THE ROLE OF CLIMATE ON WATER INSTITUTIONS IN THE WESTERN AMERICAS
| Jurisdiction | United States |
Colorado Supreme Court
For the International Water History Association Paris, France, December 1, 2005
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The early 21st Century drought in Colorado and the western United States has produced a citizenry highly interested in all matters of climate and water supply. This interest particularly extends to decision-makers at all levels of government, including local, state, and national legislators, executive officials, and judges. In all cultures of the western Americas in all ages, drought has shaped communities and their water institutions.
Because water is so vital to people and the environment, those who live in the water-scant lands have always been preoccupied with the climate. Securing as firm a water supply as possible to grow crops, sustain businesses, and provide water to city residents, has always been an economic necessity for states of the United States whose territory lies west of the Hundredth Meridian. In these areas, precipitation averages less than 20 inches per year, and cyclical droughts remind each generation that water is life.
Summiting at the Great Divide of the continent, my own state of Colorado sits at the headwaters of four major river systems, the Platte, the Arkansas, the Rio Grande, and the Colorado. The first three are tributary to the Atlantic Ocean; the Colorado, to the Pacific. Living as they do at the heart of the continent and experiencing cyclical drought in every generation, Coloradans are vitally interested in water matters.
As a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, I am involved in the decision of water law cases appealed directly from the seven water courts comprising major watersheds of Colorado. To each of the seven water divisions is assigned a water judge and a Division Engineer. Under laws adopted by the Colorado legislature, the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court designates one of the local district judges in each of the seven water divisions to be the water judge. The State Engineer, who is the executive head of Colorado's Division of Water Resources, supervises the seven division engineers. The division engineers and the local water commissioners distribute, in order of adjudicated priority based on actual
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beneficial use, the available surface water and tributary ground water to those who hold water use rights recognized by a court decree.
Each of the seventeen western states of the United States--north to south from North and South Dakota to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, then west to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and California--has its own system for establishing and administering water use rights. The single greatest common characteristic of this vast area is cyclical water shortage. In many years, there is simply not enough available water to satisfy all potential uses. As urban areas grow, there is increasing pressure for conversion of agricultural water to municipal use and increasing need for conservation measures.
A stereotypical view of western United States water law is that it was developed by Utah Mormons and California miners. But, the technology and practices of water development by Native American and Hispanic communities in the Americas are far older and demonstrate the impact of recurring drought on the laws and customs of every people in every generation in the western United States, Central America, and South America.
Contemporary Setting: Early 2lst Century Drought
The first five years of the Twenty-First century have commenced with an enormous drought in the western United States. The worst single year was 2002. The forests of Colorado were on fire. Municipal water suppliers enforced water rationing by price surcharges and strict regulation of landscape watering. Farmers suffered a major decline in the water available for growing crops. Television, radio, and the internet were full of drought and climate change news.
Normally, Colorado produces an annual average of 16 million acre-feet of surface water and tributary groundwater available for delivery to water users (conversion factor: acre-ft × 1233.49 = cubic meters).
Of that amount, approximately 10 million acre-feet is delivered on average annually at the boundaries of the state to satisfy legal obligations imposed by nine different interstate compacts and three equitable apportionment decrees of the United States Supreme Court.
In 2002, Colorado rivers totaled a water production of 4 million acre-feet of water, one fourth of its annual average. Much of that water had to be delivered out of state to satisfy Colorado's interstate obligations. Colorado sustained itself in that year through severe conservation measures and by emptying for use 6 million acre-feet of its 6.6 million acre-feet of active storage reservoir water.
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In the course of this drought experience, Coloradans have learned about the recurring visitation of drought in the Americas and its influence on native peoples and the early non-native settlers who instituted similar practices of canal and reservoir construction. Two emerging sciences, climatology and paleohydrology, greatly inform this learning.
Paleohydrology
Paleohydrology is the study of ancient water works and water use. Coloradans Ken and Ruth Wright--he is the senior engineer for Wright Water Engineers and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District--have established a paleo-hydrology institute for research into ancient water practices.
Teaming with the Peruvian archeologist Alfredo Valencia, the Wrights have focused on Tipon and Machu Picchu in Peru. They have concentrated their Colorado work on Mesa Verde National Park in cooperation with the National Park Service and the Colorado Historical Society. With the Wrights' reports, books, and drafts of forthcoming publications in hand, I visited these sites between 2002 and 2005 and participated in the survey of
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the fourth Mesa Verde reservoir, Boxelder.2 As Vice President of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, I have been privileged to discuss and write about the cultural and legal history of western water institutions in citizen and professional venues.
Tipon
Tipon is located 13 miles down the Huatanay River Valley from Cusco, Peru. Located at 12,000 feet in a high ravine, Tipon's 500-acre enclosure is a paradigm of careful water planning for food supply and ceremonial purposes. Its aesthetic, highly functional design holds an ascending stair-step arrangement of 13 skillfully constructed agricultural terraces for the growing of maize. Up to 500 people may have lived within the four-mile long perimeter wall that surrounds Tipon. A number of crop storage, dwelling, and ceremonial structures are still visible.
A comprehensive drainage system underlies the entire site. Points of water-discharge slot through walls of shapely-fitted stone that contain fertile soil the workers brought in for cultivating. These people knew that carefully tended earth was vital to survival, so they created places within the mountain sides built to be earthquake and erosion resistant. During the cool of the night, these durable walls gave back absorbed solar heat to the growing plants. The site's constant flow of water also helped to moderate against freeze.
Water ritual is vital to Andean way of life. In the ceremonial center of Tipon, a perennial spring feeds a magnificent fountain. Four jets of singing water fall gracefully into a splash pool. This water is drinking water pure. The jets are well-designed for easy filling of water jars. After stilling, the water trails down through a combination of above ground and below ground conveyances onto the lower agricultural terraces.
These people early-practiced conjunctive use of ground and surface water.
The upper agricultural terraces receive water through a surface diversion from the Rio Pukara 0.84 miles away. Three canals and an aqueduct system take this river water into Tipon for irrigation, supplementing the spring water.
When visiting Tipon, you can ascend the agricultural terraces one-by-one along a walking path. At your feet a stone channel runs water. You
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can see and hear many other conduits conducting water across and through the walls, down wall-faces, along wall footings. The place resounds with singing and working waters!
Above all looms 13,000 foot Tipon Peak on which the Cruzmoqo is prominent. This is a revered shrine, signal station, and security outpost site marked with ancient petroglyphs. You can circumnavigate by foot an entire mountain side, and feel why the Quechua people have always believed these mountains are sentient.
Ken Wright calls Tipon a "water garden." His forthcoming book contains a fascinating description of Andean/Peruvian topography, history, culture, climate, environment, religion, agriculture, government, engineering, and public works construction spanning 2000 years. The Inca perfected Tipon into a royal estate, but people of the area grew crops and lived within this challenging montane stronghold long before that.
The Inca learned their lessons about feeding and governing people by means of a well-designed system of land and water works from their predecessors, the Wari and Tiwanaku cultures. An important feature of the Tipon book is Gordon McEwan's chapter devoted to the history, culture, and archeology of the Lake Titicaca/Cusco highlands. McEwan, an American archeologist working with Peruvian crews, has devoted twenty-five years of his life to the study of the nearby Pikillacta and Chokepukio sites in the Cusco Valley.
Machu Picchu
The Inca were master water handlers...
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