John Locher / AP
People attend a news conference on Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, Tuesday, April 11, 2023, near Boulder City. The Biden administration on Tuesday released an environmental analysis of competing plans for how Western states and tribes reliant on the dwindling Colorado River should cut their use.
Published Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Updated Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023 | 8:32 p.m.
Water levels in the drought-stricken Colorado River have improved because of a wetter-than-normal winter, but water from Lake Mead will be alloted under federally mandated reductions for a third consecutive year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Bureau of Reclamation.
The water level at Lake Mead is projected to be 20 feet higher at the end of the year than it was in January, according to the report.
But while the winter precipitation and resulting snow melt brought some immediate drought relief to the Colorado River Basin, experts say the challenges of a hotter, drier climate in the future and overuse of the river remain.
“The above-average precipitation this year was a welcome relief,” Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said Tuesday. “However, the two largest reservoirs in the United States and the two largest storage units in the Colorado River system — remain at historically low levels.”
Nevada typically receives 300,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado River, according to the bureau. It will have 279,000 acre-feet of water available from the river in 2024, a 7% cut, although it traditionally has not used its full allotment because of conservation efforts and recycling water used indoors. Southern Nevada used 224,000 of its 300,000 acre-foot allocation from Lake Mead last year, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
“While the near-term hydrologic conditions have improved slightly, one good year on the river does not change the long-term projections,” said John Entsminger, SNWA general manager. “With climate change expected to create a warmer and drier future, water users across every sector must remain committed to conservation and continue finding ways to use less water.”
Local conservation efforts have kept Southern Nevada’s water supply stable for now, Entsminger said, but the future will bring greater extremes.
“We think the long run is a warmer, drier future,” he said. “We need to be prepared for this river to have significantly less water in it by the 2030s, and almost certainly by midcentury.”
He said SNWA was making “fantastic progress” toward its conservation goals of 86 gallons of water per person per day by 2035. Last year, the daily per-person usage mark dipped to 104 gallons, down from 112 gallons in 2021.
“Our community is in a very good place to adapt to these conditions,” he said.
The West is mired in a two-decade drought that is leaving less water flowing through Colorado and its tributaries. The result is depleted reservoirs that store the water that allows the West to thrive.
Those reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are still only about 39% and 33% full, respectively.
“Climate change gives us very little breathing room to refill reservoirs,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of Great Basin Water Network, a water conservation advocacy group. “Look at the history. Elevations are basically back to where we were two years ago. What’s it going to take to bring us back to the brink? Not much.
“More pain is coming for plant life, wildlife and human life, and I have little faith that water managers will take the proper long-term course to mitigate the hardship.”
Some 40 million people from Denver to Mexico, including many farmers, depend on 1,450-mile-long Colorado for water.
Simply drive past Lake Mead and the decreasing water levels are obvious with a bathtub ring showing where the water previously reached.
The water level at Lake Mead sat at 1,063.34 feet as of midafternoon Tuesday, according to the website lakelevels.info. It was at 1,042.16 feet on Aug. 15, 2022. For Lake Powell, the level Saturday was 3,579 feet — up from 3,534 feet a year ago.
In total, 613,000 acre-feet worth of cuts are coming to the Lower Basin states — Nevada, California and Arizona — and Mexico on Jan. 1, according to the report. Arizona is taking the biggest hit, losing 512,000 acre-feet, which is about 18% of the state’s annual apportionment. Mexico is losing 80,000 acre-feet, or about 5% of its apportionment.
“That is a little better than last year but still extremely low. It only takes a few dry years to set us back,” said Kim Mitchell, senior water policy adviser at Western Resource Advocates, a Phoenix-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting water and land in the West.
This is one piece of various water-savings plans already in place or being negotiated.
Earlier this year, Arizona, California and Nevada released a plan to conserve an additional 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026 in exchange for $1.2 billion from the federal government. An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons and enough to serve two to three households annually. The Interior Department is expected to release its analysis of the proposal this fall.
The plan, likely to be finalized in 2024, would mean cuts for California’s Imperial Irrigation District, the largest user of Colorado River water. The district, which supplies farmers who grow fruits, vegetables and feed crops, is typically spared based on senior water rights.
Some tribes and individual districts in the West that supply water to farms and cities are signing contracts to use less water in exchange for federal money.
The Gila River Indian Community in Arizona agreed in April with the U.S. government not to use some of its river water rights in return for $150 million and funding for a pipeline project. The tribe gets Colorado River water through the same aqueduct system that delivers river water to Arizona’s major cities.
Guidelines that dictate how Colorado River water is allocated expire in 2026.
Discussions among states, tribes and the federal government about their priorities for the river after 2026 are starting.
“We had a good year,” said Anne Castle, U.S. commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission. “But no one expects that’s going to be the new normal. The question is, ‘What’s the plan for the future?’”
Said Entsminger of the SNWA, “All the water users in this river system are going to have to contribute to the stability of the system.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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