Click the link to read the article on the Politico Website (Annie Snider and Camille von Kaenel). Here’s an excerpt:
Western states are on a collision course as they scramble to cut a deal to dramatically shrink their use of the drought-stricken Colorado River ahead of a March deadline from the Biden administration. The brawl unfolding among the states that rely on the West’s most important waterway will shape the economies for cities from Denver to Los Angeles as well as some of the nation’s most productive agricultural areas. And it poses a political dilemma for President Joe Biden, who could see the problem complicate his political calculations in a trio of swing states — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — along with California, home to many of his most deep-pocketed donors…The tensions were apparent this week as negotiators here exchanged heated words from the podium in front of the hundreds of technocrats, tribes, and farmers who manage the river’s water and were gathered at a Las Vegas casino for their annual conference.
“Ideally this is something that all seven basin states can come up with together. But I want to be real clear that we can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk,” said Becky Mitchell, the fiery lead negotiator for the state of Colorado who has objected to her state accepting reductions to its water use…
Much of the tension now centers on whether the Upper Basin states should share in the cuts needed to bring water use in line with the shrinking supply. Arizona, Nevada and California’s negotiators say they are close to a long-term deal that would stanch their use to bring it in line with the water that the river has delivered historically — a gap known as the “structural deficit.” But that just deals with the century-old over-allocation problem. Those reductions will almost certainly fall short of what will be needed to deal with the pain Mother Nature is inflicting, and those Lower Basin states argue that burden should be shared by Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, as well as Mexico, which gets a slice of the river, too…
“The structural deficit — we’re going to own that,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s lead negotiator. But what it takes after that to stabilize the river “will be a shared responsibility. A shared responsibility for everybody in the basin — all seven states and Mexico.”