The latest on the Colorado River and Lake Mead report

The federal government announced that the Colorado River will operate in a Tier 2 shortage condition for the first time starting in January as the West’s historic drought has taken a severe toll on Lake Mead.

What this means:

Those cuts are part of a system that Colorado River states have already agreed to in the case of an unprecedented water shortage.

But experts say those mandatory cuts are not enough to save the river.

In June, Bureau of Reclamation chief Camille Touton told the river’s stakeholders to come up with a plan to reduce up to 25% of their water usage. 

She gave them an August 15 deadline, but negotiations have been difficult and are not finished. Touton did not specify on Tuesday any new deadlines that might be set for states to come up with a plan for the drastic cuts.

"Today we're starting the process and more information will follow as far as the actions we'll take in that process," Touton said on Tuesday. "I want to continue to push on the need for partnership in this space and the need for collaboration and finding a consensus solution. Not just for next year but for the future."

Some of the river’s stakeholders are eager for the federal government to step in with a plan. John Entsminger, the general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told CNN that so far not enough of the stakeholders have put forth proposals that would get the basin to Touton's target.

“There's only so much water, and mother nature will figure this out at some point," Entsminger said. "At some point, there's just not water in the river channel."

Congress’s recently passed climate bill contains $4 billion for drought relief funding which will essentially pay farmers, communities, tribes and businesses if they voluntarily cut their water usage. It pairs with an infrastructure bill passed last year that contained billions in climate resilience funding, including funds to help shore up deteriorating reservoirs. 

President Biden signed the sweeping bill this afternoon.

Perhaps even more important is the nearly $370 billion in the bill that will help rein in the climate crisis by cutting US greenhouse gas emissions using tax incentives for clean electricity and new programs to curb methane leaks and remove carbon from the air.  

“It’s going to take decades, but the bill will help stabilize the climate change impacts on the [Colorado] river,” Eric Kuhn, a southwestern water expert, recently told CNN.  

The bill is the largest climate investment in US history and is expected to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 40% by the end of the decade. 

Read more about the climate provisions in the bill here.

We should address the elephant in the room: There is actually less water in Lake Mead than what the US Bureau of Reclamation reported on Tuesday.

And, significantly, it was enough to prevent Southern California from having to take its first mandatory cut of Colorado River water.

So what’s happening?

Earlier this year, the bureau announced an emergency plan to keep Lake Powell from plummeting so low that Glen Canyon Dam wouldn’t be able to generate hydropower. It is releasing more water from upstream reservoirs, and it’s also withholding water in Lake Powell, rather than sending it downstream to Lake Mead and the Lower Colorado River Basin.

Lake Powell was supposed to release 7.48 million acre-feet of water to Lake Mead this year. Instead, it only released 7 million, leaving 480,000 in Powell.

Tuesday’s report took that into account. It lays out the numbers as if that water was delivered to Lake Mead.

Of course, all of this water is still in the same Colorado River system. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are like massive buckets that manage the rate of flow through the river and ensure everyone along it has the water they need.

Patti Aaron, a spokesperson for the bureau, previously explained it to CNN this way:

“If ‘actual elevation’ projected January 1 elevations are used in August, it would almost certainly put the Lower Basin in Tier 2 in 2023,” Aaron said. “To keep the water accounting ‘operationally neutral’ and not penalize the Lower Basin for leaving the water to benefit Lake Powell, we will run the models as if the [480,000 acre-feet] had been delivered to Lake Mead.”

Notably, running the math this way wasn’t enough to prevent the Lower Basin from falling into a Tier 2 shortage — but it was enough to prevent California from having to make cuts.

The real “physical elevation” of Lake Mead is expected to be around 1,041 feet come January. The projection after adding the withheld water was 1,047. 

And California doesn’t experience a Colorado River water cut until Mead is projected to drop to 1,045 feet.

The Department of the Interior said Tuesday it is prepared to take action again next year to limit the water releases from Lake Powell to prevent it from plunging below 3,525 feet above sea level by the end of 2023. Below that level, the Glen Canyon Dam, which forms the reservoir, cannot produce hydropower.

Lake Powell’s water level is expected to fall to reach 3,521 feet above sea level by the end of December.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced unprecedented, emergency steps earlier this year to help boost water levels at Lake Powell, beginning with releasing more water from upstream on the Colorado River, then holding back water in Lake Powell itself, instead of sending it downstream to Lake Mead.

At the end of July, Lake Powell had fallen to around 3,536 feet above sea level, which is 26% of its full capacity.

“There's significant uncertainty in 2023 and two years out in 2024,” Dan Bunk, deputy chief of Boulder Canyon Operations Office, said at a Tuesday news conference. “While there's the possibility of improved conditions at Lake Powell -- with above-average inflow next year -- it would take multiple years of above average inflow for Powell to recover, and the vast majority of hydrologic projections show that Lake Powell would remain at about the same level or continue to decline over the next two years.”

“We are particularly concerned about the projections … [that] show Lake Powell declining below elevation 3,490 as early as the middle of 2023.”

Glen Canyon Dam provides power for many states including Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebraska.

Additionally, in concert with its rapidly declining levels, a recent government report also showed that the amount of water Lake Powell could store is also shrinking as sediment fills the bottom of the reservoir.

Because of that, Powell had sustained an average annual loss in storage capacity of about 33,270 acre-feet of water, or 11 billion gallons, per year between 1963 — when Glen Canyon Dam was built — and 2018. That's enough water to fill the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall about 1,600 times.

Of the states impacted by next year's mandatory water cuts, Arizona will face the largest — 592,000 acre-feet, or about 21% of the state’s yearly allotment of Colorado River water.

An acre-foot of water covers an acre one foot deep.

Meanwhile, California will have no cuts. This is because Arizona has junior Colorado River water rights, due to a decades-old compromise with California.

The Central Arizona Project, authorized by Congress in 1968, is a massive, 336-mile canal and pipeline system that funnels water from the Colorado River system across the Arizona desert to cities such as Phoenix and Tucson, as well as farms and towns in between. 

Prior the project’s completion in the 1990s, central Arizona relied heavily on groundwater pumping, which quickly sucked aquifers dry. Although the state was entitled to some of the water flowing in the Colorado River, it was only using about half of the allocation before CAP was completed. No channels or infrastructure at the time could deliver Colorado River water to cities in the middle of Arizona.  

California long opposed the project until Arizona made a key compromise to gain its support: In the event of a water shortage — which the lower Colorado River basin states are facing right now — California’s water deliveries would have priority over the needs of Arizona's CAP water users.  

While Arizona will take the steepest cuts, the state does have some banked excess Colorado River water in underground aquifers in central and southern Arizona, which it has been recharging since 1997.

But “these supplies are finite and must be used carefully so that they can be used to assist cities and tribes in the years to come," Evans said.

Tanya Trujillo, the assistant secretary for water and science at the Bureau of Reclamation, said the agency is taking several immediate actions in both the upper and lower Colorado River basin to ensure the water is being used efficiently.

Shortly after the bureau announced the results of its annual forecast on the Colorado River and the country's largest reservoir, Lake Mead, Trujillo said everyone has a responsibility to safeguard the water system. The report showed water levels dropping as the region suffers from a multi-year drought.

Federal investments and expanded resources now available through climate provisions in big bills like the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden is expected to sign Tuesday, are critical, Trujillo said.

Without investments now, she said the Colorado River will "face a future of uncertainty."

Now, Trujillo said the bureau is "moving forward with several efforts at the same time."

This means setting into motion short-term operational actions while also developing innovative strategies to help communities combat the conditions created by climate change in a more long-term way.

According to a statement, here are some of the things the Bureau of Reclamation says it will do:

The Upper Basin:

The Lower Basin:

The US Bureau of Reclamation will not yet act on a demand for Colorado River states and stakeholders to come up with a plan to cut up to 25% of their water usage — 2 to 4 million acre-feet per year, annually — to stabilize the river basin. That plan would have been in addition to the mandatory cuts announced on Tuesday.

Bureau chief Camille Touton made the demand for the plan at a Senate hearing in June and gave river stakeholders a deadline of Aug. 15. Touton said at the time that if states failed to come up with a plan, the federal government would do it for them.

Instead, administration officials said they are beginning that process.

Touton said at a news conference Tuesday that her agency is “starting the process,” but she did not specify any new deadlines that might be set for states to come up with a plan for the drastic cuts.

Administration officials indicated they did not want to impede state negotiations and wanted to focus on using federal money from climate and infrastructure bills to make improvements to Western water infrastructure.

US Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau called the current situation with state negotiations “a complex environment.”

Tuesday’s mandatory cuts, as a result of the Bureau of Reclamation’s August study for Lake Mead, will lead to a reduction of 721,000 acre-feet of river water usage.

An acre-foot is the amount of water that would fill one acre a foot deep — roughly 326,000 gallons.

As the Colorado River Basin is experiencing its driest 23-year period on record, its total systems storage is at 37% full, down from 46% last year.

Lake Powell's current elevation is at 3,534 feet, or 26% of capacity, according to Chris Cutler, the manager for the Water and Power Services Division at the Bureau of Reclamation. 

During a presentation, he showed that water storage levels of both Lake Powell and Lake Mead has fluctuated over 50 years.

But as a result of below-normal runoff this year, Lake Powell is projected to drop to 23% of storage capacity by the end of 2022.

The drought in the Colorado River basin is reaching "a tipping point," Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner, said. Her remarks come as the bureau announced its forecast for the water system in the West at a time when the region is experiencing a multi-year megadrought made worse by the climate crisis.

Touton said the Colorado River basin is in its 23rd year of a "historic drought." This year's forecast prompted the bureau to declare a Tier 2 water shortage on the Colorado River — forcing several Southwest states to make mandatory water cuts for the second year in a row.

The commissioner said Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the country's two largest reservoirs — are also at "historically low levels."

By taking conservation actions, like water cuts, she said the bureau needs to ensure communities, tribal nations and the environment are sustained, not just next year but for the future

"Protecting the system means protecting the people of the American West," she said.