Water Conservation Proving Successful as Colorado River Water Users Avoid Crisis Again

Today, as it does every August, the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) released data used to determine Colorado River operating conditions for the following year. Thanks to persistent and increasing conservation by water users in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico in addition to a couple of good winters’ snow accumulation in the mountains—crisis-level shortages impacting cities in Arizona and California will be avoided.

The “August 2024 Most Probable 24-Month Study” projects that at the end of the year, Lake Mead, the enormous reservoir supplying the southern portions of the Colorado River Basin, will sit at elevation 1062 feet above mean sea level, resulting in “Tier One” shortages and water conservation requirements under the current rules. Without farmers’ as well as some cities’ proactive water conservation measures in the Lower Colorado River Basin, including Mexico, the water surface in the reservoir might have been 25 feet lower, and significant mandatory water shortages would have hit millions of people living in Phoenix and Los Angeles and across the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Here's the backstory: in 2007, the first-ever Colorado River shortage rules were adopted with a built-in sunset in 2026. But in the years since, as increasingly warm temperatures have dried out the region and diminished the river’s flow, the federal and state agencies that manage it have scrambled to define and implement additional water conservation commitments not just once, but three times. Each time they thought they were putting rules in place that would get them to 2026: in 2019, they adopted “Drought Contingency Plans;” in 2022, they adopted the “500 plus plan;” and in 2023, they adopted a supplemental set of rules for near-term operations (often referred to as the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement). Concurrent with these commitments, the U.S. and Mexico adopted additional agreements that align Mexico’s water conservation commitments with those in the United States. With all of these rule-makings that govern water operations, state and federal government agencies have secured a path that substitutes more frequent, voluntary (and often compensated) water use reductions in the agricultural sector as an alternative to less frequent but more abrupt mandatory shortages that, by law, would be imposed on cities, which in most cases have “junior” water rights that must be cut first.

Looking forward, state and federal decision-makers are negotiating rules for managing the Colorado River after 2026. At Audubon, we’re advocating for these rules to be flexible and adaptive to increasing climate change impacts so that they can last for a longer term without needing additional conservation commitments before they expire. We are also advocating for rules that prioritize the protection and restoration of river-related habitats that support birds including the Yuma Ridgway’s Rail and the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, a more inclusive process for making decisions, consensus solutions that avoid litigation, as well as investments to improve the resilience of the entire Colorado River Basin.