Click the link to read the article on The Las Vegas Review-Journal website (Alan Halaly). Here’s an excerpt:
March 19, 2024
Colorado’s chief river negotiator doesn’t find the other side’s proposal for basinwide water cuts after 2026 plausible, she told reporters Tuesday. When it comes to updating how water from the Colorado River is allocated, the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have been wrapped in a divisive battle with the Lower Basin, which is composed of Nevada, California and Arizona. Both parties agree that the “structural deficit,” meaning the 1.5 million acre-feet of water lost to evaporation and transport, should translate to cuts made by the Lower Basin states. However, a main point of contention lies in whether Upper Basin states also must bear the brunt of cuts past the structural deficit.
States such as Colorado are at the mercy of snowpack and climate change to determine water availability, said Becky Mitchell, Colorado state’s Colorado River commissioner. That’s a far cry from a state like California, she said, which enjoys more certainty thanks to Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the country. Upper Basin states have estimated they suffer a 1.2 million acre-foot water shortage, on average, because of water loss to climate change.
“In short, our water users do not have security or certainty in their water supply because they absolutely have to live with what Mother Nature provides every year,” Mitchell said. “In contrast, we have Lower Basin contractors who’ve been provided a high level of certainty in water deliveries and, in turn, have drawn down Lake Mead.”
[…]
There are other nuances that differentiate the two proposals, such as how much water to release from Lake Powell that will trickle into Lake Mead, which supplies about 90 percent of Southern Nevada’s water…Mitchell’s group wants to base each year’s outflow on Lake Powell’s levels on Oct. 1 of each year, while Lower Basin states hope to base that on the contents of more than just one reservoir.
Nevada’s chief negotiator and Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Tuesday that the Lower Basin states are analyzing the Upper Basin proposal in more detail.