Three states are being required to cut their water use under a final plan for managing the Colorado River over the next two years, while the four upstream states are being asked to voluntarily conserve water.
The U.S. Department of the Interior released the Record of Decision for managing the river over the next decade and laying out more specific rules for the next two years. The plan is intended to protect Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which have fallen to historically low levels after years of drought.
Arizona, California and Nevada will have to collectively reduce their water use by 1.25 million acre-feet per year over the next two years, with additional restrictions possible if conditions worsen, according to the plan.
Nevada was the first state to sue the Interior Department over the plan Monday, asking a court to block it.
Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming are not subject to mandatory reductions; instead, those states are setting up programs to voluntarily conserve water.
“Under the proposed plan issued by the Department of the Interior, southern Nevada could lose more than 70 percent of its already meager Colorado River allocation while the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming are not required to contribute a drop,” Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo said in a news release on Monday.
Upper Basin officials say their water users already face reductions when drought leaves less water available and that the federal government doesn’t have authority to impose mandatory cuts in their states. But they say the Upper Basin is willing to contribute voluntarily.
“Not because we have to, or that we feel like we legally have to,” Colorado’s river negotiator Becky Mitchell said at a conference last week in Steamboat Springs, “but because the importance of this system and the survival of this system is a responsibility for everyone.”
The federal framework envisions up to 200,000 acre-feet of water per year in Upper Basin contributions when conditions allow. The federal government is dedicating $100 million to the Upper Basin to compensate farmers, cities or other water users to use less. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are also setting up their own state programs to facilitate participation.
Colorado officials expect applications could open this fall and projects could start next year.
“Our position has been and continues to be that we're going to be part of the solution,” said Amy Ostdiek, section chief for the Colorado Water Conservation Board at the Steamboat conference. “We're going to do it in the ways that we can, at the times that we can, but we can't provide water certainty for our neighbors downstream that we don't have ourselves.”
Criteria for selecting projects, how water users will be compensated and how the Upper Basin gains credit for conserved water are still being worked out.
The federal plan also creates a potential “conservation pool” in Lake Powell, allowing the Upper Basin states to store a certain amount of conserved water.
John Berggren, a water policy analyst with the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, has advocated for a conservation pool and said its inclusion in the federal framework is promising. However, exactly how it would work is not clear.
“How that pool operates, how the water is used, when it's moved, if it's moved, who decides that – all that is going to depend on future agreements,” he said.
Some key questions, he said, have to do with what the conserved water is credited towards, such as whether it’s used to offset shortages in the Lower Basin or help the Upper Basin fulfill their legal obligations to deliver water downstream.
The new framework also allows the Upper Basin to come to an agreement with the Interior Department to draw down a few reservoirs when Lake Powell nears getting too low for hydropower. That started happening this year, with water released from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
