A guest post from longtime friend of Inkstain (and friend of the Colorado River) Karl Flessa.

By Karl Flessa

In the classic Monty Python sketch, a customer returns to the pet shop where, just 30 minutes ago, he purchased a parrot.  He complains that the parrot is dead.  The shopkeeper tries to convince the customer the parrot is only resting or is stunned. 

In the ensuing argument, the customer uses no fewer than eighteen euphemisms: “This parrot is definitely deceased…demised…passed on…no more…ceased to be…expired…gone to meet his maker…a stiff…bereft of life…rests in peace…pushing up the daisies…metabolic processes are now history…off the twig…kicked the bucket…shuffled off his mortal coil…run down the curtain…joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.”

Indeed, the parrot was nailed to its perch, already dead when the customer bought it.

The Compact and its subsequent agreements are as dead as that parrot.

• The Compact is dead because it is founded on a false premise: a river that can produce the prescribed amount of water.
• The Compact is dead because it is unjust: neither the Tribes nor nature participate in negotiations.
• The Compact is dead because it doesn’t work.  The Basin States are locked in battle; the Federal government tinkers and dithers.

In the longer version of the sketch, the shopkeeper goes to the back in search of a live replacement, returning to report “…we’re right out of parrots.”

So are we. 

We need a new Compact. 

Proposals are not lacking: proportional allocations, Tribal standing, a whole-basin approach, adjustments based on actual flows, a basin authority, nature’s fair share, interstate trading… .

What’s lacking is the courage to change.    

The Compact is a dead parrot.