Earlier this spring, Nebraska lawmakers handed a invoice authorizing development of a canal that will siphon water from neighboring Colorado, igniting a confrontation between the 2 states’ leaders. Nebraska’s governor, Republican Pete Ricketts, says that the canal will “shield Nebraska’s water rights for our children, grandkids, and generations past.” Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, calls the scheme a “canal to nowhere” that’s “unlikely to ever be constructed.”

The 2 states share rights to water from the South Platte River, and Republican politicians in Nebraska say {that a} new canal is critical to protect the state’s water provide from encroachment by its fast-growing neighbor to the west.

The unusual factor concerning the political firestorm, in keeping with water consultants, is that the canal wouldn’t actually do something. The water Nebraska needs to guard doesn’t face a right away risk from Colorado, and in any case it’s not clear the canal would offer Nebraska any extra water past what it already receives. The overall quantity of water that would movement by means of the deliberate $500-million-dollar canal is unlikely to vary the course of both state’s future.

“It’s kind of a bizarre declare,” mentioned Anthony Schutz, an affiliate legislation professor on the College of Nebraska-Lincoln and an skilled on water points. “I’m unsure what precisely this factor would shield us from.” 

Even when the canal doesn’t alter the stability of water between the 2 states, nevertheless, it does assist Nebraska lawmakers spend down federal funding they obtained from the $1.9 trillion stimulus package deal handed by Congressional Democrats final 12 months. It may additionally permit them to attain political factors by antagonizing the Democrats who govern Colorado. The episode comes as different elements of the western U.S. actually do face wrenching, zero-sum tradeoffs in allocating water throughout an ongoing megadrought that has been exacerbated by local weather change — and it might be a preview of how anxieties round these points could be mobilized for partisan warfare.

The historical past behind the canal venture is a curious footnote within the bigger story of western water. Means again in 1923, Colorado and Nebraska signed a treaty that ruled using one section of the South Platte River, which flows from the Colorado Rockies by means of Denver and into Nebraska. The treaty required Colorado to ship 150 cubic toes of water per second to Nebraska in the course of the irrigation season—in different phrases, it prevented Colorado from drying up the river earlier than Nebraska farmers might use it. The treaty additionally gave Nebraska the correct to construct a canal giant sufficient to divert a further 500 cubic toes of water per second through the irrigation offseason, however the venture by no means got here to fruition: Engineers had already tried and did not construct a canal by means of the rocky territory connecting the states within the late 1800s, and nobody ever revived the concept.

For a few century, the treaty collected mud. Nebraska has maybe the biggest groundwater assets of any state, to not point out 1000’s of miles of rivers, so water wasn’t an enormous challenge. Plus, Colorado typically exceeded its treaty obligations on the South Platte: From 1996 by means of 2015, the state delivered Nebraska virtually 8 million extra acre toes than it was required to ship underneath the treaty. Across the identical time, nevertheless, Colorado started drawing extra from the South Platte to help booming inhabitants development, primarily within the Denver space. 

In January of this 12 months, Colorado officers launched an up to date plan for the South Platte, outlining virtually 300 attainable water diversion initiatives alongside the river. This record of initiatives was simply hypothetical, however it caught the eye of Nebraska lawmakers. Governor Ricketts launched a press release saying he was “vigilantly watching” the development of recent water infrastructure in Colorado, and he advised the legislature “they’re making an attempt to take our water.” Despite the fact that water from the South Platte is much from important to the survival of Nebraskan agriculture, and though Colorado already delivered much more to Nebraska than it wanted to underneath the treaty, Ricketts insisted the state wanted to guard its water rights from the rising liberal metropolis to the west.

“It’s a little bit of a straw man,” Schutz, the College of Nebraska water legislation skilled, mentioned of Nebraska’s concern concerning the Colorado initiatives. “Lots of these initiatives that [Colorado] is proposing wouldn’t truly lower the supply of water.”

Even so, the century-old treaty gave Nebraska the theoretical rights to construct a canal of its personal, and the state had loads of cash to pursue such a venture. That was due to President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which doled out billions of {dollars} of pandemic restoration assist to Nebraska and left the state with a big funds surplus. The state’s unicameral legislature has spent most of this 12 months’s session looking for methods to spend down that surplus, and the $500 million canal venture was an ideal candidate. The legislature handed a invoice in April that allotted $50 million to begin canal development, sufficient to begin buying land in Colorado and conduct preliminary designs.

The legislature’s sudden transfer on the invoice got here as a shock to water consultants. As one Colorado water supervisor put it, “the water world was rocked” when the invoice handed. 

That’s as a result of, in keeping with Schutz, the very premise of the canal venture is flawed. Ricketts argued that the canal would avert a “lower [in] agricultural water provides and [increased] pumping prices,” however neither situation is within the playing cards, even when Colorado’s inhabitants retains rising. Nebraska depends on groundwater for greater than 80 p.c of its farming irrigation, and the water that comes from the hypothetical canal would solely arrive through the offseason anyway, so it wouldn’t assist the state’s farmers. In the meantime, the state’s water rights solely cowl one part of the South Platte, and Colorado has limitless rights over a piece of the river farther upstream, which means the Centennial State can maintain future development even with out encroaching on Nebraska’s water.

Moreover, Schutz says, it isn’t clear that there’s even sufficient water within the river to fill the canal, ought to it ever be constructed.

“In the event you have a look at the quantity that’s coming in proper now, that’s most likely the utmost quantity of water that we’d ever get within the canal,” he advised Grist. “And that isn’t plenty of water.” Not solely that, however the treaty additionally solely offers Nebraska the correct to construct a canal that can divert 500 cubic toes of water per second. It doesn’t truly give the state the correct to that a lot water.

“From a political perspective, I feel that the governor needed to make Colorado into a nasty man, however then if you actually get into the weeds I don’t understand how unhealthy of a man Colorado is,” Schutz mentioned, arguing that the state’s conservative authorities has been straining to seek out methods to spend away the federal stimulus cash in order that lawmakers “don’t must cope with the political dynamics of getting a bunch of additional money to spend on social packages.”

Because the invoice neared passage this spring, the 2 governors sniped forwards and backwards at one another within the media. Colorado Governor Polis known as the venture a “boondoggle” and mentioned his state would “aggressively assert” its water rights. Ricketts shot again: “I didn’t know Jared Polis was so involved about taxpayers right here in Nebraska…. In truth, he’s by no means actually talked to me.”

For now the controversy is only a confrontation, however it might escalate if the canal strikes ahead. Colorado and Nebraska have sued one another up to now over water, and certainly Colorado reached a settlement with Nebraska only a few years in the past over claims that Colorado violated a water-sharing compact on a distinct river. Constructing the canal would require Nebraska to buy or condemn farmland throughout state strains in Colorado, which might doubtless result in litigation from non-public landowners as effectively. Colorado most likely wouldn’t sue Nebraska till the latter truly started to construct the canal, but when it did sue, the dispute would go straight to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.

The truth that such a minor water venture can generate a lot controversy is an indication that water safety is changing into a key political challenge even in locations the place the drought state of affairs will not be but catastrophic. The century-old compact between Nebraska and Colorado, just like the treaties that anchor using the Colorado River farther to the west, was designed in an period of cooperation and compromise between the states. As water provides throughout the area proceed to fade, although, that interstate friendliness is vanishing with them. Instead has emerged a battle over the right way to stability competing pursuits like agriculture and concrete development. On this case, although, the battle is extra paying homage to a schoolyard battle than a grand political debate.