[The seven states that rely on the river for water are not
expected to reach a deal on cuts. It appears the Biden administration
will have to impose reductions.]
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AS THE COLORADO RIVER SHRINKS, WASHINGTON PREPARES TO SPREAD THE PAIN
 
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Christopher Flavelle, Graphics by Mira Rojanasakul
January 27, 2023
New York Times
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_ The seven states that rely on the river for water are not expected
to reach a deal on cuts. It appears the Biden administration will have
to impose reductions. _

The shore of Lake Powell in Page, Ariz. Along with Lake Mead, it
provides water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern
California., Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

 

WASHINGTON — 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 in the water
supply for 40 million Americans.

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 American 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.

“Think of the Colorado River Basin as a slow-motion disaster,”
said Kevin Moran, who directs state and federal water policy advocacy
at the Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re really at a moment of
reckoning.”

Negotiators say the odds of a voluntary agreement appear slim. It
would be the second time in six months that the Colorado River states,
which also include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have missed
a deadline for consensus on cuts sought by the Biden administration to
avoid a catastrophic failure of the river system.

Without a deal, the Interior Department, which manages flows on the
river, must impose the cuts. That would break from the century-long
tradition of states determining how to share the river’s water. And
it would all but ensure that the administration’s increasingly
urgent efforts to save the Colorado get caught up in lengthy legal
challenges.

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.

A century’s worth of laws, which assign different priorities to
Colorado River users based on how long they’ve used the water, is
facing off against a competing philosophy that says, as the climate
changes, water cuts should be apportioned based on what’s practical.

The outcome of that dispute will shape the future of the southwestern
United States.

“We’re using more water than nature is going to provide,” said
Eric Kuhn, who worked on previous water agreements as general manager
for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “Someone is
going to have to cut back very significantly.”

There’s not enough water (and probably never was)

A spillway for the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Ariz., that was last
full of water in the early 1980s.Credit...Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

The rules that determine who gets water from the Colorado River, and
how much, were always based, to a degree, on magical thinking.

In 1922, states along the river negotiated the Colorado River Compact,
which apportioned the water among two groups of states. The so-called
upper basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) would get
7.5 million acre-feet a year. The lower basin (Arizona, California and
Nevada) got a total of 8.5 million acre-feet. A later treaty
guaranteed Mexico, where the river reaches the sea, 1.5 million
acre-feet.

(An acre-foot of water is enough water to cover an acre of land in a
foot of water. That’s roughly as much water as two typical
households use in a year.)

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.

For decades, that gap was obscured by the fact that some of the
river’s users, including Arizona and some Native American tribes,
lacked the canals and other infrastructure to employ their full
allotment. But as that infrastructure increased, so did the demand on
the river.

Then, the drought hit. From 2000 through 2022, the river’s annual
flow averaged just over 12 million acre-feet; in each of the past
three years, the total flow was less than 10 million.

The Bureau of Reclamation, an office within the Interior Department
that manages the river system, has sought to offset that water loss by
getting states to reduce their consumption. In 2003, it pushed
California, which had been exceeding its annual allotment, the largest
in the basin, to abide by that limit. In 2007, and again in 2019, the
department negotiated still deeper reductions among the states.

It wasn’t enough. Last summer, the water level in Lake Mead sank to
1,040 feet above sea level, its lowest ever.

If the water level falls below 950 feet, the Hoover Dam will no longer
be able to generate hydroelectric power. At 895 feet, no water would
be able to pass the dam at all — a condition called “deadpool.”

In June, the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Camille C.
Touton, gave the states 60 days to come up with a plan to reduce their
use of Colorado River water by two to four million acre-feet — about
20 to 40 percent of the river’s entire flow.

Ms. Touton stressed that she preferred that the states develop a
solution. But if they did not, she said, the bureau would act.

“It is in our authorities to act unilaterally to protect the
system,” Ms. Touton told lawmakers. “And we will protect the
system.”

The 60-day deadline came and went. The states produced no plan for the
cuts the bureau demanded. And the bureau didn’t present a plan of
its own.

A spokesman for Ms. Touton said she was unavailable to comment.

‘You can’t take blood from a stone’

A residential area southwest of Las Vegas. Credit...Joe Buglewicz for
The New York Times

In November, the Biden administration tried again. The Bureau of
Reclamation said it would analyze the environmental impact of large
cuts in water use from the Colorado — the first step toward making
those cuts, potentially this summer. To meet that timeline, the bureau
asked states to submit a proposal to include in the study. If states
fail to agree, the administration will be left to analyze and
ultimately impose its own plan for rationing water. The government
hasn’t said publicly what its plan would be_._

The department’s latest request and new deadline, set for Jan. 31,
has led to a new round of negotiations, and finger-pointing, among the
states.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming argue they are unable to
significantly reduce their share of water. Those states get their
water primarily from stream flow, rather than from giant reservoirs
like in the lower basin states. As the drought reduces that flow, the
amount of water they use has already declined to about half their
allotment, officials said.

“Clearly, the lion’s share of what needs to be done has to be done
by the lower basin states,” said Estevan López, the negotiator for
New Mexico who led the Bureau of Reclamation during the Obama
administration.

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.

And Nevada has already imposed some of the basin’s most aggressive
water-conservation strategies, according to John Entsminger, general
manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The state has
even outlawed some types of lawns
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“We’re using two-thirds of our allocation,” Mr. Entsminger said
in an interview. “You can’t take blood from a stone.”

Farms versus subdivisions

That leaves California and Arizona, which have rights to 4.4 million
and 2.8 million acre-feet from the Colorado — typically the largest
and third-largest allotments among the seven states. Negotiators from
both sides seem convinced of one thing: The other state ought to come
up with more cuts.

In California, the largest user of Colorado River water is the
Imperial Irrigation District, which has rights to 3.1 million
acre-feet — as much as Arizona and Nevada put together. That water
lets farmers grow alfalfa, lettuce and broccoli on about 800 square
miles of the Imperial Valley, in the southeast corner of California.

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.

“We have sound legal footing,” Mr. Hamby said in an interview. He
said that fast-growing Arizona should have been ready for the Colorado
River drying up. “That’s kind of a responsibility on their part to
plan for these risk factors.”

Tina Shields, Imperial’s water department manager, put the argument
more bluntly. It would be hard to tell the California farmers who rely
on the Colorado River to stop growing crops, she said, “so that
other folks continue to build subdivisions.”

Still, Mr. Hamby conceded that significantly reducing the water supply
for large urban populations in Arizona would be “a little tricky.”
California has offered to cut its use of Colorado River water by as
much as 400,000 acre-feet — up to one-fifth of the cuts that the
Biden administration has sought.

If the administration wants to impose deeper cuts on California, he
said, it’s welcome to try.

“Reclamation can do whatever Reclamation wants,” Mr. Hamby said.
“The question is, will it withstand legal challenge?”

A canal carried Colorado River water past a spinach field in the
Imperial Valley, Calif. Credit...Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

Equity versus the law

On the other side of the Colorado, Arizona officials acknowledge that
the laws governing the river may not work in their favor. But they
have arguments of their own.

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.

But the money came with a catch. In return for their support,
California’s legislators insisted on a provision that their
state’s water rights take priority over the aqueduct.

If Arizona could have foreseen that climate change would permanently
reduce the river’s flow, it might never have agreed to that deal,
said Tom Buschatzke, director of the state’s Department of Water
Resources.

Because of its junior rights, Arizona has taken the brunt
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recent rounds of voluntary cuts. The state’s position now, Mr.
Buschatzke said, is that everyone should make a meaningful
contribution, and that nobody should lose everything. “That’s an
equitable outcome, even if it doesn’t necessarily strictly follow
the law.”

There are other arguments in Arizona’s favor. About half of the
water delivered through the Central Arizona Project goes to Native
American tribes — including those in the Gila River Indian
Community, which is entitled to 311,800 acre-feet per year.

The United States can’t cut off that water, said Governor Stephen
Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community. “That would be a
rejection of the trust obligation that the federal government has for
our water.”

In an interview this week, Tommy Beaudreau, deputy secretary of the
Interior Department, said the federal government would consider
“equity, and public health, and safety” as it weighs how to spread
the reductions.

The department will compare California’s preference to base cuts on
seniority of water rights with Arizona’s suggestion to cut
allotments in ways meant to “meet the basic needs of communities in
the lower basin,” Mr. Beaudreau said.

“We’re in a period of 23 years of sustained drought and overdraws
on the system,” he added. “I’m not interested, under those
circumstances, in assigning blame.”

_CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE is a Washington-based climate reporter for The
Times, focusing on how people, governments and industries try to cope
with the effects of global warming. @cflav
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