The ongoing dispute over Colorado River water comes down largely to math: How much water should each state and region lose as reservoir levels continue to decline?
California has one interpretation of how to divvy up the cuts, and six other states that depend on the river have a different formula.
Figuring out where the Colorado River’s water goes after Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam can be challenging to understand and is often incorrectly stated. So when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation published forecasted use of Colorado River water it is essential to analyze the numbers.
According to the USBR, the forecasted use for 2023 in the lower Colorado River basin is divided four ways: Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico.
Snowpack has been running well above average this winter across the Colorado River watershed. It’s a rare bright spot after 23 years of grinding megadrought brought the driest conditions in 1,200 years to the basin that supplies 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Mexico.
Should the generous rains and mountain snows continue into spring, they could help head off a deeper water crisis, including perhaps an unprecedented loss of hydropower generation from severely depleted Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
The seven states that depend on the Colorado River have missed a Jan. 31 federal deadline for reaching a regionwide consensus on how to sharply reduce water use, raising the likelihood of more friction as the West grapples with how to take less supplies from the shrinking river.
In a bid to sway the process after contentious negotiations reached an impasse, six of the seven states gave the federal government a last-minute proposal outlining possible water cuts to help prevent reservoirs from falling to dangerously low levels, presenting a unified front while leaving out California, which uses the single largest share of the river.
Western water managers are optimistic that a deal to buoy the drought-stricken Colorado River can be pieced together in the waning days before a deadline set by the federal government rolls around next week.
The Bureau of Reclamation has given the seven states in the basin until the end of January to propose their own plan for voluntary reductions needed to prevent the river’s two main reservoirs from crashing, or risk the federal government moving forward with its own measures that would most likely result in mandated cuts.
The seven U.S. states along the Colorado River — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California — are up against yet another deadline to curb their water use amid extreme drought. They have until Tuesday to agree on massive voluntary cuts or the Bureau of Reclamation, a Department of the Interior agency, has said it will impose cuts on them.
The basin states have called the federal government’s bluff before, but whatever happens next week, millions of westerners and their livelihoods will be affected.
Officials involved in the talks over how to cut Colorado River water use amid a historic drought say they’re optimistic a consensus will be reached by states before a Feb. 1 deadline even though the negotiations are in a delicate place.
If the seven Western states don’t reach consensus, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation will consider mandating water cuts—a move the states are working feverishly to avoid.
New predictions by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that Lake Powell’s water levels may fall below the level needed to produce power as soon as July 2023. The Bureau of Reclamation issues two-year predictions for the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead and revises those predictions every few months. It uses multiple projections to come up with expected, worst, and best probable outcomes.
The Bureau of Reclamation is for the first time legally signaling its intent to make major cutbacks in water deliveries from Lake Powell to Lake Mead and the Lower River Basin to protect the reservoirs that are on the edge of collapse. In online presentations last week, the bureau said it’s working through a formal process that could lead to cutting deliveries from Powell by 2 million to 3 more.
California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, is located 175 miles north of Sacramento. But what happens there impacts farming throughout the entire Central Valley.
Shasta Lake is capable of holding 4,552,100 acre-feet of water, which is almost five times the capacity of Folsom Lake. When full, Shasta boasts 365 miles of scenic shoreline. But for those visiting the lake in recent months, it is impossible to ignore how that shoreline is shrinking. The water is about 150 feet below the ideal surface level.
“We’re coming out of the three driest years on record,” explained Don Bader, area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation. “So that’s a huge hit to our storage, as you can see.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
