniels, G. B. Walker, Working Through Environmental Conflict: The Collaborative Learning Approach (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001). 39. J. M. Wondolleck, S. L. Yaffee, Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resource Management (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000); J. Pretty, "Social Capital and the Collective Management of Resources," Science 302 (2003): 1912–1914; T. M. Koontz et al., eds., Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government? (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2004). 40. A. S. Cheng, "Build It and They Will Come? Mandating Collaboration in Public Lands Planning and Management," Natural Resource Journal 46 (2006): 841–858; E. P. Weber, N. P. Lovrich, M. Gaffney, "Collaboration, Enforcement, and Endangered Species: A Framework for Assessing Collaborative Problem-Solving Capacity," Society & Natural Resources 18, no. 8 (2005): 677–698. 41. See W. R. Lowry, Dam Politics: Restoring America's Rivers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). According to some estimates, more than US$1 billion is spent on river and stream restoration projects annually in the United States alone. E. S. Bernhardt, M. A. Palmer, J. D. Allan, G. Alexander, K. Barnas, S. Brooks, J. Carr, S. Clayton, C. Dahm, J. Follstad-Shah, D. Galat, S. Gloss, P. Goodwin, D. Hart, B. Hassett, R. Jenkinson, S. Katz, G. M. Kondolf, P. S. Lake, R. Lave, J. L. Meyer, and T. K. O'Don, "Synthesizing US River Restoration Efforts," Science 308, no. 29 (2005): 636–637. 42. For a fuller description of some early restoration projects, including projects along the Hardy River and in the Laguna del Indio, see O. Hinojosa-Huerta, M. Briggs, Y. Carrillo-Guerrero, E. P. Glenn, M. Lara-Flores, M. Román-Rodríguez, Community-Based Restoration of Desert Wetlands: The Case of the Colorado River Delta, USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-191 (2005). Available at: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/psw_gtr191_0637-0645_hinojosa-huerta.pdf 43. T. Nauman, Talli. Joining Forces to Save the Colorado River Delta, Americas Program Investigative Series (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, February 7, 2007). 44. F. Zamora-Arroyo et al., note 19 above. 45. In this case, the influence of Baja California's Environmental Minister, Enrique Villegas Ibarra, and the support from state agencies (the State Water Commission and the Governor of Baja California) served as important factors in the collaborative efforts. 46. Created in 1889 for the United States and Mexico to work together to apply the boundary and water treaties of the two countries states regarding boundary demarcation, national ownership of waters, sanitation, water quality, and flood control, the IWBC and its Mexican counterpart, the Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), also settle disputes or differences that might arise between the two countries in these matters. 47. Under the plan, the United States will provide 10,000 acre-feet from groundwater sources; Mexico will provide 10,000 acre-feet of water by leasing water rights; and NGOs will provide 10,000 acre-feet by leasing water rights. 48. See T. Davis, "Yuma Desalination Plant to Start Flowing," Arizona Daily Star, May 1, 2010, at http://azstarnet.com/news/science/health-med-fit/article_8e4f368f-1779-50cc-b084-3f265e1912a4.html See also National Public Radio, "Yuma Desalting Plant and the Ciénega de Santa Clara Wetland," May 14, 2010, at http://www.kawc.org/arizonaedition.html. 49. Pitt et al., note 7 above, pp. 7–8. Additionally, Minute 317, signed in June 2010, provides a process to consider environmental issues that may include those related to the Yuma Desalting Plant and the Ciénega. International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico, Minute No. 317. Conceptual Framework for US-Mexico Discussions on Colorado River Cooperative Actions, June 17, 2010, at http://www.ibwc.gov/Files/Minutes/Minute_317.pdf. 50. As part of their assessment, scientists placed instruments to record water quality and water level every 30 minutes at 20 locations in the Ciénega. Every month, the researchers used small boats to visit every instrument and download the data. The team also measured water flow into the Ciénega from its main sources of water, assessed the bird populations, and used satellite images to measure the extent and health of the vegetation. The monitoring project was a collaborative effort among the University of Arizona, the Sonoran Institute (Tucson, Arizona), Pronatura Noroeste (San Luis, R.C., Sonora), the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (Mexicali campus), Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo (Guaymas, Sonora), and the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Biosphere Reserve. 51. S. Postel, "A Historic Binational Agreement Gives New Life to the Colorado River Delta," Water Currents, National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative, November 20, 2012, at http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/20/a-historic-binational-agreement-gives-new-life-to-the-colorado-river-delta 52. F. Zamora-Arroyo, O. Hinojosa-Huerta, E. Santiago, E. Brott, P. Culp, "Collaboration in Mexico: Renewed Hope for the Colorado River Delta," Nevada Law Journal 8 (2008): 871–889. 53. Zamora-Arroyo and Flessa, note 3 above. 54. S. Mumme, O. Ibanez, "Climate Change (Drought) and the Management of International Rivers on the U.S.–Mexico Border," paper delivered at the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, March 2011, Montreal, Canada. 55. S. Postel, "The Colorado River Delta Blues," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2012.