The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time.
The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in U.S. history, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, climate change and population growth have caused water levels in the lakes to plummet.
The crisis over the Colorado River is the latest example of how climate change is overwhelming the foundations of American life — not only physical infrastructure, like dams and reservoirs, but also the legal underpinnings that have made those systems work. But the premise that the river’s flow would average 17.5 million acre-feet each year turned out to be faulty. Over the past century, the river’s actual flow has averaged less than 15 million acre-feet each year.
It wasn’t enough. Last summer, the water level in Lake Mead sank to 1,040 feet above sea level, its lowest ever. “It is in our authorities to act unilaterally to protect the system,” Touton told lawmakers. “And we will protect the system.” Nor can much of the solution come from Nevada, which is allotted just 300,000 acre-feet from the Colorado. Even if the state’s water deliveries were stopped entirely, rendering Las Vegas effectively uninhabitable, the government would get barely closer to its goal.
California has senior water rights to Arizona, which means that Arizona’s supply should be cut before California is forced to take reductions, according to JB Hamby, vice president of the Imperial Irrigation District and chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, which is negotiating for the state.
Arizona’s status as a junior rights holder was cemented in 1968, when Congress agreed to pay for the Central Arizona Project, an aqueduct that carries water from the Colorado to Phoenix and Tucson, and the farms that surround them.
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