The federal government announced Tuesday that the Colorado River will operate in a Tier 2 shortage status for the first time starting in January as the West’s historic drought has severely impacted Lake Mead. According to a new forecast from the Interior Department, Lake Mead’s water level will be below 1,050 feet above sea level in January — the threshold needed to declare a Tier 2 shortage by 2023. Lake Mead’s level was about 1,040 feet this summer, just 27% of full capacity. The Tier 2 shortage means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will have to further reduce their use of the Colorado River starting in January. California will still have no cuts in the water it receives from the Colorado River. (California’s first cut limit is 1,045 feet in January.) Of the affected states, Arizona would face the largest cuts — 592,000 acre feet — or about 21 percent of the state’s annual river water allotment. “Every sector in every state has a responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum efficiency. In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River system and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the basin must be reduced,” Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tania Trujillo said in a statement. Interior projections show that by January of next year, Lake Mead’s water surface elevations will be at 1,047.61 feet. Meanwhile, Lake Powell’s water surface elevation will be at 3,521.84 feet – 32 feet above the minimum power pool, or the amount needed to generate electricity from hydroelectric operations. Separately, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton and other federal water officials said they were prepared to take additional management actions needed to protect the Colorado River, Lake Powell and Lake Mead from falling to “critically low levels.” . Earlier this summer, Touton set a mid-August deadline for the seven Colorado River states to come up with a plan to reduce their river water use by up to 25 percent. It became apparent earlier this week that those negotiations have stalled, leading some lawmakers and state water officials to call on the federal government to take aggressive action on its own. Interior has yet to outline the next steps in Touton’s request for the states’ plan.
