If you were paying attention, strange things started happening in 2022. Reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other major news outlets began showing up in Holtville, Westmorland, and even in unassuming fields across the valley. Meanwhile, hedge fund managers were cold calling farmers asking about water availability and details about the water transfer market. In Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, some city officials and congressional representatives introduced legislation or otherwise recommended to the Federal Government anti-agricultural policies with an eye towards hay production dominant in our area. 

It didn’t stop in 2022, either. Last year, activist publications attempted to track the irrigation practices of particular farming families in the Imperial Valley and posted their names in print. Now in 2024, a billion-dollar water deal is expected to be struck among all the river users in the next few months that will likely last for over a decade and has the potential to either cripple or empower our community. 

So what put the Imperial Valley in the national spotlight to begin with?

The hornet’s nest was kicked when the Bureau of Reclamation made an announcement in June of 2022 calling the users of the Colorado River to collectively and immediately conserve an additional 2 to 4 million acre-feet (MAF) of water to stabilize the river’s supply amidst the drought. Since then, from San Diego and Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Denver, and even Washington, D.C., eyes have been on the Imperial Valley, even if most of us here haven’t noticed.

Granted, issues such as “Lithium Valley” are no doubt trendier and more novel for us than the water we see flowing through the canals and ditches each day, but the lifeblood of the Imperial Valley has always been and will continue to be our water and our rights to that water. 

One of six jobs in our county is directly dependent on our Colorado River allocation.

Yet the reason why we —out of all the users of the Colorado River— have been put under the microscope is because of our water legacy. Out of the +16.5 MAF of water allocated from the Colorado River each year to Mexico and the seven states of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California, the Imperial Valley is entitled to 3.1 MAF, more than any other user on the river. 

That allocation has made the Imperial Valley a target for the other users across the Western States.

When the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency responsible for operating the water supplies in the river, called on the seven states to conserve at least 2 MAF within a year, various water managers from other states began to (not so subtly) suggest the Imperial Valley should take the brunt of the cuts. This would be quite a perilous step for the feds, however, since the Imperial Valley’s 1901 water rights predate the formation of the Bureau of Reclamation itself and by law give us senior priority to the water over most other users along the river.

As a compromise, the most likely but not at all certain route is that the negotiator for the Imperial Valley’s water rights will strike a deal to conserve water in exchange for compensation, storage options on the river, or both. That negotiator is the Imperial Irrigation District.

What’s at stake for our community? With less water to use, the biggest industry in the valley is at risk. Agriculture might be facing another round of fallowing, and tenant farmers, ag service providers, and laborers will feel the fallout. But it’s not just farming that’s at risk: lithium and renewable energy require substantial water resources as well. 

Too much water offered up for the benefit of cities in other states could dry up our community. Yet the opportunity exists for investment in our water infrastructure, protecting jobs and keeping the Imperial Valley on its throne as the leader of water conservation in the West.

Ultimately, is it fair for the Imperial Valley to subsidize the continued urban growth hundreds of miles away from our county at the cost of our economy? The prospect looks especially short-sighted when our exceptional and historic use of the water has benefited the entire nation for over a century.

More on that next time.