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The UA Water Resources Research Center's upcoming conference will focus on the Colorado River and discuss what the water situation will look like in 2048.

By University Communications
May 9, 2008

What do John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado River and the upcoming University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center's conference have in common?

Each, in its own way, is a quest to understand the Colorado River.

Powell led his team on historic expeditions of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1872 that allowed him to explore, map and collect geologic data.

In the contemporary sense, the upcoming conference, "The Importance of the Colorado River to Arizona's Future," will do the same, by addressing legal and public policy issues related to Arizona and Colorado River.

The UA center's conference will be held June 24 in Phoenix and will host the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Bob Johnson and Michael Tramer, an authority on desalination and public-private partnerships, as keynote speakers. The conference is being presented through a collaboraiton with Central Arizona Project.

The conference also will look at historic events, beginning with the Boulder Canyon Project Act that authorized Arizona's 2.8 million acre-foot allocation 80 years ago.

Forty years later, the Colorado River Basin Project Act authorized construction of the Central Arizona Project, which resulted in a canal snaking more than 330 miles from Lake Havasu to Tucson.

The conference also will cover topics that include interstate and intrastate water baking and recovery, how major water regions use their water, how the drought impacts the Colorado River, and other topics.

The questions being posed by the conference organizers are: What can be expected in the next 40 years in Colorado River affairs? What does the future hold? Who will be using Colorado River water in 2048? How much will they use? Where will the water be used and for what purposes? What environmental issues will need to be addressed? How reliable will the Colorado River be as a water source?

Conference participants include tribal, city, county, state and federal officials, environmentalists, researchers and climate experts who will offer their own perspectives.

The titles of other panel sessions are: Looking at the Past, Looking Toward the Future; Addressing Uncertainties Associated With Drought and Climate Change: The Forty-Year Outlook; and The Environment as a Water Using Sector: The Forty-Year Outlook.

One session in particular, devoted to addressing the use of Colorado River water in 2048, will include two sub-panels, with panelists discussing its use in different geographic regions of the state by different types of users. This will include river water use on state land, tribal land and in different regions of the state. Panels will be made up of representatives of cities, agricultural interests and Indian nations along the Colorado River and in central Arizona, as well as officials knowledgeable about drought and shortage sharing.