Colorado River conservation measures will protect reservoir levels through 2026, feds say

The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday released its final plan for emergency measures to shore up Colorado River reservoir storage, declaring victory in the short-term effort to prevent catastrophe from striking in the next three years.

Touting agreements with the southwestern states that use most of the water, and announcing federal funds for three new California conservation agreements, the department’s Bureau of Reclamation said the Biden administration “has staved off the immediate possibility of the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production.”

Now comes the heavier lift: reaching an agreement or imposing a federally mandated one among the seven states that use the river to share potentially deeper shortages after the government’s water management guidelines expire at the end of 2026.

The states have struggled to reach consensus on how to do that, especially between the mountain states that have never developed their intended share of the water and the southwestern states that have already had to cut back to keep Lake Mead from crashing. The states intend to submit their ideas or commitments for that process this month, and the Interior Department will review them and then fashion a long-term plan through this year and next.

For now, administration officials say they’ve saved at least 3 million acre-feet, much of it through compensated reductions in use by irrigators and others, putting Lake Mead’s elevation at its highest in nearly three years. The agreements are part of an amendment to the old shortage-sharing guidelines, which the government released on Tuesday.

"Reclamation is grateful to our partners across the Basin — including the Basin states governor’s representatives, the 30 basin tribes, water managers, farmers and irrigators, municipalities, power contractors, non-governmental organizations, and other partners and stakeholders — for their unprecedented level of collaboration throughout this process,” Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in a written statement.

“As we move forward, supported by historic investments from the President’s Investing in America agenda, we will continue working collaboratively to ensure we have long-term tools and strategies in place to help guide the next era of the Colorado River Basin,” she said.

The administration announced three new conservation deals among the many it has reached in this process. They include up to 351,063 acre-feet in water savings through a cooperative deal with California’s Palo Verde Irrigation District and the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles. Smaller deals collectively saving nearly 50,000 acre-feet come from commitments by the Coachella Valley Water District and from the Bard Water District in cooperation with Metropolitan.

An acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons, and is enough to supply three or more southwestern households for a year. Most of the river’s water is used for agriculture, and many of the conservation agreements, including a major one with Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community, are keeping farm water behind Hoover Dam.

Interior says it has struck 24 conservation agreements in Arizona and California, using $670 million from the Inflation Reduction Act that the Biden administration and both of Arizona’s senators targeted for Western drought relief. In all, Touton said Tuesday, 2.3 million acre-feet of the projected water savings are coming from federally compensated conservation deals. Another law, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to invest $8.3 billion in water infrastructure projects over five years, including support for water purification, storage, desalination and other projects.

The Bureau of Reclamation started work on its emergency amendment to shortage-sharing guidelines when Lake Mead and Lake Powell were emptying at an alarming rate after two decades of drought. It initially told states that this process would require much more conservation through 2026 to keep the water and hydropower flowing from the dams, but accepted the 3 million acre-feet that states offered after Rocky Mountain snowmelt from a mercifully wet winter of 2022-2023 offered a reprieve.

The reservoirs remain historically low, at about a third full, but officials now believe users relying on their output are safe for the immediate future. Some scientists in the region have advocated a shift from the term "drought" to "aridification" to signify the warming climate's role in sapping moisture that would otherwise reach the river, a cue that Touton took up in a call with reporters on Tuesday. Long-term changes in the region's water cycle make new and bigger solutions all the more important, she said.

"Aridification will only intensify drought-related impacts," she said.

Her colleagues said westerners can expect a rollout of longer-term federal investments such as canal linings and crop efficiency improvements through the rest of this year.

"Climate change is not a question," White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told reporters. "The 40 million folks who depend on the Colorado River don't have time for the climate denial" that pervades partisan politics.

Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: With immediate Colorado River crisis solved, feds turn to longer term