{"id":219027,"date":"2026-08-01T10:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T10:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/water-cuts-loom-as-us-unveils-long-awaited-response-to-colorado-river-crisis-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T10:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T10:24:16","slug":"water-cuts-loom-as-us-unveils-long-awaited-response-to-colorado-river-crisis-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/water-cuts-loom-as-us-unveils-long-awaited-response-to-colorado-river-crisis-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Water cuts loom as US unveils long-awaited response to Colorado River crisis – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal government plan outlines cuts of roughly 40% to California, Arizona and Nevada but fix is likely to be only temporary
The US government released its anxiously awaited plan for how to manage the Colorado River crisis on Friday, which includes the potential for harsh cuts in water supplied to California, Arizona and Nevada.
Under the proposal, the so-called lower basin states stand to lose up to 3m acre-feet (3.7bn kiloliters) a year \u2013 enough water annually to serve more than 25 million people and roughly 40% of their collective total. The so-called upper basin states \u2013 Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming \u2013 were spared from mandates restricting their supply.
The Colorado River supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, two countries and dozens of tribes, and also irrigates 5.5m acres (2.2 hectares) of farmland. The federal government has limited jurisdiction over state-based water policy but is responsible for managing the dams at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two key reservoirs that lower basin supplies flow through.
The 10-year plan makes space for changing conditions, with specifics decided in two-year increments based upon supply in the system. Officials said this enables better planning during an uncertain future and also leaves options open if the seven states responsible for managing the essential and overdrawn waterway are able to forge an agreement in the near future.
\u201cThis framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,\u201d saidDough Doug Burgum, the US interior secretary, Secretary of the Interior Dough Burgum in a the press release.
But according to Noah Garrison, a water policy researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, adding these open-ended terms could leave the plan toothless.
\u201cAll this does is kick the can down the road yet again, in search of an agreement between the states that has failed to materialize for more than 3 years,\u201d he said in an emailed response. \u201cWe need to be more aggressively pursuing the suite of solutions that can provide a safe, reliable, new supply of water for the region.\u201d
The federal government is expected to release a so-called \u201crecord of decision\u201d in the coming week that will detail operations under the plan in the short term. It has been reported that they will closely follow a proposal issued by the lower basin states earlier this year that would shave 3.2m acre-feet from their combined total over 2027 and 2028.
The plan follows years of fraught negotiations and missed deadlines. The states that rely on the river continue to fight over a long-term management plan for the dwindling resource that supplies huge swathes of the western US.
Tensions are high and the stakes are rising. The Colorado has been overdrawn for more than a century, as demand continues to outpace supply. The river and its tributaries are the lifeblood for the American west, supplying bustling cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, as well as agricultural centers.
The climate crisis is also taking an increasingly large share. Snowmelt that feeds the river is evaporating more quickly, and thirsty soils and plants soak up more water. Flows in the Colorado are down 20% over the last century and precipitation has shrunk by about 7%.
The ecosystems on the banks of the river have already paid a heavy price. Fourteen native fish species are endangered or threatened. The once-lush wetlands in Mexico\u2019s river delta have been dry for decades and the once mighty river slows to just a trickle as it crosses the US-Mexico border.
This year was devastatingly dry, pushing the combined levels of the two largest reservoirs on the river, Lake Powell <\/a>and Lake Mead<\/a>, to record lows. It\u2019s exceedingly unlikely that the system will bounce back in the near term, even if there is a wet winter.
\u201cReclamation is doing what it can absent a seven-state deal,\u201d said Dr John Berggren, regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates. He added that the plan is moving things in the right direction but that there\u2019s little time to lose.
\u201cThe lower basin states are going to have to do more. The upper basin states are going to have to do more,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a good framework in here, but the implementation is going to be key in the coming years.\u201d
The threat of lawsuits has also hung over the rule-making process, even as most stakeholders agree that drawn-out legal battles would be calamitous for the river and the region inextricably tied to it. The new plan hasn\u2019t pushed them off the table, especially in Arizona, which is slated to take the biggest hit.
\u201cWhile we are still awaiting the final operational plans for the next two years, any proposal that imposes the vast majority of cuts on Arizona is unreasonable and unacceptable,\u201d the Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva said in a statement issued Friday.
\u201cUpper Basin states continue to hide behind an outdated legal framework that is disconnected from today\u2019s hydrologic realities, allowing them to avoid making meaningful reductions to their own water use,\u201d Grijalva said, echoing the frustrations voiced by lower basin officials throughout the negotiation process.
In the north, however, stakeholders say they\u2019ve already taken the hit from drier conditions directly. With no reservoir to manage their supply, they source from waterways themselves. When the system is low, there\u2019s simply less to go around.
\u201cWe in the upper basin know all too well that poor hydrology makes for tough decisions,\u201d said<\/a> Mike Vickrey, a rancher in the Green River valley of Wyoming, during a congressional committee hearing on the Colorado River crisis held in June. \u201cThe only way going forward is a shared pain as hydrology worsens.\u201d
The Associated Press contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n

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Federal government plan outlines cuts of roughly 40% to California, Arizona and Nevada but fix is likely to be only temporaryThe US government released its anxiously awaited plan for how to manage the Colorado River crisis on Friday, which includes the potential for harsh cuts in water supplied to California, Arizona and Nevada.Under the proposal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}