Southern Nevada business groups ask Congress for $2B for water crisis

Three Southern Nevada chambers of commerce have joined 40 other Colorado River Basin business organizations in asking Congress for at least $2 billion to address intensifying water supply challenges.

The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada had long been in deadlocked negotiations over cuts with the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. But business groups and chambers of commerce — including ones from Las Vegas, Henderson and Laughlin — from all seven states came together to sign a letter this month to Congress under the Business for Water Stewardship banner.

“Such action is essential to ensure long-term water, food, and energy security while sustaining the $3.8 trillion Colorado River economy that depends on a reliable and resilient river,” reads the undated letter. “To immediately address the crisis, we respectfully call on Congress to provide at least $2 billion in new federal funding for near-term drought mitigation and sustained funding for a multi-year program.”

More than 40 million people in seven states, several tribal nations and Mexico rely on the flows of the 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) river. Decades of overuse, along with rising temperatures, drought and climate change, mean it no longer provides what was promised in 1922.

The letter states that the federal funding framework will be most effective by supporting investments across a diverse portfolio of solutions, funding for engineered and natural systems, improving water supply reliability across the Basin and providing opportunities for input from businesses, water users and regional stakeholders.

On July 22, a bipartisan group of 12 Western representatives in Congress also sent a letter to House leadership calling for emergency funding to help fund solutions for the crisis as Lake Mead heads to historic lows, according to federal projections.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said in July that the measure was in direct response to a record-low water year.

“This is an emergency,” Titus said. “And it’s not unprecedented. Some money came out of the Inflation Reduction Act to do this, and we certainly feel like water security is a part of national security.”

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act provided $4 billion in federal funding to help solve the Colorado River crisis — a figure that Titus said is a fair estimate for what lawmakers would like to see dedicated to it again.

A leading group of academics said in a paper in July that the combined storage of Lake Mead and Lake Powell is the lowest it has been since 1957, during the construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

Nevada, California and Arizona have already agreed to mandatory cuts in 2027 and 2028, while no mandatory cuts will be imposed on Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Nevada officials filed a federal lawsuit on Aug. 24 challenging the order for cuts in water use.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, asserts that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s operating plan unlawfully authorizes the federal government to reduce the state’s allocation of the river by up to 71 percent annually sometime over the next 10 years.