'Time For Action' to Avert Colorado River Crisis, Federal Official Says
The Colorado River has for years been locked in a pattern of chronic overuse, with much more water doled out to cities and farmlands than what’s flowing into its reservoirs.
The river basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, has been drying out during what scientists say is one of the driest 19-year periods in the past 1,200 years.
Its largest reservoir, Lake Mead, now stands just 39 percent full. And the federal government has warned that the likelihood of the reservoir dropping to critical shortage levels is growing.
With all indicators pointing to increasing risks of a water crash in the Southwest, the top official of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation came to the Imperial Valley with a message for the district that holds the largest single entitlement to Colorado River water: It’s time for action to avert a worst-case scenario, and everyone will need to pitch in.
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told the Imperial Irrigation District’s board that she wants to see water agencies in California, Arizona and Nevada restart stalled talks on a “drought contingency plan,” under which all sides would agree to temporarily take less water from Lake Mead to keep it from falling to disastrously low levels.
“It’s very important for us to start thinking about, what do we need to do to protect Lake Mead and to protect the water users?” Burman told the IID board on Tuesday. She pointed out that four states in the river’s Upper Basin are working on a regional drought plan, and that during the past three years, the three Lower Basin states had, until recently, been negotiating their plan, too.
“Those talks have sort of fallen off. And I’m here to say for this secretary, for this administration, those talks need to be starting again,” Burman said.
“We need to be talking about what does a drought contingency plan in the Lower Basin look like? And we need action. We need action this year,” she said. “If you take one message from what I’m saying today, it’s that we face an overwhelming risk on the system, and the time for action is now.”
The last time the federal agency’s commissioner came to personally address the IID board was in 2004. She said she thought it was important to come to talk about the risks that all users of Colorado River water now face.
Stressing the urgency of her appeal, Burman showed a chart with a range of possible reservoir levels for Lake Mead in the mid-2020s, including a worst-case scenario in which the reservoir falls to “dead pool” — too low for any water to flow over Hoover Dam.
The Trump administration last year chose Burman, a lawyer and veteran of western water issues, to serve under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke as leader of the bureau, which manages dams and delivers water to more than 31 million people and farmlands across the West.
Burman now faces the task of trying to shepherd to completion talks toward Colorado River deals that began during the Obama administration.
Officials representing California, Arizona and Nevada started talking about a drought contingency plan in 2015. But disagreements have flared between Arizona agencies, and California water districts have also run into issues that need to be resolved.
Under a U.S.-Mexico deal signed last year, Mexico agreed to cut the amount it takes from the river together with the U.S. states to help with the situation at Lake Mead. But that agreement will only take effect once California, Arizona and Nevada finalize their drought plan.
During the past year, meanwhile, the water outlook has grown increasingly dire. Parts of the Colorado River Basin got record-low snowpack this winter, and the amount of spring runoff from the Rocky Mountains into Lake Powell was estimated to be just 42 percent of average.