By Andrew Hay
July 31 (Reuters) – The U.S. government proposed deep cuts to water supply for Arizona, California and Nevada during dry years in a new plan released on Friday to manage the drought-stricken Colorado River.
Lawsuits from states could challenge the federal intervention and could mean more years of uncertainty for a river that provides water to one in 10 Americans, irrigates land producing 15% of U.S. food output and generates power for 6 million people in seven states.
Those seven states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California and Nevada, known as the basin states — were unable to agree on how to share the water after over three years of talks to replace a plan that expires this year.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation intervened with a 10-year proposal to prevent the collapse of the river’s two largest energy-producing reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead, according to a final environmental impact statement released by the agency.
After the smallest winter snowpack on record, the two largest U.S. reservoirs are at their lowest levels since 1957 and near the point where their hydroelectric power plants stop functioning.
“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement.
The plan sets limits on how the 1,450-mile-long (2,330-km) river, the fifth-longest in the United States, would be operated, and envisages water shortages of up to 3 million acre-feet per year in river supplies to the three Lower Basin states, about a 40 percent reduction from current levels.
“NATURAL DISASTER”
That is nearly twice the 1.6 million acre-feet per year, 21 percent reduction in supplies through 2028 that the Lower Basin states envisaged in a May 1 proposal.
In a statement, the Arizona Department of Water Resources called the Bureau of Reclamation proposal “unacceptable” and noted it did not require cuts by the four Upper Basin states.
“Such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy,” the Arizona statement said.
Arizona said it hoped federal operating guidelines expected to be released later would be consistent with their May 1 plan.
Upper Basin states say a three-decade-long drought has automatically slashed their water supply and Lower Basin states, which use most of the river’s water, need to make far deeper reductions.
JB Hamby, California’s lead negotiator, said the river’s operating rules would be developed in two-year increments, and the next step was for Reclamation to release a plan for 2027 and 2028.
The bureau said drought conditions over the past 25 years, combined with expectations of continued dry conditions, had made developing future operating guidelines “particularly challenging.”
“They’re taking on the aridification of the basin head on,” water researcher Eric Kuhn said of the Reclamation plan, adding that he saw the agency trying to encourage all seven states to come up with rules for 2029 and 2030.
The United Nations has said the basin’s plight is part of a global trend of regions living beyond their hydrological means, with river areas losing their ability to return to historical, “normal” conditions, leading to what the agency calls “water bankruptcy.”
In 1922, when the river’s waters seemed inexhaustible, the seven states created a water-sharing compact dictating how much Upper and Lower Basin states receive. Native American tribes and Mexico were left out of talks and continue to fight for their legal share of water.
That fight has become particularly bitter with the U.S. West caught in its worst drought in at least 1,200 years, according to a 2022 study by the University of California, Los Angeles.
Rising regional temperatures, which scientists largely attribute to human-caused climate change, have led to about a 20% decline in Colorado River flow since 2000. Climate change models predict an additional 20% drop in flow by 2050 and 35% by 2100.
The bureau’s cuts are expected to affect Arizona the most. Under river rules, the earlier a town or irrigator started using Colorado River water, the higher their priority if supplies run short.
The Phoenix metropolitan area and Tucson, with a combined population of nearly 6 million, rely heavily on water from a Colorado River canal authorized in 1968. Should Lower Basin cuts go as high as 40%, the Central Arizona Project canal would lose all water before a drop is cut from California users with far older rights, Arizona officials say.
Water scientist Sharon Megdal called the river’s condition a “natural disaster” that will require extraordinary actions to sustain livelihoods in an area that supports an estimated $1.4 trillion in GDP and 16 million jobs.
“This does not look good for Arizona,” Megdal said of Friday’s Reclamation plan. “This does suggest that legal action may be taken.”
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; editing by Donna Bryson, Aurora Ellis, Rod Nickel and David Gregorio)
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