Water Cut Deadline Nears Denver Post Associated Press August 16, 2022 Front Page

The Bureau of Reclamation gave seven states three months, in June 2022, to restrict water usage in their state by 15 percent or have the federal government impose restrictions in response to the prolong drought in the West. The Bureau's concerns center on the viability of the Colorado River. The seven states include lower basin and upper basin states in the Colorado River Compact: upper basin--Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and lower basin--Arizona, California, and Nevada. The government continues to develop hydrologic projections to estimate the amount of water in the future, given climate change and other weather impacts. Despite a meeting among the seven states in Denver in mid-August, the states reached no decision on water curtailment but looked to California and Arizona agriculture for commitments to cut water usage. The upper basin states have not used their full annual allotment of water prescribed in the Colorado River Compact; the lower states have used their annual allotment. In return for water curtailment, farmers expect compensation from their states. According to the article, John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, called the compensation, "drought profiteering" (p. 6A). The article explained the contribution of the Colorado River water to the nation's food supply: "About 70% of its water goes toward irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of the United States' winter vegetables" (p. 6A). U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema looked to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), recently passed in Congress, as a source of funds to compensate farmers: "In the short term, however, in order to meet our day-to-day needs and year-to-year needs, ensuring that we're creating financial incentives for non-use will help us to get through. The $4 billion in drought funding in the IRA will act as a short-term solution but not a permanent fix.