MUTINY ON THE COLORADO — Push is coming to shove on the West's most important river. The seven states that share water from the Colorado River are as close to open conflict over dwindling supplies as they've ever been. Six of them ganged up on California last week, arguing that it should bear the brunt of supply cuts because a greater share of the water evaporates before it gets that far downriver. California is bristling at the proposal. “We didn’t just learn last year that water evaporates,” said J.B. Hamby, the chair of the Colorado River Board of California. California is relying on its legal status as the senior-most user in the river's lower basin and rebuffing arguments that keeping more water for its farmers will force cities in Arizona and Nevada, other lower-basin states, to run dry. It's a political nightmare for the Biden administration, which is trying to decide how to step in, as Annie Snider reports: The fight pits the nation’s most populous state, a Democratic stronghold with a $3.4 trillion economy, against Arizona — a swing state on which Democrats’ national electoral fate could turn. In the meantime, the six states’ proposal has united factions within California — cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and big agricultural users like the Imperial Irrigation District — that have at times been at odds. “I think you have stronger unity in California than has probably existed in at least 20 years,” Hamby said. Arizona and Nevada have the stronger saber-rattling skills, but observers say California has the legal argument that's likelier to hold up in court. "If California's version of the law holds, which I think is not a bad default assumption, then Nevada and Arizona have to start drying up," said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis. "That's how it'll bite in the short term, but it can't just go on that way." And incredibly, given the river's rapidly shrinking supplies, there's still more time to come to an agreement — partly because all parties know that whatever they come up with will be better than leaving it to elected officials or the courts. “I think this is progress, and it is creating the space to continue negotiating,” said Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas and surrounding areas and came up with the evaporation-based plan. Another top California water official, Jim Madaffer, vice chair of the Colorado River Board of California, who represents the San Diego County Water Authority, said California has a blueprint for other states — a multi-agency, multi-year process that California used to rein in its water use two decades ago. “California has done its part and is willing to do more, but it’s time for the other states to step up,” Madaffer said in an email. Pellegrino said she’s not clear how that would work. The California agreement took years to negotiate — years the West may not have if the Colorado’s water levels continue to decline. "We're getting closer to the final stages of brinksmanship on this," Lund said. But "one of the things that's amazing about water is how long smart people can figure out a way to cobble along until they need to make a decision. It's kind of like what the administration is doing with the debt ceiling."
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