AZ, CA Missed 1/31 Deadline For Colorado River Drought Plan; w/o Resolution, BuRec Will Decide
States that rely on the Colorado River for their water supplies are currently unable to finish a series of agreements that would keep its biggest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, from dropping to levels not seen since they were filled decades ago. Five states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nevada — are done. The country of Mexico has also completed its portion. But California and Arizona failed to meet a Jan. 31 federal government deadline to wrap up negotiations and sign a final agreement.
The Colorado River is stressed. Simply put, the system of reservoirs and streams has a fundamental imbalance between supplies and demands, a gap that’s growing in size due to long term warming and drying trends in the southwestern U.S.
The drought contingency plan, made up of agreements between the river’s two basins, is designed to rein in water use and — at least for six years — prevent the whole system from crashing. Without the plans in place, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman said she’ll be forced to take matters into her own hands. Burman has issued a new deadline of March 4 for states to finish the plans, or she says she will begin collecting comments from the state’s governors on how to solve the region’s water scarcity conundrum.
“We’re at a point where two roads are diverging in the woods,” Burman told reporters on Feb. 1. “And we need to decide which path we’re going to follow.” The first path is the one the seven states are on now, where the parties are working collaboratively to finish the plans and put them into action themselves. Some language in the plans would then need approval by Congress and the president. The other path, Burman said, involves invoking the federal government’s “broad authority” to manage how water is distributed in the river’s Lower Basin. But as tensions rise in some of the areas where the plans remain unfinished, some users are ready to challenge that authority.
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https://news.azpm.org/p/news-topical-nature/2019/2/7/145783-what-is-happening-with-the-colorado-river-drought-plans/
