The Biden administration released an environmental analysis of competing plans for how seven Western states and tribes reliant on the dwindling water supply from the Colorado River should cut their use but declined to publicly take a side.
On one side is California and some tribes along the river that want to protect their high-priority rights to the river’s water, which they use for drinking and farming. On the other side are the other six states — Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — who say it’s time to come up with an approach that more fairly shares the river.
A multidecade drought in the West intensified by climate change, rising demand and overuse has sent water levels at key reservoirs along the river to unprecedented lows. That’s forced the federal government to cut some water allocations, and to pay farmers and cities billions of dollars to dramatically reduce their use.
The Interior Department will accept public comment on the document for the next 45 days before making a decision. In January, six of the seven U.S. states that rely on the Colorado River — Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — outlined how they would conserve significantly more water, but California disagreed with the approach. California, the largest user of the river’s water, released its own ideas a day later.
California roundly disagreed with that approach. That’s because the state has senior rights to Colorado River water and because of its location, would lose a significant amount of water if such losses were counted. The further south the river travels, more water evaporates — meaning that if evaporation losses were counted, California, Arizona, and Mexico would stand to lose more than states further north.
The six states and California also disagree about when more water cuts should be triggered at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S. that serve as barometers of the river’s health.
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