Hagrid is one of the most beloved characters in the Harry Potter series. The half giant befriends Harry and his cohorts Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, with whom he develops the habit of letting slip bits of information that were supposed to be confidential. He often follows quickly with, “Oops, I shouldn’t’ve said that.” At least one Nevada water leader must be thinking that now.
Arizona leaders have been wringing hands and gnashing teeth for a month over the new Colorado River management plan, threatening to go to court. But Nevada has beaten them to it, becoming the first to sue the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), attempting to block the plan for reducing water supplies from the drought-stricken river, and insisting on continued deliveries of water that simply isn’t there. The suit says the new management plan could “devastate the state’s economy,” exactly what Arizona has said. But of course, what is devastating to water-starved southwestern states is a drought and reduced river flows, not a government management document.
The BOR’s ten-year plan for managing Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and other federal reservoirs, will reduce deliveries up to 21 percent to California, Nevada and Arizona for two years starting in 2027. Those cuts could increase after 2028 if water supplies do not improve and the states remain deadlocked on any other solution – such as augmenting their water supplies from other sources. Those include ocean desalination, water exchanges and further conservation measures. That’s what Nevada now calls entirely unacceptable.
Talk about crying before you are hurt. There is nothing in the two-year plan to be implemented starting in October that does anything at all to Nevada. That state’s share of Colorado River water would temporarily drop from 300,000 acre-feet to 250,000 acre-feet over the next two years. That is still at least 50,000 acre feet more than Nevada is now using, something which its main water authority was bragging about just a couple months ago.
The Lower Basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada have been in a bad mood for several years because the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming have refused to accept mandatory cuts to their own water supplies – because they have already underused their allocations for decades while the Lower Basin used more than twice as much.
To be specific, Upper Basin use has averaged about 4 million acre-feet a year over the last 20 years, while Lower Basin use has averaged 11 million acre-feet a year. The original interstate compact agreement – still in force – was to split the river’s yield in half between the two regions, so expecting the Upper Basin to commit even more, just because the Lower Basin’s population grew faster, was always a non-starter. Imagine we’re both promised 5 candy bars a day, but for years I took 8 so you could only get 3. Now there is less chocolate, so I propose an across-the-board 10 percent reduction, meaning I now get 7.2 and you get 2.7. Fair?
In any case, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (joined by the state) has filed suit, hoping a court will stop any water reductions. It is ironic because the same Southern Nevada Water Authority suggested the new BOR plan was acceptable when it was published in July.
The lawsuit claims the Administration did not “consider reasonable alternatives,” which is laughable considering these negotiations have dragged on for years, and every alternative has been talked to death. Lawsuit threats are common among these states but considered a “nuclear option” and not taken very seriously.
That’s especially true now, because on July 31, speaking to ABC Affiliate KTNV, Southern Nevada Water Authority spokesman Bronson Mack said the reductions (from 300,000 acre-feet to 250,000) are coming, but Southern Nevadans likely won’t notice any major change. “What this means for us here in Southern Nevada is that our water allocation… is going to be reduced in 2027 and in 2028… But the good news is that our community has been so diligent in water conservation that our water use is below 200,000 acre-feet,” Mack said. He boasted that southern Nevadans had already “reduced our consumption of Colorado River water by 40 percent since the drought started,” which is accurate and admirable.
Yet barely three weeks later the same water authority filed suit, claiming the changes will devastate Las Vegas. If Nevada leaders really believe that, they surely wish Mack hadn’t given that interview. And he must be saying, “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”
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