FILE – A formerly sunken boat stands upright with its stern buried in mud along the shoreline of Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Area on June 22, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Federal officials on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, water outages are expected to be announced that will further reduce the amount of Colorado River water received by some users in the seven US states that depend on the river and Mexico. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) U.S. officials announced Tuesday that two U.S. states that depend on water from the Colorado River will face more water outages as they experience extreme drought. The move affecting Arizona and Nevada came as officials predicted levels in Lake Mead, the largest U.S. reservoir, would drop even further than they have. The cuts will put officials in those states under extreme pressure to plan for a warmer, drier future and a growing population. Mexico will also face cuts. Lake Mead is currently less than a quarter full, and the seven states that collectively depend on its water have missed a federal deadline to announce proposals for plans to draw down extra water next year. The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people in seven states in the American West as well as Mexico and helps feed an agricultural industry worth $15 billion a year. Towns and farms across the region are anxiously awaiting official hydrological forecasts – estimates of future water levels in the river – that will determine the extent and scope of water supply cuts. And that’s not all: State officials are also trying to meet a deadline set by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to cut water use by at least 15 percent to keep the water levels in the river’s storage tanks from falling even further. Together, the projections and the deadline for the cuts present Western states with unprecedented challenges and confront them with difficult decisions about how to plan for a drier future. While the Bureau of Reclamation is “very focused on getting this out of the way by next year,” any cuts would likely have to take much longer, said Oxford University hydrologist Kevin Wheeler. “What the science adds up to is that it’s pretty clear that these reductions just have to stay in place until the drought ends or we realize that they actually have to get worse and the cuts have to go deeper,” he said. The cuts are based on a plan signed by the seven states as well as Mexico in 2019 to help maintain reservoir levels. Under this plan, the amount of water available to the states depends on the water level in Lake Mead. Last year, the lake dropped low enough for the federal government to declare a water shortage in the region for the first time, triggering mandatory cuts for Arizona and Nevada as well as Mexico in 2022. Officials expect hydrologists to predict the lake will drop further, causing additional cuts in Nevada, Arizona and Mexico next year. States with higher priority water rights are not expected to see cuts. Reservoir levels have been falling for years – and faster than experts predicted – due to 22 years of drought exacerbated by climate change and overuse of the river. Hot temperatures and less spring snowmelt have reduced the amount of water flowing from the Rocky Mountains, where the river originates before snaking 1,450 miles (2,334 kilometers) southwest and into the Gulf of California. Already, great strides have been made this year to conserve water in Lake Powell, the Colorado River’s other large reservoir, which sits upstream from Lake Mead and straddles the Arizona-Utah border. Water from the lake passes through the Glen Canyon Dam, which generates enough electricity to power between 1 million and 1.5 million homes each year. After water levels in Lake Powell dropped low enough to threaten hydroelectric power generation, federal officials said they would hold back an additional 480,000 acre feet (more than 156 billion gallons, or 592 million cubic meters) of water to ensure the dam would could still produce energy. This water would normally be directed to Lake Mead. With Tuesday’s cuts, Arizona will lose slightly more water than it did this year, when 18 percent of its supply was cut. In 2023, it will lose an additional 3%, a total reduction of 21% from its original allocation. Mexico is expected to lose 7% of the 1.5 million acres it receives each year from the river. Last year it lost about 5%. Water is a lifeline for northern desert cities, including Tijuana and a major agricultural industry in the Mexicali Valley, just south of the border from California’s Imperial Valley. Nevada is also set to lose water — about 8 percent of its supply — but most residents won’t feel the effects because the state recycles most of its indoor water and doesn’t use its full allocation. Last year the state lost 7%.
