|
Three of the states that depend on the Colorado River announced a voluntary agreement to withdraw less water from the drought-stressed river. The lower basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada will work with the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation to provide millions in funding over the next two years to support conservation, efficiency, and reduction measures as part of a plan to boost the level of Lake Mead, the country's largest reservoir on the border of Nevada and Arizona. Referred to as the "500+ Plan," each state along with Reclamation is committing to adding a combined 500,000 acre-feet of water to Lake Mead in 2022 and 2023.
In August, Reclamation declared a first-ever shortage on the river, triggering mandatory cuts for Arizona and Nevada starting next year. The river is suffering from the impacts of a 20-year megadrought that is so severe scientists are beginning to speculate that the basin is no longer experiencing drought, but rather sustained "aridification," a process of drying out. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas where the agreement was announced, “We’re experiencing what scientists are calling the new normal, a warmer, drier West. The basin is at a tipping point.”
The Colorado River feeds 40 million Americans and irrigates millions of acres of cropland. As the water level in Lake Mead continues to drop, more mandatory water delivery cuts for states are on the horizon, as well as the risk the water level will drop too low to generate hydropower from the Hoover Dam. The basin states and Reclamation are just beginning negotiations over new water use guidelines for the Colorado River basin, which are due by 2026.
Tracy Stone-Manning's plans for the BLM
In a wide-ranging interview with Outside magazine, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) director Tracy Stone-Manning shared some of her plans for how to rebuild the agency, and her priorities as the first Senate confirmed director in five years. Speaking in sharp contrast to the BLM leadership during the Trump administration, Stone-Manning struck an urgent tone in regard to tackling the dual climate and nature crises: "We’re in the middle of a climate crisis. We’re in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. It’s something we have to address seriously and quickly. And the way to do that is, in part, to restore habitat. We need to put wildlife acres back on the board that aren’t on the board today."
Stone-Manning also spoke of the need to open access to more public land: "We’re not making any more land, but we can open up access to land. In Arizona, we just did a Land and Water Conservation Fund purchase. It was 2,500 acres that opened up 30,000 acres of public lands. That kind of work is clearly important going forward because there’s just no reason on God’s green earth that we should lock up public lands by accident because it’s surrounded by private land."
|
When you look at the hills, you can see they’re crumbling, and you can see the water that’s re-emerged in the pit. That’s damage left from something the company made a good profit on and the country built its nuclear weapon stockpile on. It made the country great, but it left the community with damaged lands that may or may not be cleaned up. This little glitch is a major defect that has resulted in all the uranium mines over the Navajo Nation and around the West being left as orphan mines."
