Colorado River Water Crisis Going From Bad to Worse

Headlines about finding bodies in Lake Mead outside Las Vegas have been fascinating and amusing folks, but the water situation in the Western US is going from critical to desperate.

Washington Post:

The Colorado River’s decline has drained three-quarters of the water from the nation’s largest reservoirs, and falling closer than ever to levels where hydroelectric dams can’t generate power and millions of people lose access to drinking water and irrigation supplies across seven states.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared that the Lower Colorado River Basin has reached what’s called a “Tier 2” shortage, requiring cuts in water use that will diminish what Arizona gets by 21 percent, Nevada by 8 percent and the country of Mexico by 7 percent.

“The system is approaching a tipping point, and without action we cannot protect the system,” M. Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said during a news conference Tuesday. “Protecting the system means protecting the people of the American West.”

The urgency of this moment comes as little surprise for Western water managers who divvy up the river’s dwindling supplies, but policymakers in the region remain torn on what to do. The Biden administration told these states in June that they need to find a way to reduce water use by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — or the federal government will make cuts for them. The deadline for that deal passed Monday, as negotiators continue to scramble to reach a voluntary agreement.

The root of the problem is an ongoing, 23-year drought, the worst stretch for the region in more than a millennium. Snowpack in the mountains that feed the 1,450-mile river have been steadily diminishing as the climate warms. Ever-drier soils absorb runoff before it can reach reservoirs, and more frequent extreme heat hastens evaporation.

In searching for a solution, state officials say they are seeking to balance both short-term needs to save Lakes Mead and Powell from dropping to levels where water can no longer generate power or flow through its dams, and also set themselves up for a longer-term agreement where everyone will have to find ways to use less water because climate change has made the West hotter and drier.

“What we’re facing here is that continued drawdown at Powell and Mead starts to affect people’s physical ability to get water,” said Deven Upadhyay, assistant general manager and chief operating officer of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a major urban water provider that gets a quarter of its supply from the Colorado River.

“It’s not like we can argue over this forever, and then the reservoir goes dry and you don’t have access to water, and at that point you’re not negotiating anything,” he said. “That is a powerful driver that is very different about these discussions now.”