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Every outlook, every report out there really shows a really poor hydrologic outlook.
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So we know there's going to be less water.
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The estimates I see are anywhere from 3 to 4 million less acre feet
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in the river. And we've allocated, just as a way to think about that, we've allocated about 15.5 million acre feet of water, and we need to figure out how to live with 3 to 4 million less.
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It is by no means inconsequential. It's very significant, the numbers that we're talking about.
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Importantly, we missed the February 14th deadline that the federal government set for the states to come up with their own consensus plan.
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The seven state agreement
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for a new framework for how we share Colorado River shortage.
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There have been some unresolved conflicts between the upper basin and the lower basin. The upper basin is Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, the lower basin states are Arizona, Nevada, and California. The lower basin
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proposed a plan at the negotiating table for a self-imposed set of cuts that the three states would make about 1.25 million acre feet each year.
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And they argue that this is in addition to the many, many cuts they've made over the last two decades to farmers, to cities and even Tribal nations.
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The lower basin just wants the upper basin to agree to some cuts as well.
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It's been unclear what kind of cuts the lower basin is looking for, but they've just asked for the upper basin to put something on the table. In response,
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The upper basin states,
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they've adamantly said they don't agree to any cuts, that the upper basin won't make any reduction in their water use. And their argument is that they've never used their full allotment. So the upper basin states are entitled to 7.5 million acre feet a year. They only use about 4.5.
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So historically, they've never used their allocation. And today they don't use their allocation. So their argument is we underuse water, so we're not the ones to really take a cut.
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The reality is that the lower basin is much more economically developed. It's more populated. 75% of the population in all seven states live in the lower basin states.
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25 of the 30 federally recognized tribes are in those three lower basin states, and much of the agriculture is in Arizona and California. So again in the lower basin states.
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the heart of the conflict,
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isn't about how much water or when or where.
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It's actually about the premise that the upper basin feels as though they don't need to take cuts at all. So,
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we're philosophically stuck on the fact that the upper basin, those four states, feel as though
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they’re not obligated in any way to take any cuts.
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So to me, the negotiations, we’re very far from an agreement.
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We're at an impasse.
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Why should we care that the states failed to reach this February 14th deadline?
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I think that we have really kind of set ourselves up for the state solution. We've kind of framed it this way, and in part it's because that's how we've done it in the modern era, the last 25 years, it's been the federal government deferring to the states to come up with a series of solutions.
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And they have,
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But these the current operating guidelines expire at the end of 2026. I mean, everything expires. The agreements between the United States and Mexico, the agreements between the states, the federal funding, like everything ends at 2026.
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So it really is this is why this deal is so important because we set ourselves up for it.
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In 2007, when they signed the interim agreement, they said, we have 20 years to do something permanently and we have learned a ton from all these small increments.
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But we really do need a long term agreement that meets human needs, that meets the needs of the environment, that's able to adapt and change and be flexible,
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that provides security for community members. And so this is the moment that we really need an agreement to move us forward.
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In the absence of a state consensus solution, the decision is left to the federal government.
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They're already in a NEPA process. NEPA just stands for the National Environmental Policy Act.
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The federal government issued a draft environmental impact statement, or EIS.
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They'll consider the comments that they receive, and then they'll make a final decision this summer.
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In the absence of having a state solution, the reason why they need to do this is, by the fall, they need new operating guidelines to know how they're going to manage the two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
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So the federal government without the states saying, “Hey, this is how we're going to reduce our water consumption and how we're going to share in the shortage that we have,”
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The federal government is responsible for managing those two major reservoirs, so they're going to come up
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with their own plan.
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They're going to act if the states don't act. What most people are saying is that the federal government will adopt the alternative that's in the draft EIS called the Basin Coordination Plan.
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The reason why
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people are
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guessing that this is what reclamation will do is this is what they have the most legal authority to do,
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Most experts that I'm talking to are expecting that Reclamation will propose the Basin Coordination Plan. Why that matters for us is because it's incredibly bad news for Arizona.
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Of all the five alternatives other than doing nothing, it is the worst for Arizona because it's the biggest cuts, especially to the Central Arizona project. So the cap, which is a major infrastructure project, a 300 and some mile canal that brings water to just like it sounds, central Arizona,
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it's about a 77% cut to CAP under the Basin Coordination Plan.
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Everyone expected that there would be cuts, but nothing like that. When I talked to experts across the state
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no one was planning or is prepared for a 77% cut.
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This has huge impacts for the central part of Arizona, the Phoenix municipalities that rely on central Arizona water, tribal communities
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agriculture and dairy production in the central part of the state, and Tucson Water.
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Tucson Water is the number-one customer for Central Arizona Project. So this has huge implications for the state of Arizona and for our community here in Tucson. The Colorado River provides about 36% of water use in our state. So it's pretty significant, about a third of what we use. So thinking about major cuts like this will have major economic and human repercussions.
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I might suggest that we don't have a science problem in the basin.
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And of course there are science questions that remain.
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But I would argue at the end of the day, we're really not facing a science question. The science is incredibly clear, and I don't even see a lot of disagreement about it. The question then is what's our policy solution? And so I really see what we're facing as a more of a policy crisis. Like how do we meet the challenges of today.
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And I would argue that we need like a really diverse policy toolkit.
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We need education to educate people about what's happening, about behaviors, about uses of water. We need incentives to help encourage people and to help move people off dependencies that maybe aren't realistic in today's environment.
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And we're going to need regulation. So we need those kind of three policy tools. And then we need different versions of them
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And we need government.
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We need government at all levels. We need local level state government. We need the federal government to be a partner in this. We need the philanthropic world that has resources and science that they can bring to bear. And we need the private sector. So really it's it needs many tools, but also many partners working in concert.
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I'd like to call out three things that make me really hopeful.
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One is this tri-university effort that's been happening between the University of Arizona, ASU and Northern Arizona University to
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scientifically study how to better capture and recharge water in the state that would
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otherwise evaporate.
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So,
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storm water recharge.
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They're just concluding their efforts. It’s a multiyear effort. It's funded by the Arizona Board of Regents and it’s experts and researchers across the three universities. And it really helps us think about supply in different ways. It shows us how important the role of universities and researchers can be in this effort.
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And it helps us think more creatively about where the resources can come from for this kind of work, like right here in our own state. So it's one really good example that we could think about mimicking and using for other areas.
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Another activity that we've been doing in our state that makes me hopeful and can also be a guide for future actions, is WIFA -- the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona -- and it basically is working to improve infrastructure across the state.
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And it does it with capital, it does it with money. So it's funded by our state legislature. And it's everything from like turf removal and how we think about landscape design to groundwater recharge to making our infrastructure more efficient. So it's about thinking about demand and trying to decrease demand, but also thinking about like augmentation and supply. And how can we be more creative about supply.
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So it's another really good example of how you can bring diverse experts together, problem solve and move money across the state in really creative ways. They have a great map of where the money has gone, in what counties and for what kind of projects. And we've benefited here, right in our own community, especially in our parks where we've ripped out grass, old turf that really isn't used in thoughtful or meaningful ways, and really allowing us to go back to kind of more desert landscaping.
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And then I think the third area of work that's happening, that's underway that I'm really hopeful about is all the like, legal policy, governance work that tells us just how to manage river systems better. I mean, some of it is about how you engage and work with tribes. Some of the research is how you partner with another sovereign nation like Mexico.
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It's everything about how to fund science, how to partner, how to collaborate. And that research is happening here across the campus at the University of Arizona, but also at ASU and at NAU. And so I think the expertise that universities have and that researchers have around how to better govern and how to manage these resources can really be harnessed.
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And I think if one major thing that this failure to reach an agreement has taught me is that maybe the system we're working under doesn't work that well. If they had 25 years to produce agreement and they couldn't, maybe there's something wrong with the system. And certainly one thing that I've observed is it's such a black box of negotiations.
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Maybe it's really time to kind of shine the light on how we come to consensus and how we make deals within the seven basin states.
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And also, I really want to be talking about politics.
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water is political. Because it's about who gets what, when, where, how much, what quality, who gets it, who doesn't get it, what do you pay for it?
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And so water's always been political. And we could think about it as a political resource. I learned this from my mentor Helen Ingram
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when I was a graduate student and it really remains true today. What I think we need to be careful about is that we don't let it become a partisan issue.
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Water in this country, how we allocate it and how we care for it in terms of water quality,
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it really has risen above partisan politics, Democrat and Republican.
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And I think actually, if you look at how Arizona's congressional delegation has responded, both Democrats and Republicans are really saying the same thing to each other, to the federal government. And so in this era of
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increasing polarization, we just need to be really careful to not simplify it and not make this an issue of partisan politics. It isn't.
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It really is something that we need to transcend how we think about political party if we're really going to be working together to have the water security that we all need.
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And finally, as community members,
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a really important first step
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is educating ourselves.
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Reading, learning, engaging in discussions. It is the absolute core and the the central part of democracy and how we're going to get better decisions and how there's going to be political will from our leaders. It's going to be because the public demands it.
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Because the public demands that of our elected leaders, because the public demands it of our private sector, because the public demands it of the NGOs that operate in the nonprofit space.
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And really, we need that collaboration, that cooperation, to give us the certainty, to give us the security that we need for all of us to prosper, to be more sustainable and to be more equitable when it comes to the Colorado River.
