-The Lower Colorado River Basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California are offering to further cut the amount of water they get from the river.

The Lower Basin states say these cuts are part of a plan to stabilize the river's water supply and would be in addition to the water reductions they proposed earlier this year when negotiations with the Upper Basin states failed.

Those negotiations are to determine how the Upper and Lower Basin states manage the Colorado River and how much water each state gets from it.

The current guidelines for that are set to expire at the end of this year.

So what impact is the new proposal having?

Joining us now, Alan Halaly, Water and Environment Reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Welcome back.

-Thank you for having me.

-This newest proposal, what are they proposing and how significant are these cuts?

(Alan Halaly) They are pretty significant, perhaps the most significant we've seen in modern history.

You know, we're talking about cuts to the tune of 3.2 million acre-feet across these three states.

And for Nevada, that could be about 50,000 acre-feet per year in 2027 and 2028.

And beyond that, the states are exploring how they could potentially add 700,000 acre-feet to that total.

That could be an additional 50,000 per year for Nevada.

Now, you may know that Nevada has the smallest share of the Colorado River.

We have 300,000 acre-feet.

We routinely operate within those boundaries.

Last year, our water use came in just below 200,000 acre-feet.

But if this goes through as proposed, this could be the time where we take almost a third of a cut in our water allocations.

And that's just where the negotiators are at this point in trying to stabilize the system in this historically dry year.

-For some context, an acre-foot of water is...?

-An acre-foot of water is-- The metric usually is that it's enough to sustain two single-family households for a full year.

-Okay.

So Lower Basin States, including Nevada, are sweetening the deal.

What has the Upper Basin's response been?

-Really, there's been radio silence.

We saw the Upper Basin call for a third-party mediator to, I suppose, break through in some of these stalemate talks that we've been seeing for years now.

But the reality is, the Upper Basin has not offered any mandatory conservation commitments.

They have discussed voluntary ones.

But in my conversations with the Lower Basin negotiators, they cast some doubt on that.

They talk about, very frequently, that they feel that pain every year, even in not dry years, because of their obligation to send water downstream to us here in the Lower Basin.

-Will you remind our viewers what the Upper Basin says is its reasoning for not making any cuts or proposing any cuts.

-Right.

Well, they say, you know, because they don't have reservoir storage as significant as we do here with Lake Mead and Lake Powell is very closely tied to those releases to Lake Mead.

They say that they can't take those cuts because every year, no matter if it's a wet or a dry year, they have to shut off users and their state engineers have to proportionately take some of those cuts for folks.

So they say that they don't have any more to give, that we should live with the river that we have.

The overuse problem is largely a Lower Basin problem, but the Lower Basin is also really the only party here that's offering something on the table.

-So the Lower Basin cuts, are they going to happen?

What happens next?

-Yeah.

So the Arizona legislature will have to approve it, as well as California and Nevada water agencies.

I believe it should be discussed at the next Southern Nevada Water Authority meeting, and it's pending that as well as the release of potentially some federal funding, that additional 700,000 acre-feet that I discussed that they're exploring.

They say very clearly that they cannot do that without some additional federal funding.

-Okay.

So the operating guidelines expire at the end of this year.

The new proposals from the Lower Basin extend this out to 2028.

I mean, am I saying that correctly?

Would that push these negotiations back, give more time?

-That's what the implication is, I think.

I think this is the Lower Basin saying, you know, We're kind of at our wits end.

There needs to be some immediate, you know, sweeping cuts to stabilize the system, and this is what we can offer in the short term, absent some Upper Basin cooperation.

-If there is no deal reached, then the federal government will step in, but they are already stepping in.

What actions have they taken?

-Yeah.

So this year they released water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which is upstream of Lake Powell, into Lake Powell to avoid a scenario where they might not even be able to send water downstream to Lake Mead because of the plumbing problems there.

And in addition to that, they are-- they are reducing the releases from Lake Powell into Lake Mead by more than a million acre-feet.

So that's significant, not in any tangible way for our water supply at the moment, but as soon as this fall, we could see about a 40% reduction in hydro power generation at Hoover Dam.

And that's significant maybe not for urban Southern Nevada but for some of our rural utilities that tend to rely on that almost exclusively for their power generation.

-Lastly, tell us about this past winter and its ability to impact the drought.

-Absolutely, yeah.

It's been a really meager year for snowpack in the Rocky Mountains.

You know, you may remember that 2002 was the year that we kind of started taking water conservation seriously in Southern Nevada, because of just how poor the yield was when we talk about runoff into Lake Powell.

And water managers and hydrologists are saying that this could beat it.

The runoff season runs from April through July, so we're still kind of in, in the thick of it.

But, yeah, I mean, we're talking about like 20% of normal, and that's particularly concerning.

I mean, you probably see a lot of headlines about runoff and snowpack, but this year is the one that really is going to put the system to the test.

-Alan Halaly, Las Vegas Review-Journal, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.