Published: Jan. 2, 2024
Mark Squillace

GWC Board Chair and CU Law School Raphael J. Moses Professor of Law, Mark Squillace, is interviewed by Angela Chen in "Troubled Waters: The Colorado River Crisis Water Rights."

"´ºË®ÌÃÊÓƵ a third of the of the people that live on theÌýNavajoÌýNation currently have no water to their homes," said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resource law at UC Boulder. "They have to they have to pick up their water from trucks. They have no running water in their homes,Ìýeven though theÌýNavajoÌýNation has very senior water rights on the system. But they don't have the infrastructure to bring the water into their homes and onto their fields."

"The Lower Basin has always been using their 7.5 million acre feet,Ìýat least for the recent future or the recent past," said Squillace. "And that doesn't leave a whole lot for the Upper Basin. If you take 7.5 away from 11 million acre feet, you've got 3.5 million acre feet left for the Upper Basin. So they're short 4 million acre feet.ÌýThey're claiming, well, you know, we're entitled to our full 7.5 million acre feet or we're at least entitled to use more water. You can't tell us we need to stop right now. But that's part of the controversy."Ìý

Watch the full episode here:

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