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Major Wins and Losses for Lake Mead Under New Government Plan
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. After years of drought, shrinking reservoirs and intensifying disputes over water, the federal government has released a new plan for operating Lakes Mead and Powell.
Experts say it could help stabilize the system in the near term, but not necessarily restore it.
The Bureau of Reclamation has released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), setting out a 10-year framework for operating Lake Powell and Lake Mead through 2036.
The plan designates a preferred alternative that establishes an adaptive decision-making framework for the nation's two largest reservoirs. It is designed to provide operational flexibility while allowing the seven Colorado River Basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—to continue pursuing consensus-based agreements over water use.
The plan comes as the Colorado River system remains under severe strain. Reclamation said the combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead have not been this low since before Glen Canyon Dam began filling in 1963, while water use has exceeded total system inflow in most years since 2000.
The river provides water for more than 40 million people, supports hydropower across seven states, serves 30 tribes and two Mexican states, and sustains 5.5 million acres of farmland across the West.
When contacted for comment, a Reclamation spokesperson pointed Newsweek to a previous press release on the plan, which included the following statement from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum:
“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it," he said.
"This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”
One immediate win for Lake Mead could come not from the broad federal framework itself, but from a related Lower Basin proposal covering the first two years of operations.
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, told Newsweek there are effectively two plans at issue: Reclamation’s final environmental review, which she described as “fundamentally the Bureau’s determination of the scope of its authority,” and the Lower Basin states’ proposed two-year operating plan.
“The proposed cuts and conservation, plus additional conservation by Mexico, will result in significant reductions in the amount of water that is taken out of Lake Mead and potentially keep lake elevations up,” Porter said.
She identified California’s willingness to accept reductions as a major plus point. “One of the big positives coming out of the Lower Basin proposal is California’s willingness to take a 10 percent cut and contribute additional conservation,” Porter said, adding that California has previously leaned on its senior water priority to avoid voluntary cuts.
For water users in Arizona, California and Nevada, Porter said implementation of the Lower Basin proposal could also provide “incrementally more certainty” over the next two years.
Doug Kenney, director of the Western Water Policy Program at the University of Colorado, said a key issue will be whether Reclamation demands further reductions.
“The key issue to look for in that plan is the size of Lower Basin cutbacks in years 1 and 2,” Kenney said. He said Lower Basin users have expected cuts of around 1.5 million acre-feet per year, but the framework “keeps the door open to cuts twice that large.”
“If so, then that’s a very big deal,” he said.
But experts cautioned against viewing the plan as a rescue package for Lake Mead alone. Porter said the reservoirs are “managed conjunctively,” adding: “It’s really not about one reservoir benefiting more than the other.”
John Berggren, regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, made a similar point, saying Reclamation’s goal is to “protect the system writ large, which includes both reservoirs.”
Berggren said the framework appears to be moving in the right direction because the ranges for Lower Basin shortages and Lake Powell releases are “starting to be in the right ball park of where we need to be.” Still, he emphasized that the framework does not spell out exactly how the system will be operated.
That uncertainty may be one of the plan’s biggest weaknesses.
Porter called the FEIS “a plan to plan,” rather than a long-term project designed to recover reservoir elevations and stabilize the system. “The Lower Basin states' two-year proposal will help, but it probably won’t be sufficient to enable the reservoirs to recover,” she said.
Kenney was also skeptical of any major rebound. “Neither reservoir figures to see any great ‘rebound’ under this framework,” he said. “The goal is to avoid further catastrophic declines .”
He added that the plan prioritizes protecting storage in Lake Powell at levels needed to maintain hydropower production. “Many critics, myself included, think now is the right time to transition to a one-reservoir approach where Lake Mead is the primary storage vessel , but Reclamation is not open to that approach,” Kenney said.
Berggren said the absence of a seven-state agreement remains a significant gap. “We have the framework with a broad range of operations, but how those get implemented and how some of the programs get built out depend on the states being in agreement,” he said. “If one or more states file litigation in the coming months, that throws cold water on everything.”
Porter also said she would not be surprised to see legal challenges, particularly over Reclamation’s view of its authority in the Upper Basin and its obligations to deliver water to the Lower Basin.
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