Federal officials ordered the first water shutoffs in the Colorado River system that supports 40 million people, following the latest blow of a decades-long drought in the western United States, which has reduced reservoirs to record lows, devastated farms and set the stage for deadly forest fires.
The measure will be a severe setback for Arizona farmers, who will suffer the biggest cuts. Water deliveries to Nevada and Mexico will also fall under a system developed in 2019 by communities that depend on the river. And with the possibility of another dry La Niña winter looming, there could be further reductions.
“What we hoped we would never see is here,” Camille Touton, deputy commissioner of the US Reclamation Office, said during a news conference Monday. “And the hydrology might not be the worst we’ll probably see.”
The Colorado, which runs 2,000 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California, is a primary water source from Denver to Los Angeles, while also irrigating crops and supplying hydroelectric plants. In fact, so much water is drawn from the Colorado that it rarely reaches its historic delta, even in relatively wet years.
And those years have become scarce as a ‘mega drought’, a dry period of unusual length and severity, takes hold of the West. According to the Office of Reclamation, the amount of unregulated water flowing into Lake Powell from the river between 2000 and 2020 was less than in any other 21-year period since the reservoir began. Environmentalists say the river cannot afford significant new diversions, even as the region’s population continues to grow.
“The Colorado River is drying up and western states must act now to protect this vital waterway and its tributaries,” said Bart Miller, director of the Healthy Rivers Program, for the environmental group Western Resource Advocates, it’s a statement.
The water level in Lake Powell is now 3,551 feet above sea level, or just 32 percent of capacity. At Lake Mead, it’s 1,68 feet above sea level, or 35 percent of its capacity.
Reduced reserves
Both reservoirs are close to a point once considered unthinkable, where the flow is so small that hydroelectric dams are forced to close. Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam, for example, cannot generate electricity if the water level falls below 3,491 feet.
Rights to use water del Colorado are governed by nearly a century of agreements between the states, the United States government, and Mexico, a legal edifice known collectively as the Law of the River. The Recovery Office declared a Level 1 shortage on Monday.
Arizona’s annual allocation will be reduced by 18 percent starting next year. Nevada and Mexico will incur reductions of 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively. (The other states that draw water from the river are California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.)
Arizona’s reduction will be equivalent to the amount used by approximately 1 million average households in one year. The cuts will not affect any municipal, industrial, commercial or tribal user. Instead, nearly all of the cutbacks will fall to farms that receive their water from the Central Arizona Project.
The rationing is likely to hit Pinal County the hardest, where farmers tend to have the most subordinate water rights. Farms will have to leave the land fallow or rely on groundwater that is already being over-pumped. As Arizona is trying to cushion the blow by building groundwater infrastructure, some observers say the cuts will spark litigation.
“Pinal County agriculture faces a dire reality,” the Arizona Office of Agriculture said in a statement Monday. “This will have a devastating impact on every farm family in that county, and the surrounding communities will feel the knock-on effects for years to come.”
Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said that some of the water the state will lose has been stored underground and can now be used to mitigate the deficit. Many Central Arizona Project farms in Pinal, Pima and Maricopa counties “will lose substantial amounts of their surface water, and we will be able to make up for their losses by pumping groundwater under our Groundwater Management Act,” he said during Monday’s press conference. . .
John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said his agency has “pre-preserved” the cuts it will see in 2022, meaning there will be no reductions in water for its member agencies.
If the drought continues next year, California could face supply cuts: The Golden State must give up water when Lake Mead drops below 1,45 feet.
That is a great possibility. The United States Climate Prediction Center last week forecast a 62 percent chance that the weather phenomenon The girl, back in the Pacific Ocean this fall, his second appearance in two years. The girl it tends to bring dry winters to the southwest. While this year’s summer monsoon season has brought frequent thunderstorms, they haven’t made a dent in the drought. And with climate change, many long-term models predict a drier future for the region.
“The possibility of consecutive years of The girl it’s always there, and we’ve had them before, ”said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Having that after a 21-year period where it’s been mostly dry is starting to put us on the ropes.”
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