The cutbacks mark the first time in Lake Mead’s 86-year history that demand for water has eclipsed what federal authorities can safely supply, even in a system where reservoirs store four times more water than what flows annually down the river. The tier-one shortage — the worst designation, based on the lake’s record-low water levels — paints a troubling picture of the hardships to come as the Southwest’s growing population competes for dwindling resources while temperatures rise and precipitation falls due to soaring fossil fuel emissions. The region’s stored water capacity dropped to 40% last month, down from 49% a year earlier.
Three U.S. states share the river’s lower basin, but California will avoid cutbacks next year thanks to legal rights dating back more than a century that privilege the most populous state in the nation’s claim to Colorado River water. Farmers in Arizona and Nevada, as well as in Mexico’s Baja California and Sonora states, will face shortages starting in 2022.
“The Colorado River is absolutely in crisis with this 20-year drought persisting, but we’ve gotten through it and effectively mitigated it so far by relying on reservoir storage,” said Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director at the National Audubon Society. “We’ve been sipping our way through this to get through this, but as reservoirs drop and drop and drop, that’s not sustainable.”
The Colorado River Indian Tribes ― a federally recognized confederation of Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo people ― volunteered to stop farming crops in the Arizona portion of their reservation to eliminate water use in exchange for payments from the state. Mostly farmers across Pinal County, by contrast, are expected to receive some additional drilled water and reservoir water next year to make up for lost Colorado River water.
While the cuts will reduce risk of further shortages, Bureau of Reclamation Deputy Commissioner Camille Touton said “we have not eliminated the potential for continued decline of these critically important reservoirs” and warned that “additional actions will likely be necessary in the very near future.”
“At the turn of the millennium, our major reservoirs in the basin ― Lake Mead, and Lake Powell ― were nearly full. I remember being on a tour at Hoover Dam and standing at the top of the dam, leaning over and thinking I could touch the water because the water level was so high,” Touton said, noting her hometown was in the river basin. “Little did we know then that 2000 would be the start of what is now a 22-year drought.”
Two months ago, the Bureau of Reclamation cut off water to farmers and tribes in a lush but increasingly dry valley on the border between California and Oregon. The decision stoked tensions between the mostly white farmers and Indigenous tribes, who lobbied for reductions in water distributed for irrigation in hopes of preserving water levels for endangered fish.
The Senate’s recently passed bipartisan infrastructure deal includes billions in funding for water infrastructure, especially to tribes, and the restoration of forests and wetlands deemed crucial to natural water tables. Experts say those investments are a good start but are long overdue as problems from droughts compound.
This content was originally published here.
