Trump envoy releases letter from National Archives deemed ‘extraordinarily damning’ for Trump
Peter Weber, Senior editor – August 23, 2022
U.S. National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration waited until May 12 to give the FBI access to the highly classified documents retrieved from former President Donald Trump in January, despite the Justice Department’s “urgent” requests for the materials, according to a letter from National Archivist Debra Wall released late Monday by conservative journalist John Solomon, one of Trump’s two authorized NARA liaisons.
The May 10 letter to Trump’s lawyers also affirms that the National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified documents, including “special access program materials” — among the most highly classified secrets in government — in the 15 boxes recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex. More classified material was taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in June and August.
Much of the letter covers Wall’s rejection of a request by Trump’s lawyers to shield the documents from the FBI on executive privilege grounds. The White House counsel said President Biden “defers to my determination,” Wall wrote, and after discussions with the Office of Legal Counsel, “the question in this case is not a close one.”
“The executive branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the federal government itself,” Wall wrote, “not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.'”
The letter released by Trump’s team is “extraordinarily damning for Trump” and his team, Politico‘s Kyle Cheney marveled on Twitter. “Trump allies pointed to this letter as some kind of evidence of Biden White House meddling,” but “what it shows is officials expressing extreme alarm about national security damage based on records being held by Trump.”
The NARA letter is “damning” to Trump “on any number of levels,” including its “lack of any reference to a claim by Trump’s representatives that he had declassified any of the classified materials,” adds University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “It’s also telling that, even though this letter really hurts the Trump version of events, it wasn’t released by the Biden Administration or NARA. It was released by Trump’s own team — both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules.”
Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment
Jim Tankersley – August 23, 2022
With the cost of living outpacing her pay, Tamela Clover has begun relying on a food pantry in Portland, Oregon. (Ivan McClellan/The New York Times)
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples.
Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks such as William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day.
“I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs.
Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity.
Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods such as couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated.
Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending.
While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.
In the meantime, the progress that the Biden administration hailed in fighting poverty last year has faded. The national child poverty rate and the food hardship rate for families with children, which dipped in 2021, have both rebounded to their highest levels since December 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Two in five Americans surveyed by the Census Bureau at the end of July said they had difficulty paying a usual household expense in the previous week, the highest rate in two years of the survey.
What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.
Waiting in line on a recent Wednesday, Susan B. Smith said federal aid had helped her family endure the pandemic over the last year. Direct payments, along with three months’ worth of rental assistance, “got us through a lot last winter,” she said. “Every little bit of help, we appreciate it. We just want to make it through, not starve.”
Now, most of that assistance is gone, and food and housing cost more, a reality that has forced Smith and one of her daughters, Tamela Clover, to seek help at the food pantry. Clover, a college graduate who works part time for a social services agency, said her salary had not kept pace with her cost of living: “Everything’s so expensive.”
Biden frequently acknowledges the high inflation is hurting people and has taken several steps to try to mitigate rising costs. He and his aides insist that while the pain is real, last year’s stimulus package has made the country and its most vulnerable people better positioned for any economic troubles ahead.
Administration officials point to a stronger job market, a lower eviction rate and healthier household finances than the nation has typically experienced at this point in a recovery from a recession, which the economy briefly entered early in the pandemic. They say the $350 billion that Congress gave to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out.
The law “reduced significantly the degree of hardship, both over the last year and a half and going forward,” said Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden who has overseen fulfillment of the law.
Last week, Biden signed into law a vast economic package that his administration says will help reduce inflation. It includes tax credits to stoke low-carbon energy, expanded premium supports for Americans who buy health insurance through the federal government and curbs on prescription drug prices for seniors.
But the president was forced to drop his push to extend many of the temporary programs that Democrats approved last year to directly fight hunger and poverty. That included additional food from the Agriculture Department, rental assistance from the Treasury, and supplemental income in the form of direct payments and an expanded child tax credit. An extension of the child credit was included in a bill carrying a much larger portion of Biden’s agenda that the House passed in November, but it did not survive in the Senate. An earlier Biden proposal had also contained $150 billion in affordable-housing programs, which were also jettisoned.
The swift decline into pandemic recession plunged millions of Americans into dire financial straits. In 2020, the Oregon Food Bank served 1.7 million people, Morgan said. That number dipped in 2021 to about 1.2 million.
Now it is rising again, toward what Morgan estimates could be 1.5 million. That would be the food bank’s second-largest caseload for a single year, behind only 2020.
“There’s a very direct correlation between federal assistance, state assistance and a decrease in numbers,” said Kevin Ryan, director of social services at William Temple House, who welcomed Smith, Clover and others to a shaded sitting area where they waited for their trip into the food pantry to begin.
“When that goes away, the numbers go back up.”
When Biden’s team drafted the rescue plan in the early days of his administration, it was trying to give vulnerable Americans, particularly those thrown out of work or at risk of losing their homes, enough assistance to carry them through until the economy returned to some version of normal.
The economic recovery has been faster than was forecast before Democrats approved the $1.9 trillion package, with unemployment hovering near a 50-year low and growth surging last year. “It gave millions of working families a shot they otherwise might not have,” said Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council.
But the normalcy has yet to arrive. Inflation has climbed higher, and endured longer, than administration officials thought possible.
Higher prices are making it harder for many Americans to afford food and housing. Adjusted for inflation, average wages have declined since Biden took office. Economic data suggest that many households, including a wide swath of vulnerable Americans, have lost buying power as prices have soared.
Rising mortgage rates, the result of Fed interest rates meant to combat price spikes, have pushed home buying even further out of reach for millions of Americans. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis estimates that only 23% of Portland residents can now afford to buy a median-priced home in the city, down from 35% in December.
Poverty researchers say the coming months could be worse.
“There’s strong reason to believe that food insufficiency will continue to remain at high levels and perhaps worsen,” said Zachary Parolin, a poverty researcher at Bocconi University in Milan and a senior fellow at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
Administration officials say the best policies they can pursue for people like Smith are ones that fight inflation, such as actions to untangle supply chains that have pushed up the prices of goods like furniture. The bill Biden signed this month will eventually reduce prescription and electricity costs for many Americans, and it could help lower overall inflation by a small amount in the long term, independent studies suggest.
Smith, 55, is not expecting another round of assistance checks from the federal government and is instead relying on Social Security benefits, along with government and charitable assistance. She cares for three grandchildren, including one with a severe medical condition, and cannot work outside the home because child care would be too costly.
When her turn arrived at William Temple House, Smith carefully pulled her shopping baskets down a small flight of stairs to what resembled a miniature grocery store. “My kids are hungry,” she told Ryan, and she proceeded to stock three red crates with items she knew they would like: potatoes, celery, bacon, Froot Loops, Ritz crackers, bags of potato chips.
“I always try to get my kids snack foods here,” Smith said. “I can’t afford snacks.”
Droughts: People will need to ‘change the way we use our landscapes for tourism,’ professor says
August 19, 2022
Toronto Metropolitan University Director at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management Dr. Frederic Dimanche joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the economic impact of climate change and how it will affect tourism in particular.
– The images, they’re stunning. They’re disturbing. Quite frankly, they are depressing. Look at it. Water levels at once-pristine Lake Powell and Lake Mead are now at unimaginable heights. Both lakes are around 27% of capacity. That’s down from 95% in 2000. Climate change taking its toll on economies around the world. Let’s talk more about this with Dr. Frederic Dimanche, director of the Metropolitan University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Good to see you, doc. I know this is primarily, number one, a problem for our planet. What is the economic toll of climate change?
FREDERIC DIMANCHE: Well, the economic toll of climate change is tremendous on all kinds of different sectors, obviously. So my specialty is tourism, obviously, so I will talk about tourism specifically, but it affects every single aspect of the economy. Think about waterways in Europe that are not being used anymore because the water levels are too low. Think about the energy sector that could be shut down because there is not enough water to create hydroelectric systems.
And obviously, the tourism industry is very much affected because people are being displaced. Some tourism activities cannot take place. We’ve seen that in the western part of the United States, but we see that in Europe also this summer. Think about the fires that took place in France in the past few weeks. Think about the drought. There is a very significant impact overall, and I think we are coming slowly to realize how much that impact is.
– Well, Frederic, talk about just how much it is impacted. Do we have any data yet just on how this extreme heat, or the floods, or the droughts, have affected tourist spending so far this year?
FREDERIC DIMANCHE: No, we don’t have that information yet. But what we know is that at least it’s displacing spending, so people may not spend anymore in one region because they decide to go somewhere else. So overall, you may not see a very big difference, but for someone specific destinations that are very dependent on the travel and tourism sector, that will represent a very big impact.
– And the big story of the week– and I mentioned Lake Powell and Lake Mead, but the big story was, of course, because of that, we’re seeing cuts to the Colorado River, most notably with the state of Arizona. How do you expect that to impact economies and, to your point, tourism?
FREDERIC DIMANCHE: Well, people will have to realize– and when I say people, it’s going to have to be the states, the local governments, will have to realize that we have been depending too much on this mighty river, the Colorado River, but we have been draining it far too much. We know we have had issues of water supply for the past 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years. We’ve been threats before. Remember two years ago, there was a very significant drought, and we know about this before.
So this seems to be occurring on a regular basis now more and more often, and we’re going to have to make some choices. We’re going to have to change our lifestyle. We’re going to have to change the way we use our landscapes, for tourism activities as well as for residential activities. We probably cannot continue to live the way we are doing right now.
– And we’ve also got the flooding and the fires at national parks like Yellowstone. You talk about some of the lifestyle changes we should make. Is it the government? Is it private sector? Where does the answer lie beyond individuals making the choices you discussed?
– Well, the individuals are going to have– we asked the individuals to make some choices. We asked people not to water lawns and these type of things. But it’s a drop in the bucket, really. Until we see very significant change at the government level that will be changing the way we use the landscape, we use the land– does it make sense to develop some golf courses, for example, in arid climates in Arizona, for example, or eastern California? It may not make sense anymore in this kind of new environment.
So I think there are some hard questions to ask for government who will have to provide some new directives, some new directions for us all to follow. And us as the individuals, as well as the businesses.
– Every time I play golf in the deserts of Arizona or Palm Springs, I can’t help but wonder that. Love to discuss that in the future, doctor. Really appreciate you being with us. Thank you.
Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers — but he keeps hearing ‘No’
The former president’s current legal team includes a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company and a former host at far-right One America News
By Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind S. Helderman – August 16, 2022
Donald Trump departs Trump Tower in New York City on Aug. 10, two days after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
Former president Donald Trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the FBI searched his Florida home rushing to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers. But the answer they keep hearing is “no.”
The struggle to find expert legal advice puts Trump in a bind as he faces potential criminal exposure from a records dispute with the National Archives that escalated into a federal investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other statutes.
“Everyone is saying no,” said a prominent Republican lawyer, wholike some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.
Trump is no stranger to legal proceedings, and his scramble to hire lawyers in the face of an ominous federal probe recalls his predicament in the summer of 2017, when he was under scrutiny from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the Russia probe. Once again, Trump is struggling to find a veteran criminal defense lawyer with a strong track record of dealing with the Justice Department in a sprawling, multipronged investigation.A list of items seized in the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home was unsealed on Aug. 12. (Video: Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
Longtime confidants and advisers of Trump have grown extremely worried about Trump’s current stable of lawyers, noting that most of them have little to no experience in cases of this type, according to two people familiar with the internal discussions.
Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, defended the quality of the former president’s legal team in a statement Tuesday night, pointing to former federal prosecutors Evan Corcoran and James Trusty.
“The President’s lead counsel in relation to the raid of his home, Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran, have decades of prosecutorial experience and have litigated some of the most complex cases in American history,” Budowich said. “President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country, and any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy.”
Jon Sale, a prominent Florida defense attorney who worked on the Watergate prosecution team and said he turned down representing Trump last week because he did not have enough time to devote to the case, said “the Trump team needs a first-rate, highly experienced federal criminal practitioner.”
“You have to evaluate whether you want to take it,” Sale said. “It’s not like a DUI. It’s representing the former president of the United States — and maybe the next one — in what’s one of the highest-visibility cases ever.”
Armed Secret Service agents stand outside an entrance to former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8. (Terry Renna/AP)
Ordinarily, the prestige and publicity of representing a former president, as well as the new and complex legal issues at stake in this case, would attract high-powered attorneys. But Trump’s search is being hampered by his divisiveness, as well as his reputation for stiffing vendors and ignoring advice.
“In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it’s not the same,” said Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for Trump who was convicted of tax evasion, false statements, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress in 2018. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
One lawyer told a story from early in Trump’s presidency of his legal team urging him against tweeting about the Mueller probe, only to find he’d tweeted about it before they got to the end of the West Wing driveway. Several people said Trump was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.
People familiar with the search for legal help said the effort includes Susie Wiles, a close adviser to Trump, and attorney Christina Bobb, who was present at Mar-a-Lago during the search and signed for the list of documents taken. Former campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn is taking a prominent role, and former White House aide Kash Patel is advising informally. Patel is raising money for a “legal offense” fund by selling merchandise such as tank tops and beanies emblazoned with the logo “K$H.”
“You get these guys who just live to be around him, and mistakes get made,” a lawyer who isn’t part of the team said. “These guys just want to make him happy.”
Bobb was previously a host on the far-right, pro-Trump television network One America News. At OAN, Bobb covered the Arizona Republican Party’s review of 2020 ballots — which ultimately confirmed Joe Biden’s win in the state — while also raising money for the effort and conferring with Trump advisers, The Washington Post has reported.
Bobb’s prior legal experience at the federal level consists mainly of a handful of trademark infringement cases on behalf of CrossFit during a stint at a San Diego law firm. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s other lawyer currently based in Florida is Lindsey Halligan, whose practice, according to a professional biography, focuses on insurance claims at residential and commercial properties. She was admitted to the Florida bar in 2014. A search of federal court records found no filings under her name. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump is also being represented in the records dispute by Alina Habba, who leads a three-attorney firm with an office near Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Her professional experience includes serving as general counsel to a parking garage company. Last year, Habba started representing Trump in several cases including defending him from a defamation claim by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of a decades-old sexual assault; suing the New York Times and Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump; and suing 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other perceived enemies, alleging a conspiracy to harm Donald Trump through the Russia scandal. Habba did not respond to requests for comment.
Others on the team have relatively more experience with federal criminal probes. Trusty formerly served in the Justice Department’s criminal division and headed the organized crime and gang section. He has recently represented clients accused of financial fraud, defrauding the U.S. Department of Agriculture and trading in counterfeit military uniforms. He referred questions to Trump’s spokesman.
Corcoran is a former federal prosecutor viewed by Trump aides as a serious and experienced attorney. His recent clients include a former Capitol Police officer accused of obstructing the Jan. 6 investigation by telling a riot suspect to remove Facebook posts, and a Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to participating in the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison. Corcoran also represented former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in his contempt trial for defying a House subpoena in the Jan. 6 probe. Bannon was convicted in July.
Some of Trump’s interactions with the Justice Department have also been handled by John Rowley, another former federal prosecutor now at his own firm, Politico has reported. Rowley didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In another potential complication, any lawyer who made assurances to the FBI on Trump’s behalf could have their own legal exposure or become a witness in the case. One letter signed by a lawyer on Trump’s team was sent to the Justice Department in June suggesting that all classified material had been turned over, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The existence of the letter was first reported by the New York Times.
“Either the attorney acted in good faith on what turned out to be false factual representations made by Mr. Trump or someone else communicating on his behalf, in which case Mr. Trump or his proxy would have criminal jeopardy for false statements or obstruction of justice, or the attorney knowingly gave false assurances to the government,” said David Laufman, the former Justice Department chief of the counterintelligence division, which is now investigating the classified records kept at Trump’s home. “And it’s hard to believe that a lawyer knowingly would have lied to the government about the continued presence of classified documents.”
The universe of experienced federal practitioners is not actually that extensive, and the case would likely monopolize their time to the exclusion of all other clients. Possible candidates and their firms may be further deterred by the controversy that would attach to defending Trump.
“Good lawyers should have been working on this case for months,” said Alan Dershowitz, the former Harvard Law School professor who has advised Trump in the past and said he hasn’t been asked to get involved now. “He needs a big and good and very experienced defense team with experience trying cases.”
Dershowitz said he recommended Harvard colleague Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., the faculty director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute and the Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop. Sullivan said he hasn’t heard from Trump’s team.
“They clearly need someone with federal trial experience, and someone familiar with high-profile cases who can stay on task and not be distracted by the media glare,” Sullivan said. “The case itself presents a range of issues that would be of interest to a lot of good lawyers. Some lawyers may reasonably feel as though the public will conflate Mr. Trump’s policy aims and positions with the lawyer’s. In that way, many lawyers may be disinclined to expose themselves to the public opprobrium that would follow that sort of representation.”
Trump has long been a notoriously high-maintenance client. When he was trying to make his mark in Manhattan real estate as a young man, Trump had an especially demanding cadence with his lawyer, the late Roy Cohn. “Donald calls me 15 to 20 times a day. He is always asking, ‘What is the status of this … and that?’” Cohn was quoted as saying in a Vanity Fair story about their attorney-client relationship.
Many of the president’s former lawyers, such as Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin and Justin Clark are not expected to be involved in the investigation’s defense, people familiar with the matter said. Cipollone has been interviewed already, one of these people said, a detail first reported by the New York Times.
Two longtime Trump top legal advisers during the Mueller investigation, Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin, are still close to the former president but not involved in his current legal team. Among other alumni of the defense to the Mueller investigation, Ty Cobb has become publicly critical of Trump, and former White House counsel Donald McGahn is no longer close with the former president. McGahn represented Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who is fighting a subpoena in a separate investigation into Trump and his allies in Georgia. Another former Trump lawyer, Emmet Flood, is now representing Marc Short, adviser to former vice president Mike Pence.
“This is not good,” one Trump confidant said of the president’s lack of a high-profile white-collar defense lawyer. “Something big is going to pop. Somebody needs to be in charge.”
Arizona loses one-fifth of its Colorado River allocation under new federal drought plan
Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic – August 16, 2022
The federal government will impose deeper cuts on the drought-stricken Colorado River, officials said on Tuesday, reducing water deliveries to Arizona by one-fifth starting in January.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced what it called “urgent action” as water levels in the river’s two largest reservoirs continue to drop. Under the steps outlined Tuesday, Arizona will lose 592,000 acre-feet of its river allocation in 2023, which represents 21% of its usual delivery. That’s an increase of 80,000 acre-feet from the 2022 cuts.
The additional cuts will come from the non-Indian agricultural water allocations, which includes farmers and some tribes, said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke.
Nevada will give up 25,000 acre-feet, about 8% of its allocation, and Mexico’s share will be cut by 104,000 acre-feet, or 7% of its allocation. California will not lose any of its share under the blueprint released Tuesday.
These moves are meant to protect two major dams from structural damage and the ability to generate electric power.
Currently, Lake Mead holds just over 25% capacity and Lake Powell just less than 25%.
“Prolonged drought is one of the most profound issues facing the U.S. today,” said Tommy Beaudreau, assistant Interior secretary.
The Bureau of Reclamation also said it would take immediate action to address the continuing shortfalls in the system. Some of those include reducing Glen Canyon Dam releases to below 7 million acre-feet per year to protect critical infrastructure; investing in conservation and voluntary agreements; and looking closely at Lake Mead operations to prevent the reservoir from falling to critically low levels.
Federal officials said the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden on Tuesday, allocates $4 billion to the Bureau of Reclamation for drought relief and $12.5 million for emergency drought funding for tribes.
The measure also allocates $550 million for water programs in disadvantaged communities. That’s in addition to $8.3 billion the bureau received to address drought and build water systems under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
Interior Department officials said they would continue dialogue with the 30 federally recognized tribes in the basin and with Mexico as well as with the seven basin states to jointly deal with the long-term shortages.
Arizona: Proposed cuts are ‘unacceptable’
This chart shows the key water levels in Lake Mead, which is used to determine water deliveries for Arizona, Nevada and California.
Arizona’s water managers suggested the plan was not enough and put too much of the burden on the Central Arizona Project, despite calls from the federal government to reduce water consumption across the river basin.
“It is unacceptable for Arizona to continue to carry a disproportionate burden of reductions for the benefit of others who have not contributed,” read a statement by Buschatzke and Ted Cooke, general manager of the CAP.
They said a proposal put forth by Arizona was rejected.
Federal officials acknowledged the urgency of the situation.
“Our reservoirs are declining rapidly,” said Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary of the Interior Department for water and science.
She said all users have the responsibility to ensure the water is used responsibly. Trujillo said if new funding is authorized without prompt actions now, the Colorado River and the 40 million people who depend on it will face an uncertain future.
Arizona already has taken significant cuts to its annual take from the river, but it hasn’t been enough to keep Lake Mead from dropping further.
Under a set of guidelines negotiated between the states and the Bureau of Reclamation, the Central Arizona Project reduced its pumping by 512,000 acre-feet this year after the bureau officially declared a shortage base on reservoir projections released a year ago.
A bathtub ring of light minerals shows the high water line of Lake Mead near water intakes on the Arizona side of Hoover Dam at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on June 26, 2022, near Boulder City, Nevada. The reservoir is now below 30% of capacity, Its level has dropped 170 feet since reaching a high-water mark in 1983.
That would be enough to supply about 1.5 million Arizona households if it went exclusively to municipal uses.
The next tier, triggered when Lake Mead is projected to drop below elevation 1,050 feet above sea level, requires another 80,000 acre-feet from Arizona under guidelines adopted in 2007.
With a previously enacted Drought Contingency Plan and an additional emergency commitment that Arizona made with California and Nevada last winter, the state’s total reductions in 2022 total about 800,000 acre-feet, or more than a quarter of the state’s Colorado River allocation, according to CAP.
When disappointing runoff from Rocky Mountain snowpack started flowing toward reservoirs this spring and early summer, the Bureau of Reclamation said it would require more, at least 2 million and maybe 4 million acre-feet from all users in the watershed. That set off a scramble among Arizona and its neighbors to find more water.
Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center, said the numbers don’t work if all of the states aren’t involved.
“Even if CAP and the cities were totally cut off, that wouldn’t add up to 4 million acre-feet,” she said. Cutting water use should be discussed and agreed to by all sectors and states, including the Upper Basin. “Nobody will come out of this unscathed.”
Residential water users are likely to escape the effects because most cities deliver water from a mix of sources. Phoenix implemented its drought management plan June 6 when it issued a Stage 1 water alert, asking residents to voluntarily conserve water use. Although the Colorado River provides about 40% of the city’s water, residential water users are unlikely to experience any cuts at this time.
But one major water stakeholder said Tuesday it had reassessed its position. The Gila River Indian Community cited a lack of progress among the states in its decision to stop contributing water to help shore up Lake Mead’s water levels.
Gila River Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said Tuesday the tribe would go another direction.
“The community has been shocked and disappointed to see the complete lack of progress in reaching the kind of cooperative basin-wide plan necessary to save the Colorado River system,” Lewis said. The tribe reevaluated its strategy and will instead return to storing water underground.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes contributed more than 200,000 acre-feet and fallowed farmland. The tribe said its actions raised Lake Mead’s level by 3 feet. The 4,270-member tribe plans to up its contribution in 2023 and to develop more ways to use less water, according to a statement.
“We recognize that the decades-long drought has reduced the water availability for all of us in the basin,” said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores. “Our ancestors lived through droughts and floods before the settlers arrived and built the dams on the Colorado River. We are a resilient people at CRIT and bring this attitude to the way we live and to our efforts to protect the life of the river that is our namesake.”
Planners want more certainty
The Imperial Irrigation District, which holds 2.6 million acre-feet of Colorado River rights, issued a statement seeking more details from federal officials in conservation and reservoir operations at Lake Mead.
The Colorado River is the Imperial Valley’s only water source, according to the district. Its 116,000 acres of irrigated lands produce much of the nation’s vegetables during the winter months. One of the district’s big concerns is keeping the nearby Salton Sea from declining further while protecting their farms.
“By adopting this plan, we’re providing a means for Imperial Valley growers to be able to continue their work to meet the nation’s food supply needs, within IID’s available water supply, while supporting the river,” said James C. Hanks, the district’s board president.
The two major Arizona water agencies argued that other states must do their part in preserving the river.
“We can’t do this alone without California,” said Buschatzke. He said the Upper Basin plan is in its early stages with few details.
The seven basin states and tribes are negotiating new water management guidelines to replace the current guidelines, which expire at the end of 2025.
Cooke, the CAP general manager, said any discussion among basin states to take further reductions should take into account current reductions.
“We’re taking an almost 600,000 acre-feet cut, Nevada is losing 25,000 acre-feet and Mexico is taking a 100,000 acre-feet cut, but California is taking none,” he said. “We’re willing to do our part, but we can’t continue to be the ones who do the most.”
The two state officials said they want to see more long-term planning. They want planners looking at 2024 and beyond. Cooke said he hopes the 2023 plan in progress can have more durable elements so they don’t have to start at zero in subsequent years.
Buschatzke gave Reclamation a grade of “incomplete” in its plans. Then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton had to give the states a nudge, a “kick in the pants,” to complete a plan in the mid-2000s, he said.
Nevada: Take concrete steps
U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., agreed with state water officials.
“As the West continues experiencing historic drought, Arizona has led the way identifying short and long term solutions while shouldering a disproportionate share of this crisis,” she said.
Sinema created a water advisory council earlier this month to discuss how to expend the $4 billion earmarked for drought and water programs.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also contained funding to support voluntary reductions.
Megdal, of the UA, said that the new funding is welcome; however, she said, nothing she learned about the new measures means the pressure is off. “We all need to work together.”
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which oversees water for metropolitan Las Vegas, echoed the comments made by Arizona officials.
“The Colorado River cannot provide enough water for the current level of use,” said John Entsminger, the authority’s general manager. “The magnitude of the problem is so large that every single water user in every single sector must contribute solutions to this problem regardless of the priority system.”
Entsminger suggested several actions, including eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use, and eliminating lawns. In June 2021, Nevada passed legislation that prohibits non-functional grass irrigated by Colorado River water. That covers about one-third of southern Nevada lawns.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., also expressed disappointment that the Interior Department had fallen short in its announcement.
“The federal government has failed to offer a plan that requires all states to make the cuts necessary to save the Colorado from system collapse,” Stanton said. “Today’s announcement merely kicks the can down the road and risks turning this crisis into catastrophe.”
Kelly also called for decisive action to develop long-term solutions to mitigating drought on the Colorado River, saying this “must be an urgent priority for the Department.”
One water activist called out a “vague” plan and asked what steps the bureau would take next if the seven basin states can’t or don’t reduce water usage.
“If you were hoping for security and knowing exactly what’s going to happen, Reclamation’s ‘plan’ doesn’t change much of anything,” said Gary Wockner, director of the environmental group Save the Colorado.
The group also proposed a possible solution to the issue, one that environmentalists have discussed for years: “We encourage Reclamation to focus quickly on how to drain Lake Powell and bypass Glen Canyon Dam because it is the weight that is driving this crisis and dragging the whole system down.”
Republic reporter Brandon Loomis contributed to this article.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
Deadline looms for drought-stricken states to cut water use
Sam Metz and Felicia Fonseca – August 14, 2022
Visitors view the dramatic bend in the Colorado River at the popular Horseshoe Bend in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, in Page, Ariz., on Sept. 9, 2011. Some 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming draw from the Colorado River and its tributaries. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSFarmer John Hawk looks over his land as his seed onion fields are watered in Holtville, Calif., Sept. 3, 2002. For the seven states that rely on the Colorado River that carries snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California, that means a future with increasingly less water for farms and cities although climate scientists say it’s hard to predict how much less. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSA boat cruises along Lake Powell near Page, Ariz., on July 31, 2021. Seven states in the U.S. West are facing a deadline from the federal government to come up with a plan to use substantially less Colorado River water in 2023. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. Prolonged drought, climate change and overuse are jeopardizing the water supply that more than 40 million people rely on. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSA home with a swimming pool abuts the desert on the edge of the Las Vegas valley, Wednesday, July 20, 2022, in Henderson, Nev. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSA formerly sunken boat sits upright into the air with its stern stuck in the mud along the shoreline of Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Friday, June 10, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Lake Mead water has dropped to levels it hasn’t been since the lake initially filled over 80 years earlier. Prolonged drought, climate change and overuse are jeopardizing the water supply that more than 40 million people rely on. States are acknowledging that painful cuts are needed, but also stubbornly clinging to the water they were allocated a century ago. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSThe Colorado River flows at Horseshoe Bend in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Page, Ariz. Seven states in the U.S. West are facing a deadline from the federal government to come up with a plan to use substantially less Colorado River water in 2023. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson, File) ASSOCIATED PRESSAn aerial view of Lake Powell on the Colorado River along the Arizona-Utah border on Sept. 11, 2019. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish hydrology projections on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, that will trigger agreed-upon cuts to states that rely on the river. (AP Photo/John Antczak, FIle ) ASSOCIATED PRESS
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Banks along parts of the Colorado River where water once streamed are now just caked mud and rock as climate change makes the Western U.S. hotter and drier.
More than two decades of drought have done little to deter the region from diverting more water than flows through it, depleting key reservoirs to levels that now jeopardize water delivery and hydropower production.
Cities and farms in seven U.S. states are bracing for cuts this week as officials stare down a deadline to propose unprecedented reductions to their use of the water, setting up what’s expected to be the most consequential week for Colorado River policy in years.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to figure out how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. On top of that, the bureau is expected to publish hydrology projections that will trigger additional cuts already agreed to.
“The challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history,” Camille Touton, the bureau’s commissioner, said in a U.S. Senate hearing that month.
Tensions over the extent of the cuts and how to spread them equitably have flared, with states pointing fingers and stubbornly clinging to their water rights despite the looming crisis.
“It’s not fun sitting around a table figuring out who is going to sacrifice and how much,” said Bill Hasencamp, the Colorado River resources manager at Metropolitan Water District, which provides water to most of Southern California.
Representatives from the seven states convened in Denver last week for eleventh-hour negotiations behind closed doors. Officials party to discussions said the most likely targets for cuts are farmers in Arizona and California. Agricultural districts in those states are asking to be paid generously to shoulder that burden.
But the tentative agreements fall short of what the Bureau of Reclamation has demanded and state officials say they hope for more time to negotiate details.
The Colorado River cascades down from the Rocky Mountains into the arid deserts of the Southwest. It’s the primary water supply for 40 million people. About 70% of its water goes toward irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of the United States’ winter vegetables.
The river is divided among Mexico and the seven U.S. states under a series of agreements that date back a century, to a time when more water flowed through the river. But climate change has transformed the river’s hydrology, providing less snowmelt and causing hotter temperatures and more evaporation. As it’s yielded less water, the states have agreed to cuts tied to the levels of reservoirs that store river water.
Last year, federal officials for the first time declared a water shortage, triggering cuts to Nevada, Arizona and Mexico’s share of the river to help prevent the two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — from dropping low enough to threaten hydropower production and stop water from flowing through their dams.
The proposals for supplemental cuts due this week have inflamed disagreement between upper basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — over how to spread the pain. The lower basin states use most of the water and have thus far shouldered most of the cuts. The upper basin states have historically not used their full allocations but want to maintain their water rights to plan for population growth.
Gene Shawcroft, the chairman of Utah’s Colorado River Authority, believes the lower basin states should take most of the cuts because they use most of the water and their full allocations.
He said it was his job to protect Utah’s allocation for growth projected for decades ahead: “The direction we’ve been given as water purveyors is to make sure we have water for the future.”
In a letter last month, representatives from the upper basin states proposed a five-point conservation plan that they said would save water but argued most of the cuts needed to come from the lower basin. The plan didn’t commit to any numbers.
“The focus is getting the tools in place and working with water users to get as much as we can rather than projecting a water number,” Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, told The Associated Press.
That position, however, is unsatisfactory to many in lower basin states already facing cuts.
“It’s going to come to a head particularly if the upper basin states continue their negotiating position, saying, ‘We’re not making any cuts,’” said Bruce Babbitt, who served as Interior secretary from 2003-2011.
Lower basin states have yet to go public with plans to contribute, but officials said last week that they had a tentative proposal to reduce consumption that fell slightly short of the federal government’s request to cut 2 to 4 million acre-feet.
An acre-foot of water is enough to serve 2-3 households annually.
Hasencamp, the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado River resource manager, said all the districts in the state that draw from the river had agreed to contribute water or money to the plan, pending approval by their respective boards. Water districts, in particular the Imperial Irrigation District, have been adamant that any voluntary cut does not curtail their high priority water rights.
Southern California cities likely will be putting up money that could fund fallowing farmland in places like Imperial County and water managers are considering leaving water they’ve stored in Lake Mead as part of their contribution.
Arizona will likely be hit hard with reductions. The state has in the past few years shouldered much of the cuts and with its growing population and robust agricultural industry, has less wiggle room than its neighbors to take on more, said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke. Some tribes in Arizona have also contributed to propping up Lake Mead in the past, and could play an outsized role in any new proposal.
Irrigators around Yuma, Arizona, have proposed taking 925,000 acre-feet less of Colorado River water in 2023 and leaving it in Lake Mead if they’re paid $1.4 billion, or $1,500 per acre-foot. The cost is far above the going rate, but irrigators defended their proposal as fair considering the cost to grow crops and get them to market.
Wade Noble, the coordinator for a coalition that represents Yuma water rights holders, said it was the only proposal put forth publicly that includes actual cuts, rather than theoretical cuts to what users are allocated on paper.
Some of the compensation-for-conservation funds could come from a $4 billion drought earmark in the Inflation Reduction Act under consideration in Washington, U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona told the AP.
Sinema acknowledged paying farmers to conserve wasn’t a long-term solution: “In the short-term, however, in order to meet our day-to-day needs and year-to-year needs, ensuring that we’re creating financial incentives for non-use will help us get through,” she said.
Babbitt, too, said money in the legislation will not “miraculously solve the problem” and prices for water must be reasonable to avoid gouging because most water users will take a hit.
“There’s no way that these cuts can all be paid for at a premium price for years and years,” he said.
Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Arizona. Associated Press reporter Kathleen Ronayne contributed from Sacramento, California.
Trump frantically packed up documents to take with him in the last days of his presidency after finally accepting he was leaving the White House, report says
Kelsey Vlamis – August 13, 2022
President Donald Trump talks to reporters while hosting Republican Congressional leaders and members of his cabinet in the Oval Office at the White House July 20, 2020 in Washington, DC.Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images
FBI agents recovered classified materials during a raid on Mar-a-Lago Monday, court documents say.
Sources told NBC News that in the last days of Trump’s presidency aides rushed to pack up documents.
One source said Trump didn’t seriously start preparing to exit the White House until after January 6.
Between the January 6 Capitol attack, challenges to the 2020 election, and his impending second impeachment, President Donald Trump had some chaotic final days in office.
Amid the chaos and the realization that every election challenge was failing, Trump began instructing aides to pack up documents he planned to take with him to Mar-a-Lago, according to an NBC News report published Saturday.
Two sources with knowledge of the situation told the outlet Trump’s aides were hurriedly stuffing documents and other materials into banker boxes that were then shipped to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach club and residence.
One source said Trump only seriously began making plans to leave the White House after January 6, his final two weeks in office, after months of baselessly claiming he had won the election.
“It was a chaotic exit,” the source told NBC. “Everyone piled everything — staff, the White House movers — into the moving trucks. When they got to Mar-a-Lago, they piled everything there in this storage room, except for things like the first lady’s clothes. Everything in a box went there.”
The source said Trump was in a “dark place” at the time and that “he didn’t care about the boxes,” adding: “If you had brought him into that storeroom, and asked, ‘Which are your presidential papers?’ he couldn’t tell you.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and claimed he had declassified all the records at Mar-a-Lago, though he did not provide documentation of the declassification.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that one of Trump’s lawyers told the Justice Department in June that all classified documents had been returned. But, given the recovery of additional classified documents on Monday, the report raised questions about how cooperative and forthcoming the former president and his team have been with investigators.
Trump’s office did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
During his four years in office, Trump developed a reputation for being flippant with presidential records, which are required by law to be preserved. Reports have said Trump would rip up papers or even flush them down the toilet. Some of his former staff members also said he would ask to keep certain documents.
Cheney predicts a lengthy fight for American democracy in her campaign’s closing message
Jon Ward, Chief National Correspondent – August 11, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney released a closing message video ahead of a Republican primary she is expected to lose next week, framing the congressional race as part of a bigger fight for the soul of the nation.
Regardless of the race’s outcome, Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, has publicly hinted recently that she will run for president in 2024. Privately, those close to her have done nothing to discourage others from assuming she will. And while her video message spoke of a long fight required to reject the “poisonous lies” of former President Donald Trump about the 2020 election, she did not give any specific hints about her future plans.
Cheney did, however, talk of a cause that she said would unite Republicans, Democrats and independents. That is a nod to a national effort she seems intent on leading that transcends party and ideology.
“America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law,” Cheney said.
“This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation,” she said.
Rep. Liz Cheney. (Via YouTube)
“If we do not condemn these lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.”
Polls show Cheney is likely to lose her seat in Congress next Tuesday by double-digit margins, to a Republican primary challenger who has shown fealty to Trump and his baseless claims of a rigged election in 2020.
That challenger, Harriet Hageman, is expected not only to win the primary contest for Wyoming’s only congressional seat but, in a state that is largely Republican, to easily win the fall election.
Cheney has said for over a year that she is intent on keeping Trump out of the presidency for a second time, following his central role in fomenting an assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Since then she has been the top Republican on the select committee investigating Jan 6. The panel’s work has revealed how much of what happened on Jan. 6 was premeditated by Trump and his allies.
The questions facing Cheney now — if she does lose to Hageman — will revolve around how much she says about her future plans, including a possible White House run.
DRIED UP: Lakes Mead and Powell are at the epicenter of the biggest Western drought in history
Zack Budryk – August 11, 2022
A formerly sunken boat rests on a now-dry section of lakebed at drought-stricken Lake Mead on May 10. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“The moment of truth is here for everyone. … We need to change fundamentally how we manage and use water.”
Christopher Kuzdas, Environmental Defense Fund
The American West is experiencing its driest period in human history, a megadrought that threatens health, agriculture and entire ways of life. DRIED UP is a series of stories examining the dire effects of the drought on the states most affected — as well as the solutions Americans are embracing.
Nowhere is the Southwest’s worst drought since the year 800 more evident than Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the pair of artificial Colorado River reservoirs whose plunging levels threaten major water and power sources for tens of millions of people.
Already, the region is being forced to adapt to the sweeping effects of climate change, and the lakes and their surrounding area are nearing an environmental point of no return.
The retreating waters have revealed everything from World War II-era boats to multiple sets of human remains, including one in a barrel, a morbid reminder of Las Vegas’s history of organized crime.
Lake Mead is projected to get down to 22 percent of its full capacity by year’s end, while Lake Powell is expected to drop to 27 percent, according to estimations from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Both now sit at record lows.
In Lake Mead alone, the net water loss has worked out to more than 6 trillion gallons, according to data from the National Park Service.
Hoover Dam is already seeing reduced electricity production from Lake Mead’s shrinking size, and the reservoir is projected to fall to approximately 150 feet above “dead pool” status, or the point at which the levels are too low to flow downstream, endangering both power and drinking water.
“The moment of truth is here for everyone,” said Christopher Kuzdas, a senior water program manager with the Environmental Defense Fund. The issues, he added, are an “unmistakable signal that people — we need to change fundamentally how we manage and use water.”
The Colorado River’s vital importance to the West
The Colorado River Basin is in a unique position when it comes to drought: The river’s waters are governed by a century-old agreement among seven states, which allocates more water than actually exists in the river because it was based on data from one of the wettest decades in U.S. history.
The river, America’s sixth-longest, winds through Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and its basin covers about 8 percent of the continental U.S. Approximately 80 percent of its waters eventually go to agriculture, but it also provides drinking water for 25 million people, and its hydroelectric dams produce an average of 8,478 gigawatt hours a year in power-generating capacity.
“Failure isn’t an option, because there is so much at stake here.”
— Christopher Kuzdas, Environmental Defense Fund
Under the interstate usage compact, a new round of water cuts will kick in automatically on Jan. 1 for Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and possibly California if water levels have not increased by year’s end.
For Lake Powell, specifically, the seven states reached an agreement in April to forfeit their water from the reservoir so that it can keep producing power. The federal government, meanwhile, plans to move about 162 billion gallons from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir into Lake Powell.
And if the states involved in the Colorado River compact can’t agree on a plan to reduce water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet by Monday, the federal government will step in to determine the cuts.
“Failure isn’t an option, because there is so much at stake here,” Kuzdas said.
Much of the water policy in the U.S., particularly in the West, was developed so long ago that the era’s different values and priorities made an eventual reckoning inevitable, Kuzdas said.
“We were already trending on this trajectory, but climate change is happening maybe 20 or 30 years sooner than it otherwise would have,” he said.
For residents, difficult choices may lie ahead
The western U.S. in general has already had to make numerous overhauls to how it manages water over the centuries and decades, said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis.
“We’re going to have to continue to make those changes for these macroeconomic reasons. But we’re also going to have to make these changes because of this sort of macro climatic change that we’re seeing with the climate warming,” Lund said. That’s going to mean less water, but it’s also going to mean changes in local ecosystems as hotter temperatures become a new normal, he added.
“We’re going to have some very difficult philosophical, political, practical, economic decisions on how we want to manage these changing conditions,” he said.
Meanwhile, the West, like much of the U.S., is baking under more and more record-shattering, climate change-fueled heat waves. Between 2000 and 2021, the West saw average temperatures about 1.64 degrees Fahrenheit above the average through the second half of the 20th century.
A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change indicates the drought, which could persist until 2030, has been made approximately 40 percent worse by the effects of the warming planet.
Robert Glennon, a law and public policy professor at the University of Arizona, emphasized the importance of local solutions.
“We have tools in our toolkit capable of changing the direction that we’ve been moving,” Glennon said.
Active conservation measures, he told The Hill, “remain the fruit that’s easiest to pick.” He pointed to water conservation steps already taken by major western and southwestern cities including Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles. Those cities, he said, have managed to get their water use below that of the 1980s despite major population growth.
To some extent, however, Glennon said, meaningful conservation will also require a “cultural shift” around how Americans, those in the West particularly, think about water needs.
“I think we can back up and ask ourselves … why on Earth are we watering our lawns in the desert?” he said.
“I often get the question, ‘Can we fix it?’ … and the answer is, absolutely yes,” said Jonathan Deason, director of the Environmental and Energy Management Program at George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “We caused it and so humans can fix it. We will fix it. But how much pain will we go through before we do?”
Boaters cruise in front of mineral-stained rocks in The Narrows upstream of the Hoover Dam on July 28 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. The drought has left a white “bathtub ring” of mineral deposits left by higher water levels on the rocks around the lake. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
State and local policymakers have pressed for active changes to address the drought as well. In a June hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, John J. Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, called on Congress to make “massive investments in agricultural efficiencies.” And Maurice Hall, vice president of climate resilient water systems for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Bureau of Reclamation should have wide latitude to develop groundwater policies with states.
Beyond the Colorado River: Water crises lurk beneath the surface
Some of the challenges facing Lakes Mead and Powell are specific to the Colorado River basin due to the interstate agreement. But as unprecedented heat slams broad swathes of the country, the basin may be a preview of what it looks like for America to pivot to an adaptational approach to heat and drought.
“The Colorado River is getting the most attention recently, but the Central Valley in California has hideously overpumped its groundwater,” Glennon said. “The ground levels there have dropped by 30 to 40 feet — the whole surface of the Earth has dropped in response to excessive groundwater [depletion].”
Separately, he noted, the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies much of the Great Plains states and parts of Texas, is projected to be 70 percent depleted over the next few decades, and the Supreme Court last year had to intervene in a water dispute between the states of Florida and Georgia, ruling against the Sunshine State’s claim that water overconsumption by Georgia is depleting Florida’s oyster fisheries.
The Lake Mead and Lake Powell crises are also coming at a major moment for federal climate policy — the White House, after nearly two years, appears poised to secure major climate climate legislation, which has cleared the Senate and is set for a vote in the Democratic-controlled House on Friday.
But if, as expected, Democrats lose their majority in one or both chambers in November’s midterm elections, much of the further work on climate reform will likely be limited to the state level.
But Glennon says in many ways, that’s already the case.
“Even if you had a vast, grand [climate change] mitigation policy at the federal level, you would still have to have tremendous amounts of state and federal activities in terms of climate change adaptation, because there’s just very little likelihood that mitigation alone get rid of the need for local adaptation,” he said.
The WNBA star and her lawyers had asked for leniency after officials at a Russian airport allegedly found less than a gram of hash oil in her luggage in February, but a Russian court sentenced Griner to nine years, just below the maximum-possible sentence of 10.
Across Russia, there are 35 women’s penal colonies that house an estimated 60,000 inmates, Ivan Melnikov, the vice president of the Russian Department of the International Human Rights Defense Committee, and Yekaterina Kalugina, a Russian human rights activist who observed Griner and her living conditions in March, tell PEOPLE.
The cells have just over 11 feet of private space, with most cells holding anywhere between 40 to 60 women who sleep in bunk beds.
Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing in the Khimki district court
Jim Heintz/AP/Shutterstock Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing in the Khimki district court
Melnikov and Kalugina say much of what goes on in the colonies depends on the prison governor, with some being more strict than others. (Both say they cannot reveal which colony Griner is located.)
“Brittney is being held in a detention cell within a penal colony,” Melnikov says. At the detention center, the spaces are cramped and there’s only a small exercise yard, but there is a benefit to staying there — each day counts as two towards a prison sentence.
Kalungina expects that the guards will keep Griner in the detention center until Russia and the U.S. decide if they’ll go through with her prisoner exchange.
Melnikov adds that “she is likely to stay there for the time of her appeal, which might be up to three months if she isn’t pardoned and exchanged before then, but if her appeal fails, she might be sent on to another colony.”
WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner sits in a cage in a courtroom prior to a hearing at the Khimki City Court outside Moscow, Russia, 27 July 2022. Griner, a World Champion player of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury team was arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after some hash oil was detected and found in her luggage, for which she now could face a prison sentence of up to ten years. US basketball player Brittney Griner attends hearing on drug charges, Moscow, Russian Federation – 27 Jul 2022
ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Brittney Griner
Inside the colony, there’s more space and Griner will have to work eight hours a day. For most prisoners, this means sewing, cleaning, cooking and serving food, but, because of her career as a WNBA player, Griner can see about coaching women’s basketball. There’s a precedent for such an arrangement — Russian soccer players Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamayev coached inmates while they served time in one of the colonies.
Melnikov says that it’s up to the prison governor to decide if Griner can coach.
“I hope that she will be sent to a colony with a lenient governor who allows her to coach basketball in the daytime rather than being a seamstress,” he says. “Prisoners are encouraged to play sports or do yoga and so on, and basketball is popular. I think that would be the best thing for her.”
Brianna Turner #21, Skylar Diggins-Smith #4, Kia Nurse #0 and Brittney Griner #42 of the Phoenix Mercury
Ethan Miller/Getty (L-R) Brianna Turner, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Kia Nurse and Brittney Griner
Each morning, Melnikov says, the prisoners “are woken at 6 a.m., they wash, dress, make their beds, stand to attention for the register, go to breakfast and then start an eight-hour working day, usually as a seamstresses. But we are trying to encourage governors to use the talents of the inmates. For example, working with art.”
Prisoners in the colony get some free time outside of their work requirements, Melnikov says.
“Their free time is set by the governor, from half an hour to two hours a day and during that time they can just chat with each other, read a book from the library, write letters home, play sports, play board games and call friends and family.”
The prisoners are supposed to get a minimum wage of $180 a month, Melnikov says, which they can spend in the prison shop on items like toiletries, tampons, cigarettes and fresh fruit and vegetables, and they can also pay for the internet to send emails.
Generally, though, the conditions are difficult. Tuberculosis is common in the colonies, many prisoners are malnourished from the limited food and the medical care is poor. Most need friends and family to send them food and basic toiletries, but that isn’t possible for some prisoners.
Sarah Krivanek, another American who has been imprisoned in Russia for the last nine months on charges of assaulting a Russian man who quickly dropped any charges against her, went through a similar process to Griner. She stayed in a detention center through her trial and appeal, and is now serving a one-year, three-month sentence at a penal colony in Ryazan, a city about 120 miles southeast of Moscow, PEOPLE reported. Krivanek, too, is hoping for the U.S. to bring her home.
RELATED VIDEO: ‘Forgotten’ American Woman Jailed in Russia with Brittney Griner Tried to Flee with U.S. Help Before Arrest
For now, though, Griner is again waiting to hear what will happen to her. She’s staying in the detention center, where she can choose to work to get outside and see other people, but the two-time Olympic gold medalist doesn’t know if she’ll be exchanged, have a successful appeal, or if she’ll live out her next nine years in a Russian penal colony.
When Griner heard about the potential exchange, she was “quite happy to know that she’s not been forgotten and that there are some possible developments,” her lawyer, Maria Blagovolina, previously told PEOPLE. “But she’s quite realistic about what’s going on.”
