CNN —
In a closed-door negotiation last week over the fate of the Colorado River, representatives from California’s powerful water districts proposed modeling what the basin’s future would look like if some of the West’s biggest cities – including Phoenix and Las Vegas – were cut off from the river’s water supply, three people familiar with the talks told CNN.
More than 5 million people in Arizona are served by Colorado River water, which accounts for 40% of Phoenix’s supply. Around 90% of Las Vegas’ water is from the river.
The proposal came in a session between states that was focused on achieving unprecedented water cuts to save the Colorado River – a system that overall provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in the West. For months, seven states have been trying to come up with cuts to keep the river system from crashing.
As the river shrinks, talks to save it are increasingly pitting the longstanding senior water rights of farmers against explosive metropolitan growth.
California was proposing following the “law of the river,” which gives farmers in major agricultural districts first dibs on water because they have a priority claim established before other districts’ rights – including Californian cities like Los Angeles, which receives around half of its water from the Colorado River.
The eye-popping suggestion was met with strong and immediate pushback from other state officials at the negotiating table, the people familiar with the discussions said.
John Enstminger, the general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority who was not present at this particular session, told CNN the proposal was a major concern for public health and safety in Western cities.
“If you want to model cutting off most or all of the water supply of 27 million Americans, you can go through the exercise but implementing that on the ground would have the direst consequence for almost 10% of the country,” Entsminger said.
Arizona’s top water official, Tom Buschatzke, wouldn’t comment on the closed-door discussion. But he told CNN Arizona officials would not contemplate entirely cutting their biggest cities and Native American tribes off Colorado River water.
“I would not, even under a modeling scenario, agree or ask the federal government to model a scenario in which the Central Arizona Project goes to zero,” Buschatzke said. “I will not do that. The implications would be pretty severe if CAP went to zero. Severe for tribes, severe for cities, severe for industries.”
One source familiar with the meeting disputed that California asked to model cutting other agencies and cities all the way to zero but stipulated that if California was to compromise to other states’ demands, it also wanted to see one of the options follow the river’s current strict priority system “as the default baseline.”
US Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton last year called on the basin’s seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming – to figure out how to cut 2 to 4 million acre feet of usage, or as much as 30% of their river water allocation. She vowed the federal government would step in if an agreement couldn’t be reached.
The question is who bears the brunt of the unprecedented cuts needed to keep Colorado River flowing into America’s largest reservoirs. If the feds take a heavy hand, it could set the stage for a tense legal battle – all while the nation’s largest reservoirs continue to decline.
Arizona’s perspective is that it thinks California will let them “dry up and blow away,” one source familiar with the meeting told CNN. California’s perspective, the source added, is: “We fought for a century to preserve our super-priority, why should we give it up now?”
On Monday, six of the basin states – Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming – released a proposed model for how much Colorado River water they could potentially cut, maxing out at 3.1 million acre feet per year. That model accounts for the water lost to evaporation and leaky river infrastructure.
California is expected to release its own model this week.
But multiple states told CNN that they are going to try to continue to get an agreement everyone can support, while acknowledging talks so far have been difficult.
“We’re committed to continuing to work collectively as seven basin states,” said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water official, called the six-state proposal a “very positive outcome” and said he and others would try to keep conversations going with California.
“I’m committed to continuing to work with all seven states,” Buschatzke said, adding additional conversations and negotiations would continue “over the next few months.”
Still, the breakdown in agreement between California and the rest of the Colorado River Basin increases the prospect for federal officials to introduce their own cuts in the coming months. Buschatzke told CNN federal officials have not shared much with the states on what number of cuts they’re targeting.
“They haven’t shared with us any cumulative ballpark,” he said. “I believe it’s imperative we know the ballpark at least, and eventually the specific number, because it will be less of a gap to close on the necessary reductions.”