Colorado River deadline passes with no deal on voluntary water cuts

Seven states that rely on the drought-stricken Colorado River have failed to meet a Jan. 31 federal deadline to voluntarily cut water use, an impasse that could eventually prompt the Biden administration to impose cuts as West One facing a historical problem. Drought and record low reservoir levels.

After negotiations reached a standstill, six of the seven states dependent on the Colorado River instead submitted a proposal to the Bureau of Reclamation that outlined ways to reduce water use and repair infrastructure prone to evaporation and leaks. Because water is lost.

offer, titleConsensus-Based Modeling Alternatives,” was submitted jointly by Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The proposal notably excludes California, the largest user of the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people. Officials said the state will release its plan.

The six-state document outlines an approach to help protect the infrastructure, water distribution and power generation of Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, and to prevent Colorado River reservoirs from reaching “dead pools,” which Occurs when the water level becomes so low that it cannot move downstream from the dam.

The Colorado River has long been over-allocated, but climate change has worsened drought conditions in the region and reservoir levels have dropped over the past few decades. As the western US experiences its driest two decades at least 1,200 yearsWater levels in the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have reached record lows.

Sarah Porter, director of the Kyle Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said the states’ proposal appears to be a “very sincere commitment” to advance negotiations on water cuts and prevent reservoirs from falling to dangerous levels.

“It’s easy to overlook how difficult and complex it is for each individual state,” Porter said. “We have to get less water out of the system, and that’s the hardest negotiation.”

Water officials stressed that the proposal was not an official agreement between the states, but an important step toward protecting the Colorado River and eventually reaching a seven-state agreement.

“This modeling proposal is an important step in the ongoing dialogue among the seven basin states as we continue to seek a collaborative solution to stabilize the Colorado River system,” Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. Huh.”

However, the failure to reach agreement marks the second time in six months that the seven states that use Colorado River water missed a deadline to agree on reductions under the Department of the Interior, which manages flow on the river.

Historically, states have been the ones to figure out how to share the waters of the Colorado River. But failure to reach an agreement on cuts could put responsibility on the federal government.

The Biden administration has urged seven states to save 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water, or up to one-third of the river’s average flow. For comparison, California is entitled to use 4.4 million acre-feet of river water per year and Arizona is entitled to 2.8 million acre-feet per year. (One acre-foot of water is roughly equal to the amount used per year by two average households.)

So far, Arizona has took the brunt The government’s water cut—especially the state’s farmers, who grow produce in the desert and use about three-quarters of the available water supply to irrigate crops.

The option outlined by six states proposes water cuts that would reach the bottom end of the roughly 2 million acre-feet that federal officials have urged, with nearly all of the mandated cuts focused on Arizona, California and Nevada.

The proposal also calls for “voluntary conservation measures” to be implemented in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Becky Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said this approach “fairly distributes burdens throughout the basin and provides safeguards for tribes, water users and environmental values ​​in the upper basin.”

The Bureau of Reclamation is set to release a draft of its proposal in March on how it operates the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams and will consider letters from six states as part of that plan.