{"id":39627,"date":"2022-07-04T11:33:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T17:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/official-colorado-river-cuts-should-be-made-by-arizona-nevada-and-california\/"},"modified":"2022-07-04T17:33:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T17:33:18","slug":"official-colorado-river-cuts-should-be-made-by-arizona-nevada-and-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/official-colorado-river-cuts-should-be-made-by-arizona-nevada-and-california\/","title":{"rendered":"Official: Colorado River cuts should be made by Arizona, Nevada and California"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Colorado River a few miles upstream from Palisade near Cameo on Aug. 27. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Last month, the federal government dropped a bombshell on the states that share the Colorado River.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation gave Colorado and the other six states in the basin just two months to come up with a plan to drastically reduce the amount of river water they use. If they don\u2019t, the federal government has threatened to use its emergency authority to make the cuts it feels are necessary.<\/p>\n

The mid-August deadline is quickly approaching for the states \u2013 Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, California, Nevada and Arizona \u2013 to figure out how to cut water usage down by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet. For context, the entire state of Arizona is allowed to use 2.8 million acre-feet of river water each year.<\/p>\n

Becky Mitchell, commissioner of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, represents Colorado at the planning table with other states in the basin. Right now, her work is focused on collaborating with the other states in the upper part of the river basin \u2013 Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico \u2013 to come up with a list of ways their states can cut down on how much water they use.<\/p>\n

In a conversation on CPR\u2019s Colorado Matters<\/a>, Mitchell said most of that responsibility should be on the states in the lower part of the river basin: Arizona, Nevada and California.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re using more than Mother Nature provides,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mitchell said the states in the upper part of the river basin had been forced to use less water because of ongoing drought worsened by climate change. The states in the lower basin use water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the U.S., which she said has allowed those states to increase their water usage in the last few years.<\/p>\n

Mitchell said water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead allows the lower-basin states to use more water than the river can provide, which has significantly dropped after decades of ongoing drought and the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

The federal demand to use less water is a result of the record-low water levels in Powell and Mead, which provide water and hydroelectric power to millions of people in the West. As these reservoirs drop, they\u2019re getting close to no longer having enough water to make power.<\/p>\n

Colorado doesn\u2019t use water in Lake Powell or Lake Mead or much of the hydropower that\u2019s produced there. Despite that, Mitchell said it\u2019s crucial that the upper-basin states be included in protecting those resources. But she points back to the lower-basin states as the ones that need to be most responsible for keeping enough water in the reservoirs.<\/p>\n

Tanya Trujillo, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior for water and science, recently joined a Colorado water law conference virtually to talk about the Colorado River crisis and the demand for states to conserve more water and said the agency\u2019s order for water cuts includes Colorado and other states in the upper part of the river system, even though they don\u2019t rely on water supplies collected in the major reservoirs downstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be taking action in all states, in all sectors, in all available ways,\u201d Trujillo said. \u201cWe need to be thinking as one basin.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how Colorado can contribute to the need for cuts, Mitchell said \u201csignificant\u201d ongoing water conservations are already happening in the state. She said some projects could be expanded to decrease water use, including expanded recycling and reuse of potable water and improved technology that reduces water used for farming and ranching. Mitchell also pointed to a state law that was recently passed to create a fund to help landowners replace their grass lawns with more water-efficient landscaping.<\/p>\n

However, the message from the federal government to Colorado and other states in the river network is that small moves to cut water usage aren\u2019t enough. Mitchell said finding more ways to reduce water use likely means turning to new and uncomfortable sources to make cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really have to think about if we cut from agriculture, what are the unintended consequences from that? If we cut from some sort of industry, what are the consequences from that? And we may have to be open to dealing with what those consequences are,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

Agriculture uses more than 80% of the water in the Colorado River Basin, data show. Mitchell said it\u2019s important to recognize the benefits of farming and ranching, but she said agriculture does need to be examined for solutions as the biggest user of water.<\/p>\n

\"Kate
Kate Greenberg leads the Colorado Department of Agriculture. (Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mitchell is consulting state water users as she creates a list of the ways she feels Colorado could contribute to the water cuts. Kate Greenberg, Colorado\u2019s commissioner of agriculture, who has worked on water issues in the Colorado River basin for over a decade, said the states in the river basin have always been aware that the federal government will step in if the water source isn\u2019t sustainably managed.<\/p>\n

Greenberg said it\u2019s important that the states in the river basin, and internally in Colorado, not \u201cpit sector-against-sector.\u201d She said that agriculture shouldn\u2019t be asked to give up most of the water just because farmers and ranchers use most of the water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are massive societal implications to that kind of thinking,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

Because farmers and ranchers in Colorado have been forced to use less water amid climate change, Greenberg said they\u2019re adopting new irrigation technology, soil health practices and crop switching to adapt.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing how much we have done to date has gotta be part of that conversation,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just keep giving and giving and giving without a very tangible recognition of how much we\u2019ve already given.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Conservation District, said he was surprised that the federal government did not differentiate which states need to contribute most to the cuts. He said that Western Slope farmers and ranchers have \u201cborn almost the entire burden\u201d of water cuts in the state over the last 20 years of drought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose cuts have not necessarily been to the cities or to industry. It\u2019s really taken water directly out of agriculture,\u201d Mueller said.<\/p>\n

He said Colorado farmers and ranchers are obligated to continue to conserve water but noted that water users in Denver, Colorado Springs and other Front Range communities that use Colorado River water also share that obligation.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

two months to drastically reduce water use or face federal intervention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,1462,28,1518,295,294],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-river","tag-headlines","tag-rivers","tag-water","tag-water-supply"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39627"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}