Federal officials are easing water restrictions on the Colorado River next year, an incredible improvement after above-average winter snowpack helped shore up plummeting water levels.
Federal officials are easing water restrictions on the Colorado River next year, an incredible improvement after above-average winter snowpack helped shore up plummeting water levels at the nation’s two largest reservoirs.
“A Tier 1 shortage is still very much a shortage,” Brenda Burman, general manager of the Central Arizona Project and former Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, told CNN. But bureau commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in a statement the region’s prolonged drought, which is exacerbated by climate change, has prompted the feds and states to reconsider how to manage the Colorado River going forward.
The Colorado River’s remarkable improvement this year can mostly be credited to last year’s phenomenal winter, which raised depleted reservoirs across the West and reversed the freefall at Lakes Mead and Powell. Lake Mead, for instance, is around 20 feet higher now than it was in August 2022. “One wet year is enough to offset two to three dry years,” Hasencamp said. States are also already focused on cutting back their yearly water usage as part of negotiations with the federal government; California is starting to implement a plan to cut 400,000 acre-feet of water annually for the next four years.
The federal government isn’t expected to make awards on those projects until at least the end of the year.
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