During a U.S. Senate hearing on Western drought earlier this week, the commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation told the states in the Colorado River Basin that they have 60 days to create an emergency plan to stop using between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in the next year or the agency will use its emergency authority to make the cuts itself.

For context, the entire state of Arizona is allowed to use 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year.