Arizona, California and Nevada will be forced to make deep cuts to the water they draw from the imperiled Colorado River under a new two-year operating plan published Friday, intended to help stave off an escalating crisis in the beleaguered waterway.
The long-awaited plan from the Department of the Interior comes after years of fraught negotiations between the seven states that rely on Colorado River water failed to produce a deal. And it arrives at a time when the river’s two key reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have both fallen to record lows — threatening water and power supplies for tens of millions of people.
In July, the US Bureau of Reclamation published an operating framework for the waterway which set out the broad parameters of water sharing over the next 10 years, including a provision that cuts be set out every two years.
The new plan covers the first of these two-year periods, stipulating cuts for the three lower basin states through 2028. California will have the smallest at 440,000 acre-feet; Nevada will take 50,000 acre-feet less water; and Arizona will endure the steepest cuts at 760,000 acre-feet. It sets out no mandatory cuts for the upper basin states of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.
