States reach agreement on plan to conserve Colorado River water

By Rhiannon Saegert (contact)

Published Monday, May 22, 2023 | 8:54 a.m.

Updated Monday, May 22, 2023 | 6:55 p.m.

The three Lower Basin states sharing water from the dwindling supply in the Colorado River have agreed to conservation measures to save 3 million acre feet of system water through the end of 2026, the Department of Interior announced Monday.

The efforts will begin quickly. The three states — Nevada, Arizona and California — agreed that 1.5 million acre-feet would be conserved by the end of 2024, according to a letter sent from the states to Camille Touton, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Water districts, farm operators, cities and Native American tribes in the three states agreed to take less water in order to qualify for federal grants offered under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Those payments will total about $1.2 billion. Officials did not say how much funding individual users in the states would get.

“Nevada has long been a leader in regional water conservation efforts, and we’re pleased to continue leading through this agreement with other Lower Basin states,” Gov. Joe Lombardo said in a statement.

“Through this partnership, we look forward to equitably advancing our mutual goal of conserving our shared water resources,” Lombardo said. “It’s never been more important to protect the Colorado River System, and this partnership is a critical next step in our efforts to sustain this essential water supply.”

Officials from the seven Colorado River Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona and Texas — agreed to the submission of a proposal from the three Lower Basin states, the Department of Interior said.

“I commend our partners in the seven Basin states who have demonstrated leadership and unity of purpose in developing this consensus-based approach to achieve the substantial water conservation necessary to sustain the Colorado River System through 2026,” Tommy Beaudreau, the Department of Interior deputy secretary, said in a statement.

The next step is for the department to fully analyze the effects of the proposal under the National Environmental Policy Act, it said.

“This is an important step forward toward our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home,” Touton said in a statement.

Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said 55% of the water reductions would come from Arizona, 30% from California and 6% from Nevada.

The three states are entitled to 7.5 million acre-feet of water altogether from the river. But for the past two years, Arizona and Nevada to a lesser degree have not received their full allocations thanks to agreed-upon water cuts to keep more water in the system. California has been spared so far from those cuts thanks to its senior water rights.

An acre-foot of water is roughly enough to serve two to three U.S. households annually.

John Entsminger, general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said he was pleased by the states’ cooperation but knows the plan is only a short-term solution.

“There’s a tremendous amount of hard work that’s going to need to be done to adapt our institutions on this river to a warmer, drier future post-2026 out toward mid-century,” he said. “Two things can be true at once.”

He said before the plan is accepted, the Bureau of Reclamation will analyze it and make its findings available for public comment. After that, water users in California and Arizona need to enter into contracts with the federal government, which will all need to be reviewed by a governing board over the course of summer.

He said the SNWA’s models weighing the new plan against the two plans the Bureau of Reclamation proposed in the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement last month showed Lower Basin states’ plan would be more successful.

“Under whatever hydrology we get in the next three and a half years, this plan leaves the reservoirs higher than they would have been even if (SEIS plan) 1 or 2 were implemented,” Entsminger said. “That’s primarily because we’re front loading the conservation.”

He said starting in 2023 the water authority will begin banking up to 285,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead over the net four years, and not withdraw from that until at least 2026.

Nevada water users will not be compensated for their conservation the same way California and Arizona will be, he said.

“If you get paid for it, that water goes to the system, dedicated forever. You’re never getting that water back,” Entsminger said. “It’s more important to us to have access to that water out in the future than it is for us to get these federal dollars.”

The West is mired in a two-decade drought that is leaving less water flowing through the Colorado and its tributaries. The result is depleted reservoirs that store the water that allows the West to thrive.

Lake Mead — one of four reservoirs on the Colorado — is operating at 28% capacity.

Some 40 million people from Denver to Mexico, including many farmers, depend on the Colorado for water.

Funds from the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act will be used to compensate for 2.3 million acre-feet of the reduction, the Department of Interior said. The act is supporting efforts to increase near-term water conservation, build long-term system efficiency, and prevent the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production, the department said.

Another 700,000 acre-feet would come from California, Nevada and Arizona, which agreed to work out the cuts among themselves in the coming months.

The negotiations on voluntary cutbacks were difficult and likely a preview of what’s next when the operating guidelines for Lake Mead and Lake Powell that were adopted in 2007 expire at the end 2026.

In recent years, the river’s woes have forced the federal government to cut some water allocations, and to offer up billions of dollars to pay farmers and cities to pay farmers, cities and others to cut back. But those efforts weren’t seen as enough by key water officials to prevent the system from collapsing.

In addition to supplying drinking water, the river also generates hydroelectric power for regional markets and irrigates nearly 6 million acres (2,428 hectares) of farmland.

Last summer, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation called for the seven Colorado River Basin states to figure out how to cut their collective use of the river’s water by about 2 to 4 million acre-feet — or roughly 15% to 30% of their annual use — but states blew past that deadline and an agreement remained elusive for several more months.

In April, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released a plan that considered two ways to force cuts in the Colorado River supply for Arizona, Nevada and California.

One contemplated using a decades-old water priority system to reduce usage that would have benefited California and some Native American tribes with senior water rights. The other would have been a percentage cut across the board to spare Arizona and Nevada — states with lower-priority rights — some pain.

The Interior Department on Monday said it would leave aside that proposal for now so that it could analyze the broader plan submitted by Western states and reissue it later this year.

The Interior Department was able to negotiate less drastic cuts thanks to an unusually wet winter that provided snowpack levels in the Colorado Basin far above average, especially in California. That is expected to significantly increase the amount of water in the river, at least temporarily.

Some environmental activists criticized the short-term deal as being a far cry from what’s needed.

“The feds just want a deal. Is it the right deal? Absolutely not,” said John Weisheit, an activist who co-founded the group Living Rivers. “Where is the climate adaptation deal? There isn’t one.”

The Sun’s wire services contributed to this report.

[email protected] / 702-948-7836 / @Missmusetta