EDITORIAL: Colorado River plan would leave Nevada up a paddle without a creek

A lawsuit won’t refill the Colorado River, but it could keep Nevada from being left high and dry.

The Trump administration recently released its plan to deal with the shrinking Colorado River. The two-year plan requires the Lower Basin states, Nevada, Arizona and California, to give up 1.25 million acre-feet a year. The federal government wants the Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — to give up 200,000 acre-feet voluntarily.

The federal government could impose even steeper reductions over the next decade. Nevada’s 300,000 acre-feet allocation could drop to under 90,000 acre-feet. In 2024, Southern Nevada used around 212,500 acre-feet.

Under the Colorado River Compact, the Lower Basin states were supposed to receive 7.5 million acre-feet annually. California received 4.4 million acre-feet and Arizona took in 2.8 million acre-feet. That left Nevada with only 300,000 acre-feet.

On Monday, Nevada sued the federal government over the plan. A lawsuit isn’t optimal because lawyers can’t put more water in the river. But sometimes it’s a necessary move.

“This is a matter of survival for a community that represents about two-thirds of our state’s citizens and the lion’s share of its economy,” Gov. Joe Lombardo said in a statement.

There are two important things to remember as this lawsuit winds its way through court. For one, Clark County residents don’t need to panic about new development. The Southern Nevada Water Authority sends indoor water back into Lake Mead. This generates return-flow credits and allows Southern Nevada to reuse the “same” gallon of water again and again. As long as new homes don’t have real grass, they use very little water after accounting for return-flow credits.

The other is that the vast majority of the water released from Hoover Dam goes to agriculture, not to residential use. “Imperial Valley farms are allocated nearly 80 percent of California’s water from the Colorado River,” CalMatters reported in 2023. It continued, “By acreage, alfalfa and other forage grasses — water-intensive crops used to feed dairy cows and cattle — dominate, carpeting more than half of the farmland.”

“About 70 percent of Arizona’s water supply goes to agriculture,” KTAR News reported in July.

Agriculture’s disproportionate use of Colorado River water needs to be addressed.

The best solution for the Colorado remains technological advancements that stretch the resource and increasing supply. California has a few seawater desalination plants, but it needs to streamline the regulatory hurdles that prevent more from being built. A 2024 report from the Pacific Institute found California fails to capture more than 2 million acre-feet of urban stormwater runoff annually.

Nevada has long led by example when it comes to water conservation. It’s time for the federal government to ensure other states step up, especially when they could bring more water to the table.