California water districts signed Colorado River water conservation agreements with the federal government at the start of the 75th meeting of the Colorado River Waters Users Association.
By Amanda Pampuro, Courthouse News Service
Several California water districts signed agreements with the U.S. Bureau of Land Reclamation on Wednesday to conserve a collective 643,000 acre-feet of Lake Mead water through 2025. The decrees were finalized to kickoff the 75th meeting of the Colorado River Waters Users Association at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel.
“We all are aware of the risks the basin is facing,” said Camille Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation in a press conference. “This past winter has given us a reprieve but the fact is we have to keep working because inaction is not an option.”
Just 16 months ago, water levels in Lakes Powell and Mead hit record lows that threatened to cut off hydroelectric power to communities across the western U.S.
To ensure a sustainable future for Colorado River users, President Joe Biden’s Investing in America program is providing California communities with $295 million to fund projects aimed at increasing water conservation, more efficient use, and environmental protections.
Forty million people living in the southwest U.S. and Mexico depend on the Colorado River, including those in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Tijuana. An additional 30 Native American tribes hold senior water rights as well.
In addition to generating power for 2.5 million people, 70% of the river’s water nourishes 5.7 million acres of crops. Only 10% of the 1,400-mile river reaches Mexico, which also owns a stake in the water. Siphoned off across so many shareholders, the river rarely sees the ocean and a 2017 civil lawsuit attempting to grant the natural resource the rights of personhood dried up.
Several century-old agreements govern the law of the river, including the 1922 Colorado River Compact which doled out 17.5 million acre-feet of water each year to numerous stakeholders, an amount that was unsustainable even then.
Additional modernisms unforeseen by the original compact negotiators further strain the river including climate change, drought, industrial agriculture and sprawling metropolitan development.
While it never produced the promised 17.5 million acre-feet of water, the Colorado River supplied an average 15.2 million acre-feet per year through the 20th century, including 4 million acre-feet to the upper basin and 9 million to the lower basin and Mexico.
While water use in the lower basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — surpasses use in the upper basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — the law gives both areas the same 7.2 million annual acre-feet to use. The imbalance drives tension between the upper basin which must limit development around water availability, and the lower basin which is pressured to make cuts in usage.
To balance the equation, lower basin states have agreed to cut 3 million acre-feet by 2026, with California committing to a 1.6 million acre-feet reduction in water use driven by local water agencies.
“In just January it was six states against California,” reflected Touton. “This is an all-basin approach,”
The Quechan Indian Tribe has pledged to cut 30,000 acre-feet of water through 2025. Tribe president Joran Joaquin called the move historic.
“Our tribe has been stewards of the land and river for centuries,” said Joaquin, who is the first member of a Native America tribe to sit on the Colorado River Board of California. “Yesterday I heard a quote that we have to live within our means — and we know what that means.”
Joaquin hopes the Quechan’s partnership inspires other Native American tribes to work with the federal government on the issue.
In addition, the Coachella Valley Water District pledged to cut 105,000 acre-feet, the Imperial Irrigation District will conserve 100,000 acre-feet of water, and Palo Verdo Irrigation District is reducing water use by 58,000 acre-feet.
Now Colorado River stakeholders are reaching agreements with a wide-range of solutions from cutting nonfunctional turf in the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to paying farmers in Palo Verde to fallow thirsty fields.
While California’s cuts alone don’t ensure a sustainable water future for the West, upper basin’s commissioner Anne Castle called the development an important piece of the puzzle.
“This is the example that we need to make in order to balance the gap between supply and demand in the Colorado River system,” Castle said after the upper basin’s gathering. “It’s really meaningful because it’s big, and it shows that it’s going to take very broad-based effort in order to balance that.”
