US Plan To Allocate Water From The Colorado River Will Severely Impact California, Arizona, & Nevada

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For years, the seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River have been negotiating how to meet the looming water emergency as the amount of water in the river continues to decline every year. To date, those states have been unable to agree, so the federal government plans to do the heavy lifting for them. California, Arizona, and Nevada won’t be happy with the new federal policy, which proposes to reduce the amount of water each state draws from the river by 40 percent.

Some will cheer the announcement. For decades, new communities have been springing up in what were once deserts as ageing baby boomers move to warmer climes. But that is only a part of the picture. Much of the fruits and vegetables in the US are grown in those states. Reducing the amount of water available for irrigation will necessarily impact the farming community severely.

The largest reservoirs fed by the Colorado River — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — are severely depleted and their levels continue to drop. News of the federal government’s preliminary plan surfaced Wednesday during a meeting in Phoenix. Federal officials informed state water managers they are developing a “10-year framework,” with specific rules requiring water reductions that would be reassessed every two years, according to WaterEducation.org.

E&E News reports that the administration is preparing a plan to manage the drought-stricken Colorado River over the next decade that could slash the amount of water delivered to Arizona, California, and Nevada. The Interior Department is preparing to release its final plan in late June, Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources, told a meeting of his state’s water users.

The plan would cut water deliveries to farms, cities, and tribes in the downstream states by as much as 3 million acre-feet per year and would be applied using the legal system that prioritizes the oldest users, Buschatzke said. That approach would put the majority of the cuts on central Arizona communities, industries, and tribes that get their water through the 336 mile long Central Arizona Project canal system that delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson, and surrounding communities. Three million acre-feet of water is enough to supply 6 million to 9 million households for one year, which is more than the total number of homes in Arizona and Nevada.

Buschatzke said the federal plan would be either implemented under existing Colorado River law or through agreements among the states. He said federal officials have indicated that water cuts across the three lower-basin states would be based on the “priority of the law of the river.” The 1922 Colorado River Compact gives California the highest priority for water use, but was agreed to when Arizona and Nevada were little more than dust bowls and Las Vegas was just a tiny hamlet in the desert.

40 Million Rely On Colorado River Water

According to The Guardian, the Colorado River supplies water to some 40 million people in the American West. The new federal plan comes months after the seven states that depend on the river’s dwindling supply missed a February federal deadline to agree upon how water cuts would be divided. The river has lost about 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater in the last 20 years, due primarily to overuse. A record snow drought this year further exacerbated the issue.

The river’s upper basin states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico — have been resistant to water reductions. They believe that the downstream states — California, Arizona, and Nevada — are primarily responsible for the shortages and therefore should carry the burden of any reductions.

Two weeks ago, California, Arizona, and Nevada announced their own proposal for voluntary water reductions up to 3.25 million acre-feet through 2028. Under their offer, Arizona’s annual water flow would be slashed by 760,000 acre-feet, California by 440,000 acre-feet, and Nevada by 50,000 acre-feet. However, it’s unclear if the states’ plan will go ahead, and it would still require cooperation from state water agencies and the federal government. Alex Smith, an employee with the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Phoenix office, told AZ Central the agency is evaluating the risks and benefits of the lower basin states’ plan.

During public comment on Wednesday, Patrick Adams, senior water policy adviser to Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, said “things are moving very quickly” with respect to the federal government’s proposal. “The risk of 3 million acre-feet of reductions only in the lower basin is something that’s quite alarming to us. So we need to grapple with that,” he said.

Conservation Costs Money

Dealing with the proposed reductions will be expensive. Buschatzke said $354 million is expected to be provided by the federal government from leftover monies from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. Those funds would be used to fund an additional 700,000 acre-feet of conserved water that is also planned by the Lower Basin states. An additional $100 million was approved by the Office of Management and Budget for water conservation spending for similar agreements that would apply to the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

In 2022, $4 billion was approved by Congress and earmarked for Colorado River conservation efforts. Buschatzke claimed that David Palumbo, the deputy commissioner of operations for the Bureau of Reclamation, said recently that $1 billion of that money has yet to be spent. Where the other $3 billion went is unclear.

It is not known which water users would take on the burden of those cuts. During Wednesday’s meeting with stakeholders, southern Arizona farmer Brian Wong — a Central Arizona Project water user — asked if that system would take on that entire reduction. “I just wanted to know what those percentage reductions were going to be in those other priority pools,” Wong said. Brenda Burman, general manager of the Central Arizona Canal, said the plan from the lower division would cause about a 20 percent reduction in municipal and industrial water users and 17 percent in water allocated to tribes.

In January, the Bureau of Reclamation released its draft Environmental Impact Statement for post-2026 operating guidelines and sought to adopt a 20 year plan. Now the agency is considering a “preliminary, preferred alternative” 10 year framework that would be renewed every two years. The first two years would be covered by the Lower Basin state’s proposal and implemented through agreements among the states.

A Final Environmental Impact Statement is expected to be released in June and a decision is expected in July, Buschatzke said. During a press call last week, he said he would consider mediation with Upper Basin states to focus on a long-term solution. Actually, Tom, the lower basin states have been kicking this can down the road this entire century, so the odds of going back to sitting around another table in another room so the same issues can get tossed around again does not bode well.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that the lower basin states have allowed enormous increases in how much water they consume for the past 50 years with no thought for tomorrow. The policy dance playing out now among the states in the Southwest is a preview of the kind of wrangling that will happen in the future when the Earth becomes too hot in some places to sustain human life and the proposals for geoengineering start flying thick and fast.

The capacity of humans to ignore a problem that is staring them in the face is practically limitless. If only supplies of fresh water were limitless as well.