Opinion: Department of Interior needs to review agricultural use of water amid negotiations for Colorado River cuts
As Lake Mead continues to decline toward dead pool, federal officials are requesting the Colorado River states to offer major cuts in water usage. Nevada has responded with a detailed and innovative plan set forth in a December 20, 2022 letter to the Bureau of Reclamation, calling for basic reform of water management throughout the entire Colorado River system. … Arizona and California have not responded in public. They remain on the sidelines, unable to summon the political will to either agree or to propose an alternative. The reason Arizona and California are internally deadlocked can be summed up in one word: agriculture. Irrigated agriculture uses more than 70 percent of the water allocated to the two states from Lake Mead.
-Written by Bruce Babbitt, an attorney and politician from the state of Arizona, and President Bill Clinton’s secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001.