AZ Central – The Arizona Republic
Colorado River would need years of ‘biblical’ precipitation to be restored. The Gaggle plumbs Arizona’s water crisis
Kaely Monahan, Arizona Republic – August 31, 2022
The news reports are morbid. Bodies are being discovered in the newly visible muck of Lake Mead. But perhaps the most terrifying reality about the water situation involving the Colorado River is not the past; it’s the future for all of us. The water is drying up.
In early August, the U.S. Interior Department announced a water shortage that will trigger cuts in the water supply in Arizona and other parts of the Southwest. A United Nations environmental program said Lake Powell and Lake Mead had reached “dangerously low levels.”
The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the nation’s water projects, gave the seven states and 30 tribes that use the Colorado River eight weeks to come up with a plan to conserve more water.
The goal was to conserve an extra 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water, thereby stabilizing the rapidly dwindling reservoirs.
However, no plan was reached, and the clock keeps ticking.
Arizona has been fiercely conserving water for some time. But we share the Colorado River with California, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, as well as 30 federally recognized tribes.
This doesn’t take into account Mexico, which also uses the river as a water supply.
In this episode of The Gaggle, host Ron Hansen is joined by The Republic’s Brandon Loomis and Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU. Together they wade through the issues facing our state’s water supply and what government and policy leaders are doing about them.
Listen to the episode:
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