San Diego Forgoes More Colorado River Water in New Deal

The Colorado River’s biggest single user – farmers in Imperial Valley – made another agreement with the federal government to cut their take of the overused, threatened river for the next two years, with help from San Diego.

The Imperial Irrigation District’s board announced this week it’d pay farmers to skip some harvests in the coming two years in order to keep around 700,000 acre feet of water (an acre-foot is two California households’ annual water use) in the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead.