PHOENIX — Arizona will join a drought plan for the Colorado River, narrowly meeting a federal deadline that threatened to blow up a compromise years in the making for the seven states that draw water from the constrained river.
The Arizona House and Senate overwhelmingly supported the legislation and Gov. Doug Ducey promptly signed it, delivering the final puzzle piece needed to avoid potentially more severe cutbacks imposed by the federal government.
The river serves 40 million people in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation director Brenda Burman set a Jan. 31 deadline for all parties to agree to voluntary cutbacks.
Arizona was the only state that required legislative approval to join the agreement in which states would take less water from the river in hopes of keeping major reservoirs from reaching catastrophically low levels.
“We inherited as human beings a pristine land with pristine water, and we messed it up as human beings ourselves,” said Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, a Democrat who represents the Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona and voted to join the drought plan. “It is incumbent for us to safeguard, protect what we have left.”
The nightmare scenario for Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico is a phenomenon called “dead pool,” in which the level of the lake’s surface falls below the gates that let water out. To avoid it, the agreement calls for an escalating array of cutbacks as the lake level drops.
Arizona would be hit first and hardest if Lake Mead drops to shortage levels.
