U.S. states agree on plan to manage overtaxed Colorado River

Orme said farmers in the districts fear they will be affected disproportionately under the plan.

“Everyone recognizes something additional needs to be done,” he said. “It’s just how we get there internally is what we’re trying to work out.”

The two major components of the plans cover the Upper Basin, where most of the water originates as Rocky Mountain snowfall, and the Lower Basin, which consumes more of the water because it has more people and farms.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are in the Upper Basin. Arizona, California and Nevada are in the Lower Basin.

It will likely be next year before all seven states and the U.S. government approve the plans, said Karen Kwon, Colorado’s assistant attorney general. Mexico agreed last year to participate in drought planning.

Reaching the agreements was a complex and delicate task because the river is not controlled by a single agency. Instead, it is governed by interstate compacts, international treaties and court rulings, known collectively as the law of the river.

Water managers have warned for months that a shortage could have catastrophic effects on agriculture and the economy of the Southwest. But the states were always expected to reach agreements on drought plans because of their history of cooperating on Colorado River issues.

“This is the way things should be done,” said Ted Kowalski, who heads the Colorado River Program for the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded river restoration projects in the U.S. and Mexico.

“It’s a much preferred method of solving water management decisions than litigation or politics,” he said.

The Colorado River faces shortfalls for the foreseeable future because of what is called a structural deficit - the users along the river and its tributaries are legally entitled to more water than the river actually carries. That’s because the original allocations, made in 1922, were based on water flows that were abnormally high.

Drought, climate change and demand from growing cities are making things worse.

The drought plans rolled out this week are a first step, but the states must find ways to put water back into the river, said Mulroy, the former southern Nevada utility chief.

Desalinizing seawater and recycling wastewater are possibilities, she said.

“As important as the drought contingency plan is, it’s a tourniquet, it’s a Band-Aid, it is not the be-all and end-all that would solve the structural deficit that exists in the river,” Mulroy said.

This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA)