The water crisis along the Colorado River, a critical source for California and six other states, has gotten so serious that the Trump administration is responding with emergency measures to prevent disaster at the nation’s second largest reservoir.
The effort to boost the water level of Lake Powell will bring consequences, cutting water to farms and cities across the Southwest.
The actions will begin all the way up on the Wyoming-Utah border, where the federal government will release a significant amount of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado. Hundreds of miles downstream, that will help raise the level of Lake Powell, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border and is three-quarters empty, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said on Friday.
Next, the Trump administration will keep more water in that lake, shrinking the amount flowing downriver into Lake Mead near Las Vegas, which holds water for Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.
The measures are intended to prevent Lake Powell from falling so low that water would no longer reach intakes to turn turbines and generate electricity — a point it could have reached by August.
“It’s avoiding catastrophe, and it’s basically a one-year solution,” said Mark Gold, a board member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The federal government’s response was urgently needed, he said, “to basically stem the crisis for a year.”
Southern California cities get, on average, 20-25% of their water from the Colorado River. Farms in California’s Imperial Valley depend entirely on the river to grow crops including hay, broccoli and lettuce.
The reduction in the water that’s released from Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell will make major water cuts necessary in California, Arizona and Nevada, Gold said, but exactly how those cutbacks are divided hasn’t been decided yet.
The Bureau of Reclamation said in its announcement that the river’s reservoirs are at 36% of capacity and the drought is intensifying this year with the smallest snowpack on record and extreme heat.
If Lake Powell declines so low that its dam can no longer generate hydropower, that would also create other problems. Water could only pass through four 8-foot-wide bypass tubes, and that would limit how much would reach California, Arizona and Nevada.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum discussed the plan Friday in a virtual meeting with the seven states’ governors. He said the approach addresses “complex challenges created by these unprecedented drought conditions which require immediate action.”
The federal government, acting under a 2019 drought agreement, will release between 660,000 acre-feet and 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir over the next 12 months. At the same time, it will cut the water it releases annually from Lake Powell by more than 19%, or nearly 1.5 million acre-feet.
The river flow has shrunk dramatically since 2000, and research has shown that global warming is intensifying the dry conditions.
This year, the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains is just 22% of average, the smallest on record. The runoff reaching reservoirs is projected to drop dramatically.
Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir near Las Vegas, is now 32% full.
JB Hamby, California’s Colorado River commissioner, noted that conservation efforts have considerably boosted Lake Mead’s level in the last three years.
“Those actions have held the system together, but conditions remain tough and the outlook is still dry,” Hamby said.
“With record-low snowpack and continued strain on Lakes Mead and Powell, we have to use every tool available,” he said. “These are necessary short-term adjustments, not a long-term fix. Real stability will require conservation across the entire Colorado River Basin.”
Representatives of the seven states have deadlocked in negotiations on a long-term plan for cutting water use.
The talks are now at a standstill, Hamby said. The seven states’ negotiators haven’t met in person since January.
“We need to evaluate all of our options moving forward,” he said. “There’s too much at stake, particularly for California, not to figure this out.”
With reservoir levels so low and the negotiations failing, Gold said, “there was really no choice but for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to step in and take a bold action.”
The Colorado River provides water for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico. The water was originally divided among the states in 1922 under an agreement called the Colorado River Compact.
Arizona officials have warned if the amount of water flowing into Lake Mead falls below a legal trigger point, that would allow the state to sue for a violation of the compact.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources said in a written statement that the federal government’s plan would deliver “substantially less” water than required.
“This failure to comply with the bedrock agreement among the seven Colorado River states is itself a serious development that Arizona will assess and will respond to accordingly in time,” it said.
However, the Arizona agency also praised the water release for Lake Powell, calling it “in line” with what it has advocated.
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