Federal officials on Friday sharply cut how much water Arizona, California and Nevada can draw from the Colorado River over the next two years in an attempt to stabilize a system on the verge of collapse because of climate change and overuse.
The existing rules governing use of the river and of the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, were set to expire this year, just as drought constricts the Colorado’s flow and both lakes shrink to record lows. Friday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reduced the allocation for the three states by about a quarter, in total, reducing Arizona’s share by the most, about a third.
The plan formalized voluntary cuts the states had already offered to accept and settles months of uncertainty over how the water supply will be managed in the coming years. But it does little to solve the underlying crisis: The river’s flow is diminishing and reservoirs are drying up, but communities and farms still use unsustainable amounts of water.
“If the next couple of years are dry, the risk to Colorado River water users is extraordinary,” said Jennifer Pitt, who directs the Colorado River Program at the National Audubon Society. “There is no buffer to rely on anymore.”
In the short term, the cuts will require the three states, which make up the river’s lower basin, to rely more on groundwater, to limit or cut off some users, and to invest more in water-efficiency projects. They could also increase pressure on the agriculture industry, which uses the majority of the river’s water. Nearly half of the water goes toward growing crops used for animal feed, such as alfalfa.
That burden will fall hardest on Arizona, which holds some of the most junior water rights in a byzantine priority system based on the longest-standing uses of the river and a century-old agreement among seven Western states and Mexico.
The Colorado supplies water to 40 million people, 5.5 million acres of farmland and about two dozen native tribes. Two Mexican states also use the river.
But the waterway has transformed since communities first began tapping it. Its flow has diminished by about 20 percent across two decades of drought, a period scientists say is the driest for the Southwest in 1,200 years.
The Trump administration’s plan sidestepped a conflict over how to bring water consumption in line with that dwindling supply, a question that water officials say may ultimately be up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The downriver states had already volunteered to make the cuts announced Friday in an effort to break a deadlock in negotiations. But the administration didn’t impose any mandatory water use cuts that upstream states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — have refused to accept.
Andrea Travnicek, assistant secretary for water and science at the Interior Department, which includes the Reclamation Bureau, said in a statement that the administration would continue to work with states to find consensus.
The lower basin states said the cuts reflect their willingness to share in the pain of a shrinking water supply. Upper basin water officials have maintained that communities there cannot commit to permanent cuts when their water supply each year is largely determined not by reservoir levels, but by year-to-year fluctuations in winter snowpack. Snowpack hit record lows this winter, driving major water shortages and sending reservoir levels plummeting.
Colorado officials, who have been the most vocal of the upper basin states, could not immediately be reached for comment.
J.B. Hamby, California’s chief negotiator on Colorado River issues, called the plan issued Friday “a bridge, not a permanent solution” and called for upstream states to step forward with “robust action” of their own in the coming years.
“The Lower Basin has shown what meaningful action looks like,” he said in a statement. “Now we need the entire basin to do the same.”
Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s Colorado River negotiator, said the focus should now shift to “a longer-term, equitable, basin-wide outcome that includes shared sacrifices.”
Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona, a Democrat who is running for re-election, stressed that the state stands ready to “fight” in court for any water it is owed.
“As long as I’m governor, Arizona will continue defending our right to our water by every legal means necessary and stand up to Upper Basin states who refuse to cut a drop of water in protection of the River,” she wrote on social media.
