It’s always good to have backup plans. But sometimes you need to have contingency plans for your contingency plans. That’s where the Bureau of Reclamation finds itself as the seven Colorado River Basin states still have not finalized their drought contingency plans.
On March 4, the Bureau of Reclamation opened a short comment period. The agency seeks input from the governors of Colorado River Basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—on what the federal agency should do if the states can’t come to an agreement on how to manage the dwindling water of the Colorado River through drought contingency plans (DCPs).
“The Basin States made significant progress in 2018 on draft DCP agreements that would implement Upper and Lower Basin DCPs, but work on the DCPs remains unfinished,” the announcement of the comment period read.
“While the Department supports the ongoing efforts of the Basin States and remains cautiously optimistic that the Basin States will successfully complete their efforts promptly in early 2019, the Department is highly concerned that the continued delays regarding adoption of the DCPs inappropriately increases risk for all that rely on the waters of the Colorado River.”
According to Bureau of Reclamation estimates, over 40 million people across the seven Basin States depend on the Colorado River for their water. The DPCs are needed because the Colorado River is historically overallocated across the seven states and Mexico. Additionally, decades of drought have drawn down the river’s primary storage sites—Lake Mead in Arizona and Nevada and Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona—to historical lows.
Continued DCP delays
Thus far, Arizona and California are the sticking points in the seven-state agreement. Arizona had the unusual requirement of its DCP to be cleared through its state legislature, which slowed down the process relative to other states.
As of press time, the Arizona effort was still underway. In its call for comments, the Bureau of Reclamation noted that this suggests “that finalization of the [Arizona] DCP is imminent.”
The sticking point in California lies in the Salton Sea; a shallow, salty terminal lake historically fed by the Colorado River in Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District (IID). According to IID information, declining water levels in the lake could expose the highly saline, and possibly toxic, lake bed soil to the air, where particulates could “further deteriorate the compromised air quality in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.”
However, stakeholders don’t seem to be on the same page regarding the Salton Sea’s place in the state’s DCP. Erik Ortega, president of the IID board of directors issued, a statement on March 1, saying any Lower Basin DCP that “attempts to sidestep or work around the unique environmental challenges posed by the Salton Sea, or one that excludes IID because the other parties ‘can’t wait’ for the sea isn’t really a contingency plan. It’s an escape hatch.”
Deadlines, real and imagined
The mainstream press has reported the March 4 date as another missed deadline for the DCP timeline.
“It wasn’t really a deadline, per se,” Patti Aaron, media contact for the Bureau of Reclamation, told WLJ. She explained that Jan. 31 had been a real deadline in the DCP timeline that was missed, as reported in the Feb. 18 issue of WLJ.
However, the reference to “early 2019” in the call for comments’ expectation of completed DCPs does come with a deadline; March 19, the close of the comment period.
“We need to have things done as soon as possible,” Aaron told WLJ.
There are a few other Colorado River drought-related deadlines on the horizon. The Bureau of Reclamation cited August 2019 as a deadline for “determinations of the operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead in 2020.” Elsewhere, it cited Dec. 31, 2020 as a statutory deadline for the “2007 Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lack Mead.”
“In the circumstance that the DCPs cannot be promptly completed in early 2019, the Department must be prepared to take actions—if needed—to respond to the increasing risks facing the Colorado River Basin,” the Bureau of Reclamation’s request for comments read.
Elsewhere, the bureau expressed strong desire that the Basin States come to a consensus among themselves rather than necessitate federal action.
“Simply put, this approach minimizes the likelihood that controversies will increase and intensify as water supplies diminish.” — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
