California and the other Colorado River Basin states are at odds over how to halt the precipitous decline of Lake Mead. The impasse reflects a century of failure to take a basic step left undone by the original Colorado River Compact.
The seven states in the basin have made dueling proposals for balancing water demand with the available supply. Both require large cuts in water use in all three Lower Basin states: California, Arizona and Nevada. While California’s proposal puts a greater burden on the system’s junior users, primarily the Central Arizona Project, the other states would lean more heavily on California.
What’s missing is a water-sharing agreement among the Lower Basin states. In contrast to the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — the Lower Basin states never decided how to divvy up their part of the river.
