7 states finish deal for drought
Congress must now enact plan into law
Representatives of seven states finished a landmark agreement to shore up the dwindling Colorado River and signed a letter to Congress on Tuesday calling for legislation to enact the deal.
The set of agreements would prop up water-starved reservoirs that supply cities and farms across the Southwest and would lay the groundwork for larger negotiations to address the river’s chronic overallocation, which has been compounded by years of drought and the worsening effects of climate change.
The states’ delegates met in Phoenix and signed their joint letter to Congress alongside federal Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman, who had set a Tuesday deadline for the states to complete the agreements.
“Today is a very important day in the history of the Colorado River,” Bur-
man said after the signing. “Congratulations to all for a job well done.”
The first cuts in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada could begin as soon as next year under the terms of the deal.
Talks on the Colorado River drought contingency plans have been underway since 2015 and have included a series of meetings and difficult negotiations.
Tuesday’s meeting was closed to the news media and was held behind closed doors at the office of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Doug MacEachern, a department spokesman, said that due to limited space, “we simply cannot reasonably accommodate public access to these meetings.”
Burman and the representatives of states from Wyoming to California held a conference call afterward to discuss the meeting. Burman praised their cooperative efforts, saying: “I am pleased to see their hard work is done.”
The signing event was organized amid bitter complaints by California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which was excluded from the deal even though it controls the single largest share of Colorado River water.
While the signing was getting underway in Phoenix, a veteran board member of the IID spoke angrily at a state water board meeting on the shore of the Salton Sea, condemning his counterparts for writing his district out of the deal and suggesting they were sipping champagne while ignoring an urgent “environmental and public health disaster” at the shrinking lake.
Burman and other officials said the drought plan was designed in a way that will avoid causing further declines in the Salton Sea.
In their letter, the states’ representatives asked Congress to promptly pass legislation authorizing the Interior secretary to implement the agreements. Once legislation is passed, the agreements still need to be signed by representatives of the states.
Deal establishes short-term plan
The Colorado River irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmlands and supplies about 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles.
Nineteen years of drought and the longstanding overuse of water, combined with the effects of climate change, have pushed the levels of the river’s reservoirs lower and lower.
The seven states that rely on the river have negotiated two drought contingency plans, one for the river’s Upper Basin and the other for the Lower Basin. The plans are designed to prevent Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s largest reservoirs, from falling to critical lows during the next several years.
Lake Powell is now 38 percent full. Lake Mead is now 41 percent full, not far above a threshold that would trigger a
first-ever declaration of a shortage by the federal government.
The three-state agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada lays out a framework for taking less water from Lake Mead and sharing in cutbacks between 2020 and 2026.
‘... I say, “Damn them. Damn them.” ’
The process was fractious until the end, with blistering rebukes from board members of the Imperial Irrigation District and charges that state and federal laws were possibly being violated to cross the finish line. IID officials had demanded that as a condition of participating in the agreement, the federal government should provide about $200 million for California’s projects building wetlands at the shrinking Salton Sea.
Transfers of Colorado River water away from the agricultural Imperial Valley to growing urban areas have accelerated the decline of the Salton Sea, and dust spewing from exposed stretches of lakebed poses a health threat in low-income communities that already suffer from high asthma rates.
California officials are working on a long-stalled project to build thousands of acres of wetlands along the dry shorelines to keep down lung-damaging dust and salvage habitat for fish and birds. Board members of the Imperial district said with the federal government asking for help to prop up Lake Mead, Washington should also acknowledge the linkage to the worsening environmental problems at the Salton Sea.
During a meeting on the shore of the Salton Sea on Tuesday, IID officials lashed out at those gathering to sign on without them in Arizona.
“I have six grandchildren who live on the Salton Sea and five of them have asthma. On behalf of them, I say, ‘Damn them. Damn them,’” said IID board member Jim Hanks.
“As we gather here today on the shore of the Salton Sea strewn with bleached bones, bird carcasses and a growing shoreline,” Hanks said, “and as champagne is being prepared for debauched self-congratulation in Phoenix, remember this: The IID is the elephant in the room on the Colorado River as we move forward. And like the elephant, our memory and rage is long.”
Burman said her agency supports efforts at the Salton Sea but didn’t want to delay a drought contingency plan that benefits the entire Southwest. Other California agencies approved the deal, and the state’s Colorado River Board endorsed the agreement at a meeting on Monday.
Snowpack helping a bit for now
After years of extremely dry conditions, storms this winter covered the Rocky Mountains with snow, leaving a bounty of runoff that should boost the levels of the river’s depleted reservoirs this spring and summer.
The snow that has fallen during the past month has pushed the accumulated snowpack across the Upper Colorado River Basin to nearly 140 percent of average. Last week, water managers at the Bureau of Reclamation updated their estimates of reservoir levels, projecting there could be enough snow to narrowly avert a declaration of a shortage at Lake Mead next year.
They estimated that Lake Mead will probably be near elevation 1,081 by the year’s end — just above the trigger point for a shortage of 1,075 feet.
The Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to announce in August whether a shortage will be declared in January 2020 or not.
But even without a shortage, Arizona and Nevada may face water cutbacks starting next year under the drought plan. If federal officials determine in August that Lake Mead is likely to be below 1,090 feet at the start of next year — which now looks likely — water deliveries to Arizona would be cut about 6.9 percent, and deliveries to Nevada would be cut 2.7 percent.
Larger cutbacks would occur if Lake Mead is projected to be below 1,075 feet at the start of a future year. And California would also contribute by taking cuts sooner than it would be required to under the existing rules, when the reservoir reaches 1,045 feet.