Nevada official urges federal intervention in Colorado River crisis

Nevada’s top Colorado River negotiator came out swinging Monday with a pointed letter urging the federal government to take a long list of actions soon to bring water uses on the depleted river in line with its supply.

The letter from Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger expressed frustration that the seven river basin states haven’t done anything in 62 days of talks to carry out a federal order to drastically cut river water use.

Saying “absolutely nothing” has been accomplished in the past two months of interstate negotiations over the river, despite a federal directive and a deadline of Aug. 16, Entsminger wrote that it’s time for U.S. officials to order specific cuts in water use.

His letter went to three top U.S. Interior Department officials, led by Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland.

Numbering a dozen, his solutions run the gamut from creating regional turf removal programs, to improving farms’ water use efficiency, to cracking down on how water users can justify their use of river water as beneficial in order to be eligible to take the water.

He called for eliminating “wasteful municipal watering of non-functional turf” and requiring seasonal irrigation schedules in cities to save water.

He also said water users in the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada should have to include evaporation and other water losses in the Lower Basin in determining their total supplies. That action by itself could knock out well over one-third of the 2 million acre-feet minimum that the feds want the states to save.

If such efforts don’t get accomplished, his Las Vegas-based water authority is ready to work with other parties on “common sense federal legislation” to bring river water use in line with supply, Entsminger wrote.

He didn’t elaborate, but a source said that at a seven-state river meeting Thursday in Denver, Entsminger suggested legislation that would reduce the river water supply of California, which has by far the river’s largest share of 4.4 million acre-feet a year.

Entsminger declined to comment on that report, saying, “As a rule of decorum in these negotiations, we do not comment on specific matters that occur in these negotiations.”

“We are at the stage where basin-wide, every drop counts, and every single drop we are short of achieving 2 to 4 million acre-feet in permanent reductions draws us a step closer to the catastrophic collapse of the system, as well as draconian water management practices to protect health and human safety that we have successfully staved off in the past through cooperation,” Entsminger wrote. “Each temporary action must be a bridge to permanent reductions and must be implemented posthaste.”

On Tuesday, Aug. 16, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to announce how it will respond to the seven states’ failure so far to reach agreement on a plan to cut water use next year by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet a year. Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton directed the states in mid-June to come up with a firm plan to carry out such cuts by mid-August or face federal intervention.

In a letter to Haaland on Tuesday, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, also urged the feds to step in and take action.

"In the basin states negotiations, Arizona has offered to put more wet water on the table than any other state, while other parties have offered a fraction of the same amount. Other states with significant water allocations have so far offered insufficient or uncertain amounts of water," Kelly wrote.

"Therefore, as a matter of accountability for the missed August 15th deadline, I request that you outline the Department’s options and legal authorities for implementing mitigation measures that would prevent drastic consequences for Arizona and other Colorado Basin States, including the loss of hydropower generation at Hoover Dam and reduced Colorado River water availability for any user in the Lower Basin," Kelly wrote. "Such options should recognize and account for the early and consistent contributions that Arizona has made and will continue to make to preserve waterlevels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell."

The seven states’ water officials couldn’t reach agreement, due in part to uncertainty among Lower Basin officials as to how much to cut water use, and in part to the Lower Basin’s unwillingness to accept the Upper Basin’s position that it won’t do any conservation immediately but would wait for several studies and congressional action before launching conservation actions. The Upper Basin states are Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Nevada’s Entsminger is the first public official to have offered any detailed fixes for the Colorado River’s chronic overuse of water.

His letter also comes as various water experts offered a wide range of outlooks for whether and how soon Reclamation will act. Several experts say they believe Reclamation will create a plan eventually but will delay that into next year to give states more time to come up with a plan, while other experts are dubious about Reclamation’s willingness to take any politically or legally controversial actions.

Entsminger noted that back in mid-June, he and Touton “sat side by side in the United States Senate and conveyed to the world that the Colorado River is on the brink of crisis.”

But, “despite the obvious urgency of the situation, the last 62 days produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis,” Entsminger wrote. “The unreasonable expectations of water users, including the prices and drought profiteering proposals, only further divide common goals and interests. Through our collective inaction, the federal government, the basin states and every water user on the Colorado River is complicit in allowing the situation to reach this point.”

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By “drought profiteering proposals,” Entsminger said later, he was referring to a request from Yuma-area farmers for $1,500 an acre-foot compensation for cutting water use. The farmers say such payments are needed to match the economic losses the farmers would incur from giving up that much water.

“To the broader river community, I say this: The Colorado River cannot provide enough water for the current level of use. The magnitude of the problem is so large that every single water user in every single sector must contribute solutions to this problem regardless of the priority system,” Entsminger wrote, adding, “the bulk of the responsibility to reduce use falls upon water users downstream of Hoover Dam, because that is where the bulk of the water is used.”

Colorado environmental activist Jennifer Pitt and New Mexico water researcher/author John Fleck praised Entsminger’s letter, with Pitt calling it “pretty spot on.”

“We have to figure out how to use less water. That part is not negotiable. It’s not great that there’s less water to use. But it does seem like collaborative decision-making is a path toward a socially economically viable strategy, rather than letting it be dictated by a century-old law, and letting people interpreting century-old laws and agreements that did not anticipate these conditions,” she said. She was referring to the 1922 Colorado River Compact that divided the river’s water between the Lower and Upper basins.

“His list of actions is a really good list of actions. Somebody should figure out how to get them done. If it’s the states, great. If the states can’t do it, then somebody better have a plan. It there is no plan announced (Tuesday), it would be irresponsible for the feds to not start working on a plan,” said Pitt, the National Audubon Society’s Colorado River programs manager.

The water users’ inability to come up with a plan responding to the scale of the crisis adds much risk to the river systems and its Lakes Mead and Powell, Fleck said.

He added, “It’s not enough just to reduce water use to its current supply to stabilize the reservoirs, we need to cut even more to refill the reservoirs to provide conditions that protect against the next dry period.”

“By missing the deadline we’ve done a disservice to everyone in the basin who depends on this river,” Fleck said.

Upper Colorado River Commission executive director Chuck Cullom said he agreed with several of Entsminger’s proposals and noted that many cities in the Upper Basin states already have or are embarking on some, including turf removal programs. Unlike the Lower Basin, the Upper Basin already counts water losses from evaporation against the water supplies that it has the right to use, he said.

He also supported more efficient water use for irrigated agriculture. He added that the federal government should carry out its existing authority to save more water in the Lower Basin rather than pursuing legislative changes.

But Sarah Porter, director of an Arizona State University water research center, said that while she liked many of Entsminger’s proposals, it’s easy for Nevada to make them because it only has a small amount of river water rights and only one major user — Las Vegas-area municipalities.

Also, Nevada has already dug pipes deep enough into Lake Mead that it can extract water from it even when the lake drops to “dead pool,” at 895-foot elevation, at which nobody else can get water from it, she noted.

“It’s good that they’re in that position to provide moral leadership to the rest of the states. But other states have harder problems to solve. They have cities, agriculture, tribes, a lot of different interests to balance,” said Porter, of ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

Dan Beard, a former Bureau of Reclamation commissioner from the 1990s, said he’s skeptical that federal authorities will act on their own to fix the river’s problems.

“The Bureau of Reclamation is a government agency and it operates under significant pressure from a lot of different directions. The bureau answers to the assistant Interior secretary, the assistant answers to the secretary and the secretary answers to the president,” said Beard, who served under President Bill Clinton.

“I hope the bureau will come forward with meaningful proposals. But if history is any guide, they won’t. They may start out that way, but the system will grind away on it and make it very difficult to come forward with meaningful proposals,” Beard said. “If they come forward with a proposal, it will be a high risk proposal. If they don’t, they will have egg on their faces.”

By contrast, former Assistant Interior Secretary Anne Castle said she believes the bureau will take action, but added, “I understand that might not happen right away. The August 16 deadline no longer appears to be a firm line.

“I think the feds feel a real obligation to protect the system from crashing. It’s their job to protect the infrastructure for sure. They have the obligation and authority to make sure that bad things don’t happen to the dam and the power plants, both Hoover and Glen Canyon,” said Castle, who was assistant secretary for water and science during the Obama administration.

“Overall, I think they really want to keep the river system viable and not let it just run itself into the ground with the huge devastating impacts that would have.”

Photos: Construction of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the 1930s