California will not be able to take Arizona’s unused water in Lake Mead.
That was the take home message in a letter from a federal water official to Sen. Jeff Flake on Wednesday.
As the drought on the Colorado River has lingered on, Arizona has voluntarily foregone some of its water and left it in Lake Mead instead. By 2017, that will total more than 300,000 acre feet. The goal is to keep enough water in the reservoir to stave off much more severe cutbacks for Arizona in the next year or so.This arrangement has also been a source of anxiety for guardians of the state’s water including Flake.
The concern: what's stopping another state, most notably California, from nabbing some of this excess water?
“For the short term, this is as good as we’re going to get right now,” Flake told KJZZ.
The letter from the Department of the Interior's Michael Connor clarified that none of the excess water will be re-appropriated without the approval of California, Nevada and Arizona.
Flake had been trying to accomplish this through legislation, but said he is dropping that effort for the time being.
“But any long term solution has to include assurance that this is protected and that will likely be an agreement between the Lower Basin states.”
Next month, federal officials will look at the projected water level in Lake Mead for the beginning of 2017. If that is predicted to drop below 1075 feet, a level one shortage would be declared and the Central Arizona Project loses 320,000 acre feet of its 1.6 million acre feet allotment.
