Political obstacles and increased winter precipitation will slow U.S. federal and state officials’ response to the decline of the Colorado River until at least after the November 2024 election. Cities in the U.S. Southwest will thus initially be forced to take the lead on water restrictions, which will further undermine the desert region’s attractiveness in the face of climate change and rising living costs, and negatively impact its labor market for defense and technology industries. On April 11, the U.S. Department of the Interior released three options to address the critical water shortages in the Colorado River. The first, which the Department of Interior itself suggested is unfeasible, is to allow the river to continue to decline without water cuts or adjustments in the levels of reservoirs. The second is to impose cuts equally for the seven states that utilize the river, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California. The last is to make cuts based on priority and seniority, which would largely favor California and leave more recently settled Arizona and Nevada to shoulder the biggest cuts. States have until May 30 to comment on the plan and come up with an agreement. After that, the Federal government could suggest its own plan if the states that make up the Colorado River Compact fail to make an agreement.
- The Colorado River’s water usage is governed by the 1922 Colorado River Compact among the seven states that share the river’s basin. The allotments for the Lower Colorado River Basin (which is made up of Arizona, Nevada and California) were established in 1928 at the end of a particularly wet decade. As a result, each state has an annual usage rate that normal rainfall totals have long been unable to replace.
- The Rocky Mountains enjoyed heavier than normal snowfall in the winter of 2022-23, which will likely increase water flows for the spring and summer into the Colorado River basin. This will probably ease shortages in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which hold the bulk of the region’s water supplies and provide hydroelectric power for millions of people. However, projections show only that repeated wetter-than-normal years — an unlikely prospect in the face of climate change — can prevent water cuts for users of the river in the coming years.
- A proposed Israeli-backed desalination plant that would be built in Mexico’s state of Sonora and supply fresh water to Arizona has also run into political and environmental obstacles. Environmentalists worry such a plant would damage the Sea of Cortez by increasing its salinity, while the governor of Sonora axed the deal and accused the Israeli company, IDE Technologies, of ”lacking ethics” in February 2023.
- A 2023 Bureau of Reclamation study claims that Lake Powell, the more at-risk of the two reservoirs, will remain above minimum operating levels (or ”deadpool”) under even its worst-case projections until spring 2024.
The Importance of the Colorado River
The 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) Colorado River provides water and hydroelectric power for nearly 40 million people in the U.S. Southwest and Southern California. The river’s management has enabled the United States to develop an otherwise-arid region to support booming agriculture, defense and technology industries. Today, farms watered by the Colorado River — particularly those in California’s Imperial Valley — produce much of the United States’ winter crops. The U.S. Southwest and Southern California also host key defense companies like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, which utilize the region’s reliable weather and open landscape for testing. Several key technology companies reside in the area as well, including IBM, Motorola and, most recently, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is setting up operations in Phoenix, Arizona.
Intense lobbying against water cuts and this year’s higher-than-normal snowfall, along with Arizona and Nevada’s status as key electoral battleground states, means the implementation of widespread federal mandatory cuts will likely be delayed until after elections in November 2024. Increased springtime water flows for reservoirs above Lake Powell will give states and the federal government the flexibility to more strategically release stored water upstream to keep both Lake Powell and Lake Mead above deadpool status for the next few years. Meanwhile, California seems unlikely to shift its current objection to sharing the cuts equally between the states as its proposed policies favor waiting longer before implementing likely unpopular and economically disruptive water cuts. Farming lobbies and Native American tribes in each state are also gearing up for legal and political fights to push the cuts elsewhere, with threatened lawsuits further slowing the political process to impose cuts. In addition, both Arizona and Nevada are political battleground states for national elections in 2024. Arizona, in particular, will host a three-way race for a seat in the closely divided U.S. Senate. For the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, imposing deep, mandatory water cuts in the lead-up to the vote would risk sparking political backlash from urban and agricultural water users in those battleground states. The impact such cuts would have on farms watered by the Colorado River (which are a key source of U.S. winter crops, including feed crops for livestock) would also risk further increasing food prices in the United States — another key political issue. Given these political and economic risks, the White House is thus unlikely to take significant action on the Colorado River crisis ahead of November 2024 for fear of turning election results in Republicans’ favor.
- In the 2020 election, Biden narrowly defeated former U.S. President Donald Trump in Arizona by some 10,000 votes, the first time a Democratic candidate had carried the state since former President Bill Clinton in 1996. Republicans remain hopeful that a policy misstep might flip the state back into their column in 2024.
- Strategic releases of upstream dams have been proposed as a means to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead from reaching deadpool, as have modifications to the dams to keep them providing water. Lake Powell recently had a new water intake system installed in January 2023 to allow it to continue to provide water to nearby Page, Arizona, even as water levels continue to decline.
Despite the federal and state governments deferring action, local governments will debate and implement what they assume will be inevitable water cuts and restrictions in the coming years, creating a patchwork of regulations. Local politics and perceptions of the Colorado River emergency will likely shape municipal and local restrictions, with some cities (like Las Vegas, Nevada) continuing aggressive water restrictions, as others (like Scottsdale, Arizona) ask for voluntary reductions. Las Vegas has already implemented some cuts based largely on the cosmetic use of water; Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona are also considering potential reductions of water use in their cities. Phoenix, for its part, has successfully flatlined the absolute total of water over the past 20 years thanks to such changes in water consumption, which include requirements for things like low-flow toilets and water-saving showers. The entire state of California, meanwhile, has been under water restrictions since 2021 due to its own ongoing drought, which heavier-than-usual rains this winter have only recently begun to ease. However, such water restrictions will be more difficult to impose in agricultural communities, as state governments are subject to intense lobbying from this sector to provide water at an affordable rate.
- In April, the city council in Tucson began debating how to impose its own municipal water cuts, including limiting the size of swimming pools in the city, cutting back on water for golf courses and limiting the time of day for public watering. Las Vegas has already implemented similar water-saving measures, including a ban on ”ornamental” grass lawns deemed unnecessary by the city.
But such conservation efforts will likely undermine the attractiveness of U.S. cities in Southern California and the Southwest, which will most heavily impact tech and defense companies in the region that are already struggling to attract skilled workers due to climate concerns and rising living costs. With cuts likely focused on ornamental use of water (like in swimming pools, golf courses and lawns), Southwestern cities’ traditional, water-intensive amenities will be undermined. This will feed into the growing national narrative that the Southwest’s current lifestyle is unsustainable as climate change makes the desert region even hotter and drier, which will deter others from moving there. It will also reduce Southwestern cities’ attractiveness for certain workers amid increased housing costs — especially those in tech and defense, who are being increasingly lured by companies in California, the Pacific Northwest, Texas and elsewhere.
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Projections suggest summer temperatures in Phoenix and Las Vegas will average well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, placing them among the ranks of current cities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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A surge of new migrants arrived in Arizona during the COVID-19 pandemic to escape restrictions and/or take advantage of new flexible work-from-home arrangements. This increased demand, combined with a lack of new housing, has seen real estate prices skyrocket in a state once known for its cheap housing tracts. In 2022 alone, average home prices in Arizona’s Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix) increased 36%, from $310,000 in the first quarter of 2022 to $482,000 in the fourth quarter, according to data released by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
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According to a study by PoolResearch, Arizona and Nevada have the most swimming pools per capita in the United States, with 13 and 14 people per pool in each state, respectively. The affordability of such amenities is part of Nevada and Arizon’as overall attractiveness, particularly during the summer months that often see weeks of triple-degree temperatures.
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Defense contractor Raytheon has reportedly struggled to hire and attract senior leadership and engineers in Tucson as part of the company’s wider struggle to fill thousands of positions. Some job postings now come with $30,000 sign-on bonuses. Arizona had a 3.7% unemployment rate in February 2023, the lowest since September 2007 and only .1% higher than the national average of 3.6% that month.