"The Bush administration is threatening to impose unilateral water cutbacks on California, Arizona and Nevada if the three states can't come up with a plan to deal with a historic drought on the Colorado River. Following five years of dry weather, the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado are roughly half-empty and dropping fast, and Interior Department officials are urging water agencies to work together on a contingency plan or have one imposed on them.
"We need the three basin states to get their act together and deal with shortages," said Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley in a recent meeting with water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada. If the three states can't work out a plan, he said, the Interior secretary "will have to do it."
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Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped more than 80 feet and is at 58 percent of capacity. With less water pressure going through its turbines, Hoover Dam is losing some of its capacity to generate power, and Las Vegas is preparing to deepen its water intake in Lake Mead to keep up with a moving target.
Upstream, at Lake Powell, the water loss is even more dramatic. In four years, Powell has dropped nearly 120 feet, and now holds 42 percent of its maximum water capacity. Never before have both Lake Mead and Lake Powell been at such a low state at the same time, according to officials for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Water leaders in the Southwest are closely watching these lake levels, and so are those in other Western states. Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the upper-basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming must deliver 7.5 million acre-feet of water to the three lower-basin states each year. Lake Powell was built so the upper basin could deliver on that promise, but now Powell's future is in doubt."
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