SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
States that rely on the Colorado River expect major news as soon as today. It's about a new federal plan for sharing the river's water, and it will reverberate across those state economies, especially in California and Arizona and Nevada, because the plan is expected to result in big cutbacks in their water supply. Alex Hager at member station KJZZ in Phoenix is here to explain. Hi, Alex.
ALEX HAGER, BYLINE: Hello.
PFEIFFER: So, Alex, as you know, seven states share in Colorado River water. Those states include some big cities - LA, Phoenix, Denver. They rely on that water. Why is the federal government stepping in now and changing how much water each of the states can have?
HAGER: Negotiators from the seven states that use the river have been trying for years to agree on a new plan that reins in demand for the shrinking river, but they could not find a consensus. So with the current rules expiring this fall, the federal government has to step in and impose its own plan.
PFEIFFER: So give us some more detail about what will change for those states that rely on this water.
HAGER: We don't know the exact size of cutbacks yet, but Arizona, Nevada and California are probably going to lose the most water. We expect the biggest cuts to hit the Phoenix and Tucson areas, and officials say the exact size of those cuts will probably be announced Friday. The big takeaway here - the reductions are all expected to happen in the downstream states. The other ones they were negotiating with - Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico - they did not volunteer to cut back on water use.
PFEIFFER: So the downstream states will take the biggest hit. Why aren't the upstream states seeing their share of the river also being reduced?
HAGER: Those states argue they are cutting back. They are legally required to send a certain amount of water downstream every year. And because of drought and climate change, they say they have less water to send. Because they couldn't agree on cutbacks with their downstream neighbors, the feds had to go ahead with their own plan. So earlier this year, they proposed huge cutbacks to Arizona. Local leaders called the plan devastating. So then Arizona and its downstream allies countered. They basically said, we will use much less water, but can you please let us do it on our own terms? And that is a big part of the deal that's expected to come now.
PFEIFFER: Alex, you mentioned climate change. How much is that believed to factor into this new plan?
HAGER: Most of the river starts as snow in the Rocky Mountains, and for the last 26 years, there has been less of it. There is less snow falling. It's melting earlier. It's getting soaked up by dry soil. The whole region is just getting hotter and drier, and there isn't as much water in the Colorado River as there used to be - certainly not as much as 104 years ago when the first rules for sharing the Colorado River were written. So that is the driving force between these tough conversations about cutting back on use. Supply and demand are way out of balance, and the negotiations you're hearing about right now show how hard it is to bring down demand.
PFEIFFER: And these new rules, are they expected to be permanent?
HAGER: They are not. These new rules would last for 10 years, but they will force negotiators to come back to the table every two years and tweak the plan in response to river conditions. The plan is designed to stop the nation's largest reservoirs from falling to dangerously low levels right now, but it doesn't give a lot of long-term certainty to people who use the Colorado River. That makes it hard for farms and cities across the West to plan for the future.
PFEIFFER: That's Alex Hager. He covers the Colorado River for member station KJZZ in Phoenix. Thanks, Alex.
HAGER: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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