John McCain stirred up a tizzy last week with a comment about a Colorado River compact that allocates water among seven Western states. The compact "needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties," McCain told Colorado's Pueblo Chieftain. "I think that there's a movement amongst the governors to try, if not, quote, renegotiate, certainly adjust to the new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource." Coloradans on both sides of the aisle objected, taking McCain to mean that he favors diverting water away from upper basin states, including Colorado, to give to lower basin states, including McCain's home state of Arizona. They also pointed out the contract was just renegotiated in December. McCain said this week that his comment was "mistakenly construed as a call to rescind" the compact. Colorado Democrats, however, remain unimpressed. "The word 'renegotiate' does not have double meaning," says Gov. Bill Ritter, adding that McCain's statement "just showed to me either a naïveté or even a hostility toward water usage in Colorado."
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Tasermons Partner Posted 4:58 am
22 Aug 2008
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Wolverine Posted 8:21 am
22 Aug 2008
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JohnS Posted 10:54 am
22 Aug 2008
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GonzoDon Posted 6:34 am
24 Aug 2008
Places like Phoenix and Las Vegas are unsustainable in the long term, for various reasons, water being only one of them. Which will play itself out in time, so that's fine.
But in the meantime, those cities are draining aquifers and rivers throughout the interior West to feed their reckless habits. So we should quit being enablers. We should cut them off from any new supplies. The sooner the better. For their good, and for our good.
Doing otherwise is like giving more rum to an alcoholic. Let them all move to Milwaukie or Buffalo or Baltimore.
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Wolverine Posted 3:25 am
25 Aug 2008
When I was a 48-state trucker, Phoenix and Vegas were my most hated cities (still are). They are beyond unsustainable, they have already caused massive ecological destruction just by their existence. Add to that the fact that people in Phoenix have lawns and swimming pools, which waste massive amounts of water and should be prohibited in the West due to its arid nature, and the massive waste of electricity that is Las Vegas, which requires the hideous Hoover Dam(n), and you have the two cities that I'd like to remove the most.
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