White House Proposes Evenly Cutting Water Allotments From Colorado River [View all]

[Zorro]

Source: New York Times

As the river shrinks, the Biden administration is getting ready to impose, for the first time, reductions in water supplies to states.

After months of fruitless negotiations between the states that depend on the shrinking Colorado River, the Biden administration on Tuesday proposed to put aside legal precedent and save what’s left of the river by evenly cutting water allotments, reducing the water delivered to California, Arizona and Nevada by as much as one-quarter.

The size of those reductions and the prospect of the federal government unilaterally imposing them on states have never occurred in American history.

Overuse and a 23-year-long drought made worse by climate change have threatened to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West. The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans as well as two states in Mexico, and irrigates 5.5 million agricultural acres. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.

But the river’s flows have recently fallen by one-third compared with historical averages. Levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell are so low that water may soon fail to turn the turbines that generate electricity — and could even fall to the point that water is unable to reach the intake valves that control its flow out of the reservoirs. If that happened, the river would essentially stop moving.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts-drought.html?unlocked_article_code=v6er0VECZYZv-MB269sXYfHYflDPaouVHYLpaw2qSPYlLpLfrXbddujwQ1g9joF-vvhXdoH04rJyD4RPBpBH12GgIxKoS3a-4jhR1bMjqokcJZ5Q_8VlnI26DKSzlTRoxDZi25bYCpG65b3paFCizbF6RrfFTtwHPKvHaA8iIxXrzL4JdZzD4MRD7vnEUaPU9A2_-vHRGzbKKzkH--SKt4S_UZ5QgutZcXcT9eY7bXwl6s5CYalR7WzjmVKYdWPEVPBMmzsb6bMaV1Cq3VYCvFqeC6DbTePeb_57blr7XliQtcCnI8VpSKBP1MI_-Wsnl9hV5sm3uyKUtm48G7CdgzBo1fD8Hk5EHTx1&smid=url-share