With Lake Mead At 38% Of Capacity, Still No Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan

EDIT

Thirty-five miles away in Las Vegas, Lake Mead's water bubbles up from an ornate fountain inside Caesars Palace. The casino resort is the venue where water managers as part of the Colorado River Water Users Association — sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation, which also provides funding support for water reporting at KUNC — meet each winter to hash out their biggest problems. And right now, that problem is Lake Mead.

“It’s rather clear that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when the Colorado River goes into an official shortage,” says Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The lake has been flirting with that shortage declaration for years. If the water drops to less than 1,075 feet in elevation, the Department of Interior Secretary could, for the first time, announce a shortage and start curtailing deliveries downstream. This year alone the lake has been within 10 feet of the shortage level since April. In the past two years it’s been even closer.

If triggered, the shortage could allow the federal government to have a stronger hand in managing the river, a thought that leaves many local and state-based water managers queasy. “With that looming over us,” Kightlinger says, “we’ve been trying to figure out — are there ways we can cooperatively share this pain and make this whole situation easier?”

Under the current guidelines, set up in a 2007 agreement among the states, Arizona would be hit the hardest. A cascade of water users could see their deliveries curtailed in a shortage declaration: First farmers, then suburban developers, possibly even big cities like Phoenix and Tucson if Lake Mead continues to drop. But an agreement in the works -- called the Drought Contingency Plan -- would, for the first time, place some of burden on fast-growing California.

EDIT

http://www.kunc.org/post/elusive-colorado-river-drought-plan-fails-materialize-now