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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Thursday, August 18, 2022
The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that Colorado River water shortages had passed a threshold that will require unprecedented water cuts in Arizona and Nevada, but a multi-state consensus on future cuts remains elusive.
Seven states in the Colorado River Basin have emerged from 3 months of negotiations with no agreement for how to conserve between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in 2023, leaving that decision in the hands of the Bureau of Reclamation.
The climate funding package that Senate Democrats expect to pass this weekend will include $4 billion in drought-related funding for the Bureau of Reclamation.
The Bureau of Reclamation is working on new steps to prevent further depletion of drought-stricken Colorado River reservoirs that are critical for agriculture and cities but shrinking to levels that can’t sustain hydropower.
The federal government’s Drought Resilience Interagency Working Group is helping coordinate the distribution of $13 billion provided by the infrastructure bill as drought continues to hammer western communities.
The Interior Department is doling out more than $240 million for repairs to aging water infrastructure in the drought-ridden West, one of the first investments with ramifications for agriculture in the $1.5 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted last year.
The Bureau of Reclamation only plans to allocate 50,000 acre-feet of water to Klamath Basin farmers this year, a drought-inspired move that has producers concerned about the 170,000 acres of cropland they hoped to irrigate.
Legislators and citizens in the Pacific Northwest are engulfed in a debate over whether or not to breach four dams on the Snake River to restore dwindling salmon populations.
