US plan for Colorado River could cut up to 40% supply for Arizona, California and Nevada | West Coast
The U.S. government has proposed a plan for the drought-stricken Colorado River that could cut up to 40% of current supplies to Arizona, California and Nevada as the waterway’s reservoirs continue to drop to critically low levels.
A top Arizona water official shared details of the Trump administration’s plan in the state meeting on Wednesday.
The annual amount of water distributed to Arizona, California and Nevada could be reduced by up to 3 million acre-feet under the 10-year plan to be completed in June, according to Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s water resources department. Discounts will be evaluated every two years.
Three million acres of water is enough to meet the needs of 6 to 9 million households for a year; That’s more than the number of homes in Arizona and Nevada.
The federal plan would be implemented either under existing Colorado River law or through agreements between states, Buschatzke said. He said federal officials have indicated that water cuts in the three downstream states would be based on “the primacy of the river law.” This law, the 1922 Colorado River Compact, gives California the highest priority in water use.
Buschatzke called the proposed federal cuts “serious.”
“This is us, this is Arizona, and potentially CAP is going to zero,” Buschatzke said, referring to flows from the Central Arizona Project, a canal that carries Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona.
The Colorado River provides water to approximately 40 million people in the American West. The plan comes months after seven states dependent on the river’s dwindling supply missed a February federal deadline to agree on how to share water cuts. The river has lost approximately 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater over the past 20 years, largely due to overexploitation. This year’s record snow drought has exacerbated the problem.
The upper river basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico were resilient to water reductions. The states argue that the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada bear responsibility for the water shortage and therefore should bear the brunt of the outages.
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated earlier this year that the US Bureau of Reclamation would step in to resolve the long-running dispute.
Two weeks ago California, Arizona and Nevada announced Their own proposal for voluntary water reductions of up to 3.25 million acre-feet by 2028. Under their proposal, Arizona’s water flow would be cut by 760 acre-feet, California by 440 acre-feet, and Nevada by 50 acre-feet.
But it’s unclear whether the states’ plan will proceed, and it still requires cooperation from state water agencies and the federal government. Alex Smith, who works in the Phoenix office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. said The AZ Central agency is evaluating the risks and benefits of the plan for downstream states.
“Things are moving very quickly,” Patrick Adams, senior water policy adviser to Arizona governor Katie Hobb, said during public comment on Wednesday, referring to the federal government’s proposal.
“The risk of a reduction of 3 million acres just in the lower basin is something that is pretty concerning to us. So we have to deal with that,” he said.
Reuters contributed reporting
