by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
Hagrid is one of the most beloved characters in the Harry Potter series. The half-giant befriends Harry and his cohorts Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, with whom he develops the habit of letting slip bits of information that were supposed to be confidential. He often follows quickly with, “Oops, I shouldn’t’ve said that.” At least one Nevada water leader must be thinking that now.
Arizona leaders have been wringing hands and gnashing teeth for a month over the new Colorado River management plan, threatening to go to court. But Nevada has beaten them to it, becoming the first to sue the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), attempting to block the plan for reducing water supplies from the drought-stricken river, and insisting on continued deliveries of water that simply isn’t there. The suit says the new management plan could “devastate the state’s economy,” exactly what Arizona has said. But of course, what is devastating to water-starved southwestern states is a drought and reduced river flows, not a government management document.
The BOR’s 10-year plan for managing Lake Powell, Lake Mead and other federal reservoirs will reduce deliveries up to 21% to California, Nevada and Arizona for two years starting in 2027. Those cuts could increase after 2028 if water supplies do not improve and the states remain deadlocked on any other solution — such as augmenting their water supplies from other sources. Those include ocean desalination, water exchanges and further conservation measures. That’s what Nevada now calls entirely unacceptable.
Talk about crying before you are hurt. There is nothing in the two-year plan to be implemented starting in October that does anything at all to Nevada. That state’s share of Colorado River water would temporarily drop from 300,000 acre-feet to 250,000 acre-feet over the next two years. That is still at least 50,000 acre-feet more than Nevada is now using, something that its main water authority was bragging about just a couple of months ago.
