Arizona, California and Nevada are expecting the Trump administration to impose significant cuts to their water usage as Colorado River levels drop to historic lows.
Federal officials announced the first steps in their plan to manage Colorado River water use on Friday. The initial framework suggests that the three Lower Basin states will be asked to cut up to 1.5 million acre feet of water per year for the next two years — a significant reduction in their water consumption.
The country’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell, which sits between Utah and Arizona, and Lake Mead, which spans Arizona and Nevada, hit their lowest combined water levels on record earlier in July. Both are fed by the Colorado River. If levels drop much lower in Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon Dam will no longer be able to sustain the hydroelectric power plant that feeds electricity across much of the West.
The guidelines that have governed how states can use the water in the Colorado River for the last 19 years are set to expire at the end of 2026. Western states have been in negotiations for years on how to use water from the Colorado River moving forward, and remain at an impasse.
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With no deal in sight, the Interior Department laid out a set of guidelines Friday that would help balance two needs: keeping enough water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and delivering enough water to communities that rely on the river.
Some of the federal government’s plans are based on a proposal the Lower Basin states themselves made earlier this year. The document, however, suggests cuts to those states’ water usage could be doubled in drought conditions to protect the Hoover Dam.
Arizona state officials immediately criticized the suggestion for those more aggressive cuts, calling it “unacceptable.”
“Such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy,” the state officials said in a statement.
The guidelines would impose a plan for the next two years and then every two years after that for 10 years, unless states come to a consensus themselves during that time period.
The river provides water to nearly 40 million Americans and powers the agricultural economies across Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the river’s Upper Basin and Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin.
More than a dozen tribes also depend on water from the river but have been largely left out of the negotiations.
Since the current water usage framework was adopted in 2007, unprecedented drought has changed the hydrology of the basin, confounding efforts to manage the system.
Even with the deep cuts to water use, it’s not clear that the plan will turn into a sustainable solution.
The proposal from Lower Basin states is “the best there is so far,” said Sarah Porter, head of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “But it’s not enough to keep the system from crashing, to keep the reservoirs from not being in the territory of hitting dead pool.”
After 2028, the terms of water conservation are murkier, with the possibility that more severe cuts could come for the Lower Basin states.
The Interior Department is limited in how it can enforce its plan. Arizona’s state Legislature will have to approve some of the plan, and some water boards in California may need to officially sign off on the agreement as well.
States could also sue the federal government over the proposal. Severe cuts to water resources could put state economies at risk, especially the agricultural operations in California and Arizona that depend heavily on irrigation from the river.
Arizona officials told reporters on Monday they reserved the right to pursue litigation if necessary.
The three Lower Basin states have long argued that the other four states should be required to share some of the most drastic cuts in especially dry years. The Upper Basin states together consume less water than is legally allotted to them, and argue that low snowpack and drier rivers have already caused them to cut water use. But their southern neighbors have proposed that no state should be excluded from legally enforced water conservation in the driest years.
“I actually think we’re at the point where Supreme Court litigation among the seven states may be the most hopeful vehicle for getting the states to come to a settlement,” Porter said.
Interior’s current plan covers the next 10 years, with checkpoints every two years. This design could allow the seven states to continue negotiating with each other and with Interior to address the river crisis moving forward.
The amount of water flowing through the basin has been dropping significantly over the last decade because of a combination of factors, primarily persistent droughts, decreasing snowpack in the Upper Basin states, high temperatures causing the water levels to fall, and overuse of the water that remains. Almost half of all water used from the river goes toward irrigated agriculture.
Arizona, California and Nevada have been voluntarily reducing their water usage for the last several years, paying farmers to leave fields dry in return for billions in drought relief payments from the federal government.
Monday’s framework did not specify whether Interior would pursue funding to pay for similar efforts in the future.
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