Environmental advocacy groups are pressing the Interior Department to invoke a little-used regulation to halt “current wasteful water uses” across Arizona, California and Nevada, in a bid to reduce consumption on the drought-stricken Colorado River.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, represented by UCLA’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic, unveiled their petition Tuesday in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the Bureau of Reclamation.
“More than 40 million people in seven states rely on the over-stressed Colorado River for their water supply and the West can’t afford to continue to waste water unsustainably,” Mark Gold, the NRDC’s director of water scarcity solutions, said in a statement. “The Bureau of Reclamation has the authority and obligation to stop the waste and protect this precious resource today and for future generations.”
More than two decades of persistent drought have reduced flows in the Colorado River by as much as 20 percent. The resulting shortages have triggered a series of cuts to users in the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, which rely almost exclusively on federally managed reservoirs for their share of the waterway.
