Feisty sports matches need referees to take control early or risk mayhem on the field. In the furious battle over the rights to dwindling Colorado River water — a game with life-or-death stakes — the U.S. government has let things get out of hand. It’s only just now starting to flash yellow cards. It shouldn’t wait too long to make even tougher calls.
After decades of misuse, soaring temperatures and a 23-year drought, the Colorado’s flow has fallen by 20% since 2000. The 40 million people that depend on it, spread across seven U.S. states, tribes and parts of Mexico, must make painful sacrifices now or risk watching this precious resource dwindle even more. The critical reservoir of Lake Mead risks going “dead pool,” the point at which water will stop flowing to farms and cities in the river’s lower basin and the Hoover Dam will stop producing hydroelectric power.
Two months ago, the states blew a U.S. government-imposed deadline for agreeing to share the burden of cutting between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water use per year, or up to a quarter of current usage levels. (An acre-foot is how much water it takes to flood one acre with a foot of water.) That followed a similar missed deadline last summer. All along, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation has threatened to impose its own harsh cuts if the states couldn’t agree.
