Stories by Mitch Tobin and photos by Jeffry Scott
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
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Ramon Alvarado Garcia grows grass for cattle feed in a ditch beside the canal carrying the river's remnants.
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For Evanisto Beltronas, 74, the damming and diversion of the Colorado has been a good thing.
At high noon, in a cotton field 20 miles south of Yuma, with the temperature climbing toward 105 degrees, the Mexican farmer said an aqueduct from the Colorado has made his life easier.
"When the river was still here, there wasn't a road, there wasn't electricity, there wasn't anything," he said.
Beltronas makes 80 pesos for a six-hour shift on someone else's land - about $1.25 an hour. At the end of his day he crosses a canal choked with algae and disappears into a village of crude shacks.
A 1944 treaty guarantees Mexico about 10 percent of the river's flow. Most of that water is diverted to farmland by a concrete river that starts at Morelos Dam west of Yuma; the rest goes to the booming border cities of Mexicali and Tijuana, which are growing at more than 3 percent annually.
For farmers north of the border, harnessing the Colorado's flow has allowed them to exist in the continent's driest region. The dams have also provided hydroelectric power and reduced the threat of deadly flooding. To some, river water that reaches the sea is still "wasted."
California's Imperial Irrigation District, which uses about 20 percent of the Colorado's flow, harvests a half-million acres and produces $1 billion in crops each year. It is politically powerful enough to stand toe-to-toe with the cities of Southern California, which desperately want farmers' water for their growing populations.
Although cities in the Southwest are drawing an increasing amount from the Colorado, farms still account for 72 percent of the river's use. Some of that water grows produce and cotton; most irrigates cattle feed.
As a result, environmental groups argue that slight improvements in farms' water efficiency - using drip irrigation instead of flooding fields, for example - could create enough surplus water for the delta.
"There's plenty of water. The thing is, we abuse it," said Lisa Force, director of the Moab, Utah-based Living Rivers.
Because it takes 3,200 gallons of water to create enough feed for 1 pound of beef, Force says, if everyone dependent on the Colorado skipped just one half-pound burger per year, there would be enough for the delta. The same gains would result from each of those people conserving 3 gallons per day.
"We're not preaching vegetarianism or veganism," she said. "We just want to make little notches in the extreme extravagance with how we treat water."
But Imperial Irrigation District spokeswoman Susan Giller said the district has already lined nearly all of its canals to prevent seepage and has become one of California's most efficient agricultural areas.
"The more efficient you become, the more complicated and expensive it becomes to save water," she said.
Drip irrigation isn't practical for crops such as alfalfa because the plants are harvested several times a year and the tubes would be ripped up, she said.
The Imperial Valley also must frequently flush salts from the soil because the Colorado's naturally high mineral content gets even more salty by repeated irrigation upstream.
"If you cut production here," Giller said, "that means your food will cost more."
But even if U.S. water users agree to give up water for the delta, skeptics argue that Mexican farmers would intercept it as soon as it crosses the border.
That's why the delta's boosters say a binational pact would be essential. Such a deal would likely pass through the International Boundary and Water Commission, which regulates U.S.-Mexican water issues.
Tucsonan John Bernal was the commission's U.S. representative for the past six years, and one of his last acts in office in December was signing an agreement with Mexico to start working on solutions for the delta.
But with new leaders in both countries, it's unclear what will happen, Bernal said.
Others note that as the upstream user, the United States has absolute leverage to prevent Mexico from reneging on an agreement.
"We've got our hand on the faucet," said Stuart Hurlbert, a San Diego State University biologist who has led field trips to the delta since 1978.
