The Colorado River: A High-Level Look at the Water Shortage and Policy Negotiations Today
It’s been all over the news for decades – the Colorado River, which supplies roughly 40 million people in the arid southwest with freshwater – is drying up.
Consumers are using more water each year than the river provides, and the enormous reservoirs known as Lakes Mead and Powell have been depleted further than ever before, putting the water and power supplies of millions at risk.
Add to this the fact that nearly all of the federal guidelines in place to protect water supplies coming from the Colorado River expire in 2026 and it’s a recipe for a potential policy disaster on the not-too-distant horizon.
So how did we get here? And what are policymakers doing today to avert an even worse crisis down the line?
We sat down with UArizona water and policy experts to talk about the Colorado River crisis, how we got where we are and the future of governance on the river.