The Western United States is dealing with a twenty three year mega drought that has left the Southwest with very little water. To put it bluntly, the Colorado River basin is drawing up. Today. We'll talk about what that means for the millions of people who depend on that water, and we'll look at what states and regulators are doing to ensure that communities get the water they need to survive. Hello, and welcome back to Parts for a Billion, the Environmental
podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm Matthew Schwartz, sitting in for David Schultz. Seven Western states are frantically working to reach an agreement on how to divvy up the available water ahead of a February first deadline, at which point the federal government has suggested it will impose its own rules to fix the problem. Joining me to discuss the latest is Bloomberg Laws, Water and Public Lands reporter Bobby McGill. Bobby, thank you for being here. Hi. So this drought has
been going on for decades? Now, what exactly does it mean in practical terms? We know there's a drought, but it's it's about more than just people getting enough drinking water. Right, How bad are things. Yeah, So the West drought started in the middle of the year two thousand. It contributes to wildfire. It contributes to low reservoir levels that restrict the amount of water that both farmers and cities receive.
It reduces stream flows. It has tremendous impact on on just general water availability for drinking water, but also for fish and other species that use streams and other wetlands. One of the primary effects of the drought has been just the massive wildfires out west. Let's just lay out the geography of the problem right now, just so we can picture it. The states out there get a lot of water from the Colorado River. Where does the river
actually start and where does that water flow. The Colorado River starts in the rocky mountains and it's fed by mountains, snows and all of that runoff. Historically it trickled down to the to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, but that doesn't happen anymore because people for decades and decades now have built cities and suburbs in pretty dry places,
and so they had to have water. And one of the ways they obtained that water was to dam the Colorado River so that they could create reservoirs and hydropower dams and basically take water from those reservoirs. So which states are actually fed by the Colorado River. So the seven states of the Colorado River basin, they're actually divided into the upper basin in the lower basin. The upper basin is where the water comes from the lower basins where most not all, but most of the water users are.
There are forty million people in this basin, plus five and a half million acres of farmland that produces a lot of your winter vegetables, for example. So it serves, you know, cities from Denver all the way to Los Angeles. The upper basin is Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah. The lower basin is Nevada, California, primarily southern California, and Arizona. And is there a law or an agreement that exists to apportion the water between the states. It's called the
Colorado River Compact. It was signed in when water was abundant. There's a certain amount of water that the upper basin is obligated to to send each year to the lower basin. And it's really tenuous because the upper basin entirely depends on the amount of snow and rain. They get mostly snow, and the lower basin depends on how much waters in the reservoirs, so they can get a continuous amount of
water to feed farms and cities. And just so we're clear about the scope of the problem, when you say that this drought affects millions of acres of farmland in those states that produce vegetables, it seems like you're implying that this drought doesn't just affect people in those states. It seems like it would affect everybody in the country who might want to purchase those vegetables. Is that right?
This is a national problem because the water that the Colorado River provides two farmers basically provides part of the economic engine for the southwest of the United States. So what happens on there affects the rest of the country. It affects the food supply. Um, your lettuce that you get from the store right now, there's a pretty good chance it came from southern Arizona near Yuma and the farm fields in that region, those are are entirely fed
by water from the Colorado River. So let's talk more about that law from two that you mentioned is it is it working well today to to divvy up this water. So it worked well for a while, although there's probably some arguments about that. Today it doesn't work quite as well.
Why does the law no longer work? That law was signed with the assumption that the amount of water that was in the system was going to remain that, you know, Mother nature would provide a steady amount of water or snow every year, and that has not borne out, So that law didn't take into account the possibility of a
twenty year drought. That's right, and there's no evidence that the drought is really subsiding, and scientists are pretty clear that in the long run, we're watching the continued ertification of the West, which means there's going to be less and less water in the system. All right, let's talk about possible solutions. You wrote that officials say they're optimistic that states will reach a consensus agreement in the next
couple of weeks. Tell me about what this agreement might look like and how we got to the point where the states are actually working together to reach an agreement. So the states have always worked, I mean, the Colorado River Compact is an example of states working together to solve a regional issue, which was, you know, how the river should be governed and who gets how much water
from this multi state river system. The situation where in now is a result of the drought, and there is a long term water shortage and the states are having to come together to deal with that. Part of the problem is that the two major dams in the Colorado River they produce hydro power, and if the reservoir levels dropped below a certain point, it causes lots of problems.
They won't be able to produce hydro power anymore. And the Bureau of Reclamation, which runs those damns, you know, is able to potentially mandate regional water cuts against the states will if if it comes to that. The states desperately don't want the federal government to step in and tell them how to cut water, and so they're highly motivated to come together and figure out a way to
make those cuts. Now, what happened last year was that for the first time the federal government, the Bureau of Reclamation, part of the Interior Department, declared a water shortage on the river. In December, the Beuera of Reclamation said to the seven basins states, Hey, if you don't have a water cuts plan by early three, we're going to be very likely to, you know, impose some cuts on you, or at least consider that. And the thing is that
the deadline is a little fuzzy. They said February first, but they said there's some flexibility there, and it's they're trying to give the states as much of an opportunity as possible to come up with their own solution. Do we know what that solution might look like? Most folks seem to agree that the lower Basin states are going
to have to find ways to cut utter. It's really complicated because each of the Lower Basin states has its own internal issues with how water is allocated within the state, and they have to make some pretty difficult choices there. You know, They've got some other systemic issues they've got to figure out, including how to deal with evaporation, like more than a million acre feet of water. Again, a lot of water and is lost just to the air the evaporation, So they're trying to figure out how to
stem that water loss. There's a number of unresolved issues. It's gonna require probably a pretty complicated technical, legally technical solution. And nobody's quite willing to make public exactly how that's going just yet. So you wrote that the talks between the states are currently in a delicate place. Do we know what that means exactly? Like, do we know what the sticking points in the negotiations are or are they
holding this pretty pretty tight to the best? Well, it's delicate because, I mean, these are all politically like you know, for example, if you're I mean there there was a situation in Arizona just this week, not directly related to this, but it shows you the delicacy of the issue, which is that, you know, the city of Scottsdale cut off the water supply to a neighborhood north of town because
they just didn't have enough water to go around. And it's you know, people are pretty upset when somebody is forced to cut back on water against their will, or if it means it could mean lost jobs, it could mean less production, it could mean you know that some residents in some places don't get to water their lawns, some farmers don't get to produce crops this next year.
That's a pretty delicate situation. When we return Bloomberg Laws, Bobby McGill talks more about who the winners and losers could be under whatever consensus agreement is reached, which states will get first DIBs on the water stick around? Welcome back to parts per billion. I'm speaking with Bloomberg Laws, Bobby McGill. So keep talking about making cuts and it it seems like in theory, oh yeah, that that makes sense,
just cut, reduce your water usage. But how could states enforce this and what kind of impact would this have on real people? Like, how do you just make cuts? How does that even work? People need water? People need water, but there has to be the water for them to need. Um, it's going to hit farmers before it's going to hit cities. For the most part, cities have throughout Arizona, California, have done a lot to reduce their water consumption, some better
than others. But you know, it's a matter of whether or not water is actually diverted from the Central Arizona project or or in California to two farmers, and they just may not get what they need to grow their crops. So the states are working on an agreement internally probably which will include many of the states. Are most of the states making cuts if they can't come up with an agreement. Can we expect the federal government to come in and just mandate cuts. That's what they're afraid of.
The puer Reclamation will basically turn off the faucet if necessary, but it's not clear what that's gonna look like. The Beer of Reclamation is basically said they don't want to do that. They want to come up with what they call a consensus solution that the states come up with themselves, and most states would agree to that, and uh, it's not going to be a situation of, you know, each
state cutting equally. And one of the sources of tension here is that, you know, because most of the water users are in the lower basin, the upper basin wants to make sure that a lot of the water use cuts are down there and not in the upper basin. You mentioned a minute ago that some of the states have senior priority and some have junior priority. How does this work exactly? How do they determine who gets access
to the water first. Again, it's it's determined by the compact, But the bottom line is the way it generally works is you know, first in time, first and right if you were there first and you claim the water first,
then your water rights have seniority over over others. The Central Arizona Project, which feeds the Metro areas in in Arizona, that has junior water rights, you know, compared to southern California, And so there's concern about how and if the State of California is going to exercise those rights in this particular situation. And I'm wondering how to tribal water rights play into all this. To do the tribes have a seat at the table. They do, And it's a wild
card because for lots of historical reasons. Is you can imagine, you know, the Colorado River Compacts signed in two did not include Native American tribes. It's taken many decades and court decisions to quantify the water rights of indigenous tribes. Will you talk about senior priority who was there first? It seems like they were there before everybody exactly. And so they're going to get senior water rights, which means that somebody who's using the water right now is going
to have to give it up. And so that's going to create some tension. And I think if you're a city and you're using water, that might eventually go to a tribe, You're probably gonna kind of deal with that tribe, and I think that's going to be part of this equation. But over the last forty five years or so, some tribes have been able to quantify their water rights. But
the big wild card is the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation has had its water rights quantified in Utah and New Mexico because it spans three states, but the bulk of the Navajo Nation is in Arizona and that has yet to be quantified. Um tribal water rights could actually consume a good quarter of of all the water in the Colorado River basin. That's a lot of water. So it's unresolved. Nobody knows exactly how this is going to
play out, especially as water supplies dwindle. And this is a real environmental justice issue because a large minority of the Navajo residents they don't have running water, that they don't have the infrastructure to provide running water, and so they have to truck their water in or they get it from someplace else, and it's it's a real tragedy that, you know, thousands of people, thousands of Americans simply don't have faucets in their house. We are in the second
half of January right now. When can we expect states to reach a tentative agreement? Well, it sounds like they're going to try earnestly too agreed to something, um by the end of the month. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. I imagine we're going to hear something, you know, in the first half of February. It sounds like that's a goal, but um, it's really anybody's gas is too. When this is going to be finalized or
even if it's going to be finalized. That's Bobby McGill, Bloomberg Laws, Water and Public Lands reporter Bobby, thank you so much for being here, you bet, thank you, And that's it for today's Parts per Billion. If you want more environmental news, check out our website news dot Bloomberg Law dot com. That's news dot Bloomberg Law dot com. Today's episode of Parts for Billion was produced by myself,
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