Biden administration eases up on Colorado River cuts for 2024, following a wetter-than-usual winter

Federal officials announced Tuesday they would ease up on Colorado River usage cutbacks in 2024, thanks to an unusually wet winter combined with systemwide conservation measures.

Water releases from Lake Mead — the Colorado River Basin’s largest reservoir — in 2023 are expected to be the lowest in three decades, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s newly released 24-Month Study.

“The above-average precipitation this year was a welcome relief,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said in a statement.

“Coupled with our hard work for system conservation, we have the time to focus on the long-term sustainability solutions needed in the Colorado River Basin,” Touton added.

The 24-Month study, published each year in mid-August, determines the so-called “tiers” for coordinated operation of both the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs for the following year.

Each tier defines how much water Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — as well as Mexico must relinquish to keep the reservoirs stable.

The Lower Basin contribution amounts came from both the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and state-level Drought Contingency Plans, approved in 2019. Mexico agreed to its cutback amounts in 2017, in an international agreement called Minute 323.

The U.S. and Mexico have been jointly managing the Colorado River Basin since 1944, when the Mexican Water Treaty guaranteed the latter 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year. A previous 1922 compact allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually to each of the U.S. basins. For reference, a typical suburban U.S. household uses about an acre-foot of water each year.

A combination of the 2007 interim guidelines, the state-level plans and Minute 323 ended up triggering temporary conservation measures in the summer of 2021 and then even more severe measures in 2022.

As far as Lake Mead is concerned, Nevada and Arizona will be downgraded in 2024 to a “Tier 1” shortage — a return to 2021 ranks and an improvement from the “Tier 2a” cuts the two states endured in 2022.

The Tier 1 shortage means that Arizona will face 512,000 acre-feet of cutbacks, or approximately 18 percent to the state’s annual Colorado River apportionment.

Nevada, meanwhile, will lose 21,000 acre-feet, or about 7 percent of the state’s allotment.

Mexico will lose 80,000 acre-feet, or about 5 percent of the country’s annual share.

Under Lake Mead’s first-ever “Tier 2a” shortage announced last summer, Arizona contributed about 21 percent of its annual apportionment, Nevada lost 8 percent and Mexico conserved approximately 7 percent for the 2023 year.

California, which has among the most senior rights to Colorado River water, was not required to implement any such reductions in 2023, nor will it need to do so in 2024, according to the tier system. The state only begins to do so during an even more severe “Tier 2b” shortage.

The 2024 operating conditions for Lake Mead and Lake Powell will remain in effect until new near-term guidelines — currently under review by the Bureau of Reclamation — have been finalized.

Last summer, the seven Colorado River basin states missed a deadline to present a unified plan for additional conservation measures, after being requested to do so by the Bureau of Reclamation.

When a plan failed to materialize, the bureau ended up announcing its alternatives in the form of a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.

The states then came to their own consensus, through which California, Arizona and Nevada agreed to commit to collective conservation of at least 3 million acre-feet of system water by the end of 2026 — when the 2007 interim guidelines are set to expire.

But the Bureau of Reclamation has yet to officially approve the proposal. If it does, more than three-quarters of the proposed reductions would be funded by about $1.2 billion dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act. The rest would be voluntary commitments.

At the same time, federal officials have also already launched a formal process to develop new long-term operational guidelines for the Colorado River, given that the current protocols will terminate in 2026.

Despite the marked improvements in basin-wide stability this year, the Bureau of Reclamation warned on Tuesday that Colorado River reservoir levels are still far from ideal, with a combined storage of just 36 percent.

“Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the two largest reservoirs in the United States and the two largest storage units in the Colorado River system — remain at historically low levels,” Touton said in a statement.

“As we experience a warmer, drier west due to a prolonged drought, accelerated by climate change, Reclamation is committed to leading inclusive and transparent efforts to develop the next-generation framework for managing the river system,” she added.