McCain Campaign "Clarifies" His Colorado Water Grab Statement

McCain Campaign "Clarifies" His Colorado Water Grab Statement

by mcjoan

Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 06:51:18 AM PDT

They sure have to do a lot of clarifying in the McCain campaign, don't they?

McCain set off a firestorm last week when he suggested that the 86 year old agreement that allocates the scarce resource of the Colorado River among the seven states of the Colorado Basin "obviously needs to be renegotiated" because of "new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource," he didn't mean it should, you know, be renegotiated, really, to make sure that the high growth states of California, Nevada, and Arizona got more of that scarce resource. But that's sure how it sounded to the people of Colorado.

So here comes the McCain campaign with what he "really" meant:


Ah, so the states need to talk, that's all he was saying. Only problem is: they have been.

Considering he's a Senator from one of those seven states in the compact, you think he'd have somewhat of a better grasp of the actual policy making on the issue in his state. See, the seven states' governors came together last year to address current changing water conditions. In fact, they came up with an agreement:

<...>

Into the middle of all this stumbles McCain, ignoring--or completely ignorant of--the fact that the seven governors (including California's, Nevada's, and Arizona's) decided that those states needed to work on how to find some of their own water, ignoring the fact that this was a complex and difficult set of negotiations.

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