US News: What Could Future Colorado Water Cuts Look Like?
Colorado River negotiations are heating up as officials try to reach a basin wide agreement by 2026.
But how would their competing proposals play out if they were managing the basin this year?
If any of the Colorado River management options were used to manage this year's sub-par snowpack, Arizona, California and Nevada would be forced to slash 17% to 43% of their legal share. Coloradans would be focused on voluntary conservation.
Colorado River officials are debating six options for how to manage the overstressed river after 2026 with the goal of reaching a seven-state agreement by May. Under this year's water conditions, all of the proposed plans would call for mandatory cuts in the three Lower Basin states with reductions ranging from 1.3 million to 3.2 million acre-feet.
The basin's legal share of the river is 7.5 million acre-feet, although estimates say its actual use is higher.
Under most of the different management options, Colorado and its sister states in the Upper Basin would be asked to voluntarily conserve up to 500,000 acre-feet of water. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three households.
In Arizona, the state that would be hardest-hit, cities, farms and tribes are already making alternative plans, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona's Colorado River negotiator, said.
“The impacts are going to be meaningful,” Buschatzke, who is also director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said.“They are going to have some pain attached to them.”
It's been a tough water year for parts of Colorado and the Colorado River Basin. In Colorado, the snowpack on the Western Slope - where the Colorado River starts ended up with a below average peak this winter.
Across the basin, more than 20 major reservoirs and tributaries can expect a lower-than-usual water supply between April and July, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
Lake Powell, one of the immense reservoirs that provides storage for millions of water users in the basin, will likely receive less than 70% of its normal inflows from the Upper Basin region of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah.
It's the kind of water year that starts to worry officials about late-summer irrigation supplies and wildfire risks, according to fire officials, irrigators and water providers.
With this year's conditions, Colorado River states would be conserving or cutting back on their water use under any of the six plans dominating current planning discussions: two competing proposals from basin states - one from the Upper Basin and one from the Lower Basin - and four options from the federal government.
The fifth federal option, called the“no action” alternative, is theoretical and a required part of the federal planning process. It would not sustainably manage the river, officials say.
It will mean that creative things, like treating water so it can be used to drink, will have to be developed and deployed, which also means significant infrastructure costs of hundreds of millions of dollars, Buschatzke said.
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