California fires back with its own Colorado River plan; Arizona says feds could ban lawns

Dueling plans for how to save the fast-drying Colorado River have been submitted by California and six other states to federal authorities, who have made clear they may impose draconian cuts if consensus is not reached regionally on deep reductions. That agreement could be hard to come by.

California swung hard at six other Western states late Tuesday, submitting its own proposal for more than 3 million acre feet in reductions — both from current and future agreements — from the river's dwindling reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The plan, which includes some California cuts, mainly targets Arizona and other states with fewer legal rights to the water, and aims to preserve all of the Golden State's rights, most of which stretch back more than a century.

But six other states say drastic action is needed by the federal government and all who rely on the river water, including California. That includes possibly banning lawns across the Southwest, said a key Arizona official on Wednesday.

Noting that every contract with the federal government for Colorado River water contains a clause that requires "beneficial use," Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said high-ranking federal officials "might be able to say lawns or non-functional turfs are no longer a beneficial use of Colorado River water. ... I would like to see the beneficial use process move forward as quickly as possible."

Not so fast with golf courses though, which would impact the Coachella Valley, Scottsdale and other locales in both states.

"They'd have a harder time with golf courses, because there is clearly an economic value to golf courses on their own and to the tourism industry. That's a tougher nut to crack."

The "beneficial use" clauses could give the feds and other states a legal leg to stand on to combat California's longstanding "senior" rights to water from the river, too. Federal officials said last spring they were examining the language, but have not elaborated since.

The Imperial Irrigation District, tucked in the state’s arid southeastern corner and a major producer of the nation’s winter crops and livestock feed, is entitled to more water than Arizona and Nevada combined.

But Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas and farms and suburbs across Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming also rely heavily on the river water, which is disappearing due both to overallocation and unprecedented drought and rising temperatures linked to climate change.

On Monday, those states submitted a proposal that also called for more than 3 million acre-feet of conservation and reductions — squarely within the 2 to 4 million acre-feet that U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said last year was necessary. An acre-foot is about enough water for two households for a year. Much of the cuts in their proposal would come from California, not them.

Under the six-state plan, if the massive reservoirs — currently just a quarter full — sank to ever lower trigger levels, ever larger mandatory cuts to water deliveries would kick in for some, with the biggest amounts coming from California. Accounting for evaporation in the reservoirs and seepage as water is piped from the river to state systems would save another nearly 1.6 million acre-feet, largely impacting Arizona and California, which have the longest aqueducts in the hottest parts of the watershed.

“Gutting California in this way would be devastating to the state,” said JB Hamby, California’s newly elected Colorado River Commissioner, who said low-income residents in cities and rural farming communities alike would be hit hard. The state’s own proposal would be spread across the region based on existing compacts and court decisions known as "The Law of the River," which Hamby said shows it is also “committed to making voluntary contributions.”

Hamby and other state water officials noted they have already committed to save a million acre-feet of water through 2026, or at least 400,000 acre-feet per year, the only concrete pledge from a state, and have already spent billions of dollars to conserve 1.2 million acre-feet in Lake Mead in recent years, sparing other states bigger, faster cuts. Still, its proposal would eliminate protections that spared lower-basin states harsher reductions last year when flows were held back in the upper basin, and ratchet up cuts to them if low flows continue.

California’s alternative “provides a realistic and implementable framework to address reduced inflows and declining reservoir elevations by building on voluntary agreements and past collaborative efforts,” wrote Hamby in a letter to Assistant U.S. Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau outlining the proposal.

Other area water managers agreed, and said it was wrong to target them.

"Our plan unfairly targets California? Absolutely not, because the physical reality of the world requires that evaporation and system losses be incorporated, and there's an equity argument about the additional losses ... they believe that the junior priority resides with Arizona."

Hamby suggested Arizona's agencies work together to allocate its existing supply, including river water and groundwater, equitably in its boundaries, as California did in 2003 under a thorny but ultimately successful transfer from rural IID to urban areas.

But Buschatzke shot back, saying Arizona had already undergone such a process under an earlier drought plan, and the current federal process has nothing to do with internal state agreements. He also said California's 2003 agreement had just moved water around internally. "The ... agreement in California has not resulted in one drop of water staying in Lake Mead. Not one drop."

Metropolitan Water District of California officials note they have stored more than a million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead since the agreement was enacted, staving off harsher cuts for other states by keeping 10 feet of elevation in the massive reservoir.

“For over 20 years, Metropolitan has met the challenge of reducing our use of Colorado River water, and we are committed to doing more now. But we must do it in a way that does not harm half of the people who rely on the river,” wrote Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “We must do it in a way that does not devastate our $1.6 trillion economy, an economic engine for the entire United States ... in a way that can be quickly implemented ... without getting mired in lengthy legal battles.”

He added: “The proposal presented today by California does all of this by equitably sharing the risk among Basin states without adversely affecting any one agency or state. The plan presented yesterday, which shut out California, does not.”

California versus the rest of the West

The Golden State, which provides drinking water to 19 million of the nearly 40 million people across the West dependent on the river supplies, has by far the largest legal share of its water, totaling 4.4 million acre-feet of the 7.5 million acre-feet distributed annually to each of the states, tribes and others.

That has made it a target of other states' ire for decades, particularly as their urban and suburban development boomed, upping their water needs. Monday's six-state proposal is the latest attempt to upend the established system, said some.

Officials for other state water agencies declined to comment immediately, saying they needed time to read the proposal, though some said they are committed to continuing discussions.

"The basin state's efforts are ongoing, and a lot more work needs to be done to broaden consensus to move forward together," said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Basin Commission. But members of Congress have weighed in, defending their home states.

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona has for months called on California to make cuts, including in August, when he said, “specifically, California gets a large portion of water from the Colorado River. So it just can't be on us.”

On Tuesday evening, California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, said in a joint statement: "We know that drought caused by climate change will require changes to Colorado River water use and that no state will be spared from water reductions. That’s why last fall, California was the first state to come forward with a plan to voluntarily reduce water use.

“But six other Western states dictating how much water California must give up simply isn’t a genuine consensus solution — especially coming from states that haven’t offered any new cuts to their own water usage. The proposal further fails to recognize California’s senior legal water rights.

“The plan California released today proposes the same level of water cuts across the Colorado Basin as the plan released yesterday by the other six states, including significant cuts for California. To be successful, it’s critical that any agreement has the support of all seven states."

Federal action spurred the competing proposals

The plans were prompted by federal action. In November, Reclamation officials, a division of the Department of Interior, announced they would draft “supplemental” environmental documents to amend 2007 guidelines governing the distribution of river water through two huge dams by this summer — a clear warning they are serious about cuts. Although public comment closed in December, agency officials agreed to give the states until Jan. 31 to submit voluntary strategies. Instead, they now have competing plans, either of which could be incorporated in whole or in part into the federal documents, or ignored.

On Tuesday, a federal spokesman downplayed the differences, declining to comment on either plan, and said input from and talks with state representatives would continue.

“The Biden-Harris administration is urgently pursuing a collaborative and consensus-based approach and deploying unprecedented resources to improve and protect the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River System,” said Interior Department spokesman Tyler Cherry in response to emailed questions. This process will help to provide the Department with additional alternatives and tools needed to address the likelihood of continued low-runoff conditions.”

He added that there are “ongoing conversations” with the affected states, tribal officials, water managers, irrigators and others.

“This will help ensure that any action from the Department is done with as much support and consensus as possible.”

Buschatzke with Arizona said both plans leave plenty of room for all sides to keep talking, and they plan to do so. Federal and state officials alike are eager to avoid litigation, which could drag on for years even as the river reaches unprecedented lows, and which could bring the entire system to a standstill. IID had their senior rights to Colorado River water affirmed by the Supreme Court in the past, although they and other California agencies were also ordered by federal officials in 2003 to cut a large share of river water use, and not go above their legal limits.

“I hope that nothing like that occurs. If it ends up in litigation, it diminishes the states’ ability to control the outcome,” said Fisher with the Palo Verde Irrigation District. He and others warned it could backfire.

“If the feds have to take action on their own, it certainly could end up in court, and if we end up in litigation it will take a long, long time for it to play out. If that happens, we're going to have to watch Mother Nature play it out for us, rather than trying to take care of our own problems.”

A silver lining in dueling plans?

John Fleck, a water policy researcher at the University of New Mexico, said "it would be a disaster” to let water levels in Lake Powell, behind the aging Glen Canyon Dam, sink so low that it could not function.

Fleck also said it bothers him to see California boast about being the only state to commit to conserve water, when Arizona and Nevada were required under existing policies to absorb sharp supply cuts last year. He said while California had made major cuts over the past 20 years, it was actually the only state last year to use more than its allocation.

"The optics are bad when the river is crashing."

That occurred because MWD took 70,000 acre-feet of the large amounts it has stored in Lake Mead in previous years for possible dry times. MWD spokeswoman Rebecca Kimitch defended those withdrawals, noting they were only necessary because “California was in the third year of a historic three-year drought” and its supplies from the State Water Project, a different system that relies on water from northern California, had been slashed to almost nothing. With healthy rains this season, state water managers announced last week that agencies would receive 30% of their allocated supplies — an improvement over the 5% they were set to receive.

Those tensions and the competing needs for ever-scarcer water are likely to ramp up in the coming years. But Fleck said it was encouraging that both plans proposed deep cuts, albeit by different means.

“We’re all focused on the conflict, and that’s legitimate, but I think there’s something really important to note in taking these two proposals together: they both recognize we clearly have a need for major steps, for deep reductions, and that’s a major step forward,” said Fleck.

Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun and a Stanford Bill Lane Center Western Media Fellow. She can be reached at jwilson@gannettt.com or on Twitter @janetwilson66

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California fires back at other states with its own Colorado River plan