Up and down the Colorado River last week, the state, local and tribal leaders in charge of water supplies for more than 40 million people waited to see if the federal government would impose deeper cuts to river allocations.

The Bureau of Reclamation had given states and tribes an Aug. 15 deadline to find ways to conserve 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of water to stabilize the drought-stricken river and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Without such a plan, the bureau said, it would act.