Click the link to read the article on the Las Vegas Sun website (Kyle Chouinard). Here’s an excerpt:
August 15, 2024
A plan from water officials in Arizona, Nevada and California to cut back on the amount of water those states use from the Colorado River in exchange for money with hopes of saving 3 million acre-feet of water over three years is meeting conservation goals, a top water official said Wednesday. The 2023 agreement has already seen 1.7 million acres of improvement less than one year into the effort, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said. She says she believes the states are on pace to reach their original goal.
“There is proof here that we can take on these hard moments, but we have to do it together,” said Touton, who spoke during a summit hosted by U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., at Springs Preserve. “We’ve been able to stabilize the system in the short term, and now we are focused on what this river looks like for the future.”
[…]
The $1.2 billion plan in 2023 called for half of the cuts to be made by the end of 2024 — a benchmark that has already been hit. The agreement runs through 2026, when the 100-year legal document about how Colorado River water is shared will expire, and negotiations could bring deeper cuts in water usage based on climate modeling and future warming in the West.
“We really were on the brink of catastrophe in this basin if we got another dry year,” said Colby Pellegrino, Southern Nevada Water Authority’s deputy general manager of resources, of the Colorado River prior to the agreement. “Mother Nature was kind to us, and Congress was very kind to us. And those two things together are what enabled us to get there voluntarily.”