Environmental Issues in the Allocation and Management of Western Interstate Rivers

Abstract

This special issue focuses on a range of topics relating to Great Lakes water and the environment, including the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (Great Lakes Compact). This interstate agreement, approved by Congress in 2008,2 represents one of the more important recent developments in water policy, not just in the Great Lakes, but nationally as well.3 There are many interstate water compacts, primarily in the western United States,4 but the Great Lakes Compact is unique. From a western perspective, what makes this new compact so unusual is that it actually restricts diversions for consumptive uses for purposes of protecting the Great Lakes environment. The western compacts essentially take the opposite approach, emphasizing old-school water development and use, while mostly ignoring environmental matters. 6 In practice, the water development favored by these compacts-chiefly in the form of large federal water projects-sharply altered western river ecosystems, resulting in serious environmental problems. These problems have not prompted changes in the compacts (or Supreme Court decrees) that formally allocate interstate waters among the western states. But largely because of the