3 words sum up the plan to save Lake Mead

The takeaway from the “500-plus plan,” the recently inked effort to save Lake Mead, can be summed up in just three words:

We’re. Not. Done.

That doesn’t make the deal any less consequential.

Arizona, California, Nevada and the federal government have agreed to voluntarily conserve at least 500,000 acrefeet of water, over and above mandatory cuts, for the next two years. In 2022, that’s roughly twice as much as we would otherwise be leaving in the lake.

They’ve committed $200 million to fund the plan – most of which will pay people not to use water they were already using.

And they did so in roughly four months.

Clearly, the lower basin got the memo about how quickly things are changing, and how quickly states needed to act. The chances of Lake Mead dipping to dangerously low levels are now nearly as high as they were before we inked the Drought Contingency Plan, which makes mandatory cuts as we dip deeper into shortage, in 2019.

In fact, on the day the 500-plus plan was signed, the inflow forecast for the upstream Lake Powell dropped by an eye-popping 1.5 million acre-feet.

That’s more water than the Central Arizona Project has delivered to customers this year.

And it evaporated from the forecast just one month.

A dry November radically decreased the amount of water that is expected to flow into the lake, dropping forecasted levels at Powell by 20 feet or more and, for the first time, projecting that Lake Mead will be in a deeper Tier 2 shortage next year.

Scary as that is, this isn’t the first time this year that we’ve seen a million acre-feet change in a month. The frequency is as concerning as the size.

Granted, the 500-plus plan won’t change Powell’s projections. And it may be a month or two before the forecasts show its impact on Lake Mead.

Agreements with water users to offer up the water are still in the works, though saving 500,000 acre-feet a year in 2022 and 2023 is expected to increase lake levels on Mead by about 16 feet.

In Arizona, the Gila River Indian Community and Colorado River Indian Tribes have signed deals to save a combined 135,000 acre-feet.

That’s a little more than a quarter of the lower basin target.

Mohave Valley, Wellton-Mohawk and Yuma Mesa irrigation districts – which because of their higher priority water rights have not been heavily impacted by shortage – have signed letters of intent to offer water, as has the Salt River Project, which delivers water from in-state rivers to central Arizona.

Eight central Arizona cities – El Mirage, Gilbert, Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Surprise, Tempe and Mesa – and two central Arizona irrigation districts – Harquahala and Queen Creek – also have expressed interest in joining the plan, state water director Tom Buschatzke said last week.

But will they offer up enough water to reach Arizona’s informal goals?

That remains to be seen.

If it’s this tough to find water now, with cash on the table to fallow fields or pay for municipal conservation, imagine how difficult this is going to be in 2024, 2025 and 2026, when we are likely to be in even deeper levels of shortage.

We must save as much water in those years to make the 500-plus plan work, and even if we do, the modeling suggests that the lake will continue to decline but shouldn’t dip below 1,020 feet of elevation.

That still puts us squarely in a Tier 3 shortage, which will affect the supplies of every central Arizona city.

So, the additional conservation probably won’t make life easier for us – it’s simply buying time to find more permanent solutions. The hope is that they’ll be included in the next 20 years of guidelines for the Colorado River, which must be in place by 2027.

But the 500-plus plan also has delayed work on those new guidelines. We’re just triaging at this point.

So, yes, while the 500-plus plan saves Lake Mead for the moment, which makes it the right choice, it is not sustainable, which also makes it a bad idea. We can’t just keep paying people not to use water.

And even if we could, it wouldn’t solve our problems – which at this point are as much a function of what the upper basin does to stabilize Lake Powell as it is about what the lower basin does to stabilize Lake Mead.

The ray of hope is that, particularly in the lower basin, everyone wants to be considered a team player. Great steps are being taken to appear united and willing to sacrifice for the greater good. No one is publicly digging in on their allocations.

Mexico also has agreed do more to prop up Lake Mead, though we don’t yet know how much water that might entail. The goal is to have a deal locked up by summer.

All of which is awesome. And necessary.

But we’re not done.

Not by a long shot.