The largest single batch of water-use cuts ever carried out on the Colorado River is needed in 2023 to keep Lakes Mead and Powell from falling to critically low levels, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation commissioner told a congressional hearing Tuesday.
Between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water use must be cut for 2023 across the river basin to cope with continued declines in reservoir levels, said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton.
This comes as the West continues to struggle with ongoing conditions of โhotter temperatures, leading to early snowmelt and dry soils, all translated into low runoff and the lowest reservoir levels on record,โ Touton said.
โThe normal drier, warmer West is what weโre seeing today,โ said Touton, testifying before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in Washington, D.C.
A 2 million to 4 million acre-foot cut would slice anywhere from 14% to 28% of the entire river basinโs total annual average water consumption in recent years.
Many water experts have said more conservation is needed soon because the river has an annual supply-demand gap of somewhere between 2 million and 3 million acre-feet a year.
That compares to Tucsonโs annual use of about 100,000 acre-feet a year and of around 1 million to 1.2 million acre feet consumed statewide by the Central Arizona Project canal system that pumps river water 336 miles from Lake Havasu to users including Tucson.
Feds can act unilaterally
Touton warned the committee that the bureau has authority to act unilaterally to impose water use curbs to protect the river system and its reservoirs, โand we will protect the system.โ
But for now, the bureau is pursuing a โpath of partnershipโ with the seven river basin states and with tribal leaders. The hope is to get some kind of agreement by mid-August. Thatโs when the bureau schedules its river water deliveries each year for the following year.
While top federal officials have issued similar threats to impose solutions on at least three occasions since 2005, theyโve always backed off after the states eventually agreed on lesser measures to address a growing supply-demand deficit in the basin.
The measures included a 2007 set of federal guidelines to manage the reservoirs; separate 2019 drought contingency plans for the riverโs Upper and Lower Basins; and the โ500-plusโ plan that calls for Lower Basin states to reduce water use just this year by an extra 500,000 acre-feet to prop up Lake Mead.
Arizona, Nevada and California are in the riverโs Lower Basin.
But those measures have continually fallen short as continued warm, dry weather has kept the reservoirs plunging. Currently, Lake Powell stands at 27% of its total storage capacity and Lake Mead is at 29% of capacity.
While officials have expressed faith in the spirit of cooperation that has led to numerous interstate water agreements in the past century, โfaith alone is not enough,โ Touton testified.
โWe need to see the work. We need to see the action,โ Touton said. โI ask Congress today to keep pushing us back to the table and I ask our partners to stay at the table till the job is done.โ
She noted that the bureau will celebrate its 120th birthday on Friday, commemorating federal passage of the 1902 Reclamation Act, pushed by President Theodore Roosevelt as a way of maximizing development of water resources, particularly in the West.
โThe challenge weโve seen today is unlike anything weโve seen in our history โ one of immediate action,โ Touton said.
Toutonโs comments, far more pessimistic about the riverโs immediate situation than any bureau official has ever made, come a little less than two months after the Interior Department, the bureauโs parent agency, agreed to prop up Lake Powell to the tune of nearly 1 million acre-feet this year.
It did that by first releasing a half-million acre feet into Lake Powell from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir at the Utah-Wyoming border, and second, by holding back 480,000 acre-feet in Powell that had been slated to be released this year to Lake Mead.
Toutonโs comments โshould remove any doubt that the Colorado River states and our federal partner have a duty to take immediate action โ no matter how painful โ to protect the system from crashing,โ said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke in a statement issued after the hearing.
โI have seen the data Commissioner Touton has seen and I agree with her conclusions,โ said Buschatzke, who was on vacation and unavailable for immediate questioning.
CAP first in line for cuts
Buschatzke noted that during Tuesdayโs hearing, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona warned that if federal legal priorities for managing Lower Basin supplies are needed, the Central Arizona Project would be first in line to absorb all the cuts before any other Lower Basin states lose any water.
Arizona accepted that junior priority status back in 1968 as a condition to win federal approval of construction of the CAP, which delivers drinking water to the Tucson and Phoenix areas.
โIf our state absorbed this two-to-four million acre-foot loss, it would wipe out water deliveries to cities, tribes and farms, to Phoenix and Tucson,โ said Kelly, a Tucson Democrat.
August deadline
Under questioning from Kelly, Touton said that if necessary, the bureau is prepared to impose restrictions on water use by other states without regard to legal priorities.
But Touton added, โBut weโre not at that decision point yet. So letโs get to the table and try to figure this out by August.โ
Buschatzke said itโs vital for the basin states to propose a plan before federal officials are forced to act unilaterally.
โWe have done much in recent years to protect this vital system. By her comments today, the commissioner has rendered it clear that the powerful impact of a decades-long drought and a changing climate requires us now to do much, much more and to do it quickly,โ Buschatzke said in his statement.
He noted that since 2014, Arizona and other Lower Basin states have conserved enough water to raise Lake Mead 70 feet higher than it otherwise would have been.
Providing even gloomier testimony on Tuesday before the Senate committee, top Las Vegas water official John Entsminger said, โIโm not a person prone to hyperbole, but the ominous tenor of recent media reports (about the Colorado) are warranted. What has been a slow-motion train wreck for years is accelerating, and the day of reckoning is near. The situation is effectively bleak but not in my view unsolvable.
โThe solution to the problem is not refilling reservoirs but ... a degree of demand management previously considered unattainable,โ said Entsminger, the Southern Nevada Water Authorityโs general manager.
Official: Farms need to step up
As for who will bear the burden of any cuts to Colorado River usage, โThereโs no way around this. The cities alone cannot address this critical level. Not because of indifference โ we simply donโt use enough water to tip the scale,โ Entsminger said.
The primary use of river water in the basin is โgrasses,โ he said.
โEighty percent of Colorado River water is used for agriculture and 80% of that is used for forage crops like alfalfa. Iโm not saying farmers should stop farming, but that they carefully consider crop selections and make investments to improve efficiency. By reducing their use of Colorado River water, agricultural entities will be protecting their own interest,โ Entsminger said.
Should Lake Mead fall to the โdead poolโ level of 895 feet elevation, Las Vegas will be able to meet is critical water needs because it has installed equipment deep enough in the lake to be able to extract water at such a low level, he said. On Wednesday, Mead stood at about 1,045 feet, 150 feet above โdead pool.โ
โBut at the same elevation, Arizona, California and Mexico will be cut off entirely. Weโre 150 feet from losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating,โ he said. โThe burden of shortage canโt be borne by any community or sector. Weโre 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the river.โ
