James Eklund joined Denver Gazette Editor Luigi DelPuerto to discuss a draft Environmental Impact Statement released this week by the federal government.

According to the Gazette: Eklund “said the federal government’s water analysis means the basin states need to come up with a plan they can all agree on. This time, he said, the federal government showed it, indeed, carries a big stick.”

The plan comes up with three options: one was if the states took no action at all to solve the water crisis on the Colorado River, and two alternative options that make some drastic cuts that will involve pain for the entire Western part of the country.

The following are some of James’ comments from the interview.

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Our federal government released a draft Environmental Impact Statement yesterday that set out various options for managing the Colorado River in light of the water supply imbalance gripping the basin. I’m sure your readers have read about this in your pages. It’s also good to note that the great snow we’ve received this year really doesn’t solve that imbalance, which is really structural in nature.

This is the federal government’s attempt to try and address that. I’ve done the math. This is 768 pages that lay out the foundation for critical leadership on the Colorado River. I’m still working my way through it and there are a lot of tables in the appendices that are very important to understanding the impacts and that pain you described.

I’m a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt said, “Talk softly and carry a big stick,” and for the past year, the feds have been talking loudly and carrying no stick. This draft EIS really, finally shows the stick and whether or not they have to use it is really up to the states and their water users. But if the federal inaction and failure to follow through on the threats they have made over the last year have lost our attention, I’m pretty sure they have our attention now.

The action alternatives involve a great deal of pain and disruption in the lower basin that will inevitably ripple upstream to Colorado and the upper basin, in the form of food security, because they grow 90 percent of the winter green vegetables.

We’re talking about cutting water use by about the same amount of water the entire state of Colorado uses in an average year. So, talk about a lot of water. The second reason, the federal government has demonstrated with these two action alternatives that it is at least willing to consider acting and upending, or modifying, the priority system we have kind of grown up with and evolved under.

That is another reason Coloradans should pay very close attention to this. Even though you won’t find the name of Colorado mentioned in the EIS, at the end of the day, we are going to be impacted by the cuts imposed down there. And again, if the federal government is willing to do this to the largest state population-wise in our nation, they have demonstrated they’re perfectly willing to take whatever action that is needed in a state like ours.

It’s very important for us to realize the moment we’re in. It’s a big deal and it’s an opportunity for leadership. We have not as seven basin states gotten together, showing the stick and really backing up the threats or the potential of backing up those threats, and it will make the water users, the states themselves, come back in a more concerted effort to find agreement and fill that vacuum, that void of leadership that has been generated over the last several years.

If we don’t demonstrate what we can do in a voluntary, compensated, and temporary way, they are demonstrating with this EIS that they can do things that are involuntary, and uncompensated or low compensated, and potentially permanent. It would be really folly for us to walk away from this moment with the idea that that’s their problem.

We have the tools to control our own destiny, … but we do have to act. If we don’t that’s where we’re gong to get in trouble.

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Listen to the conversation here.

Read the article by The Denver Gazette here (subscription required).