Water securityU.S. states agree on plan to manage overtaxed Colorado River

Seven Southwestern U.S. states that depend on the overtaxed Colorado River have reached landmark agreements on how to manage the waterway amid an unprecedented drought, including a commitment by California to bear part of the burden before it is legally required to do so, officials said Tuesday.

The agreements are tentative and must be approved by multiple states and agencies as well as the U.S. government. But they are seen as a milestone in the effort to preserve the river, which supports 40 million people and 6,300 square miles (16,300 square kilometers) of farmland in the U.S. and Mexico.

“I think it’s a critical step,” said Pat Mulroy, former manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves Las Vegas and other cities, and now a senior fellow at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas law school.

The agreements create a collection of drought contingency plans designed to manage and minimize the effects of declining flows in the Colorado and its tributaries. Some plans were made public Tuesday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages major reservoirs across the West, is expected to release others Wednesday.

A nearly two-decade-long drought has drained the river’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, to alarmingly low levels. The Bureau of Reclamation says the chances of a shortfall in Lake Mead are 57 percent by 2020. If that happens, mandatory cutbacks would hit Arizona, Nevada and Mexico first.

The reservoir never has fallen low enough to trigger a shortage.

California agreed to soften the blow by voluntarily reducing its Colorado River use by about 6 percent if conditions are bad enough, said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesaler serving 19 million people.

Kightlinger said California wanted to avoid having Congress or the U.S. Department of Interior step in and dictate a solution. “We wanted to control our own destiny and not leave things up to a political process,” he said.

Even with the plans in place, the impacts will be painful for some.

“We’ve been letting farms know they are undoubtedly going to have to change their irrigation practices,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents four Arizona irrigation districts in that state’s internal discussions on drought planning. “Irrigate less land with less water.”