Revisiting the Colorado River Compact: Time for a Change?
Revisiting the Colorado River Compact: Time for a Change?
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重温科罗拉多河契约：是时候做出改变了吗？
DOI：
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发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Adler
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Adler
自1922年以来，《科罗拉多河契约》一直是科罗拉多河流域七个州以及许多其他用水方和其他利益相关方的《河流法》的基础。大量其他法律（包括其他州际契约、国际条约、联邦和州法规、法规、司法判决、行政政策、合同和其他文件）都以契约为基础。此外，政府和私人各方都广泛依赖契约和《河法》其他方面提供的法律稳定性来支持广泛的经济投资，包括世界上最密集的水坝、改道、运河、防洪堤和其他旨在管理流域水资源的结构之一。这表明在提议对协议进行重大修改时要谨慎。然而，由于许多原因，在编写契约时所犯的错误以及自那时以来发生的变化表明，从根本上重新考虑契约可能是适当的。这些因素包括：(1)流域国家在签订契约时使用了不充分的水文记录，严重低估了流域的平均可用水量；(2)根据最近的模拟预测，全球变暖可能进一步减少流域可用水量；(3)原契约谈判对印第安部落和墨西哥的用水需求重视不足；(4)契约没有解决河流环境需求，这反映在后来的一系列联邦法规和其他新的环境法原则中；(5) 1922年以来，区域增长格局发生了显著变化；(6)所有这些因素都将给契约的运作方式带来越来越大的压力，因为上游流域各州在未来几十年里寻求充分利用它们的契约权利。所有这些因素都表明，如果预见到重新考虑科罗拉多河契约的需要，流域各州和其他利益相关方将得到更好的服务，而不是等待在不久的将来某个时候可能出现的危机。
Since 1922, the Colorado River Compact has served as the fundamental underpinning of the Law of the River for the seven states and many other water users and other interested parties in the Colorado River Basin. A vast body of other law (including other interstate compacts, international treaties, federal and state statutes, regulations, judicial decisions, administrative policies, contracts, and other documents) is grounded in the compact. Moreover, both governmental and private parties have relied extensively on the legal stability provided by the compact and other aspects of the Law of the River to support a wide range of economic investments, including one of the world's most intensive systems of dams, diversions, canals, levees, and other structures designed to manage water resources in the basin. That suggests caution in proposing major changes to the compact. For a large number of reasons, however, mistakes made when the compact was written, and changed circumstances since that time, suggest that a fundamental reconsideration of the compact may be appropriate. Those include the following factors: (1) the basin states used an inadequate hydrologic record when they negotiated the compact, and seriously underestimated the average amount of water available in the basin; (2) according to recent modeling predictions, global warming may further reduce available basin water supplies; (3) the original compact negotiations paid insufficient attention to water needs of Indian Tribes and Mexico; (4) the compact did not address instream environmental needs, reflected in a series of later federal statutes and other new principles of environmental law; (5) regional growth patterns have shifted significantly since 1922; and (6) all of those factors will place an increasing strain on the manner in which the compact operates as the upper basin states seek to use their full compact entitlements over the next several decades. All of those factors suggest that the basin states and other interested parties would be better served by anticipating the need to reconsider the Colorado River Compact, rather than waiting for a likely crisis sometime in the near future.