Biden's plan to fix CO river crisis implies huge water cuts for millions of people in major cities

In the draft analysis, the US Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation offers two different scenarios for how to slash water usage should the levels in Lakes Mead and Powell continue to plummet, with the immediate goal of keeping enough Colorado River flowing through the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams to supply hydroelectric power to hundreds of thousands of customers. But the implications of the analysis go far beyond hydropower. The Colorado River provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in seven states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California. This would be an enormous amount of water, roughly 684 billion gallons, according to CNN.

In both of the federal government’s scenarios, states, farms and tribes could be forced to cut nearly 2.1 million more acre-feet of their Colorado River usage in 2024, on top of existing water-conservation agreements struck in past years. The Interior Department is expected to make a final decision on the cuts – and how and when they would be implemented – later this summer.