Federal officials this week are expected to ease water cuts for Western states reliant on the Colorado River next year.
A wetter winter and conservation measures have helped improve the river’s health, but experts warn a drier future is ahead.
The U.S. government in 2021 announced cuts that hit Arizona particularly hard. Last year, those cuts grew more severe thanks to continued drought, poor precipitation and less runoff from the river’s Rocky Mountains source. Officials on Tuesday said releases from Lake Mead in 2023 to water users are expected to be the lowest in 30 years, the result of a wet winter and conservation efforts in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico.
Earlier this year, Arizona, California and Nevada released a plan to conserve an additional 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026 in exchange for $1.2 billion from the federal government. An acre-foot of water is enough to serve two to three households annually. The Interior Department is expected to release its analysis of the proposal this fall.
The cuts announced Tuesday would not be “a big swing one way or the other in terms of on-reservation use,” said Jason Hauter, a member of the Gila River Indian Community and a tribal water attorney.Farmers use between 70% and 80% of all water in the Colorado River system, but Tuesday’s announcement will not change much for most of them.
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