More than $250M in federal funds coming to help keep water in Lake Mead

The federal government on Thursday announced more than $250 million in new funding for water conservation agreements in Arizona and California aimed at keeping more water in Lake Mead.

The biggest chunk of the spending will go to the Gila River Indian Community, which will receive $50 million in exchange for leaving 125,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead this year with the option to do the same in 2024 and 2025.

The tribe is also receiving $83 million to fund construction of a water recycling pipeline that, once finished, will allow up to 20,000 acre-feet in water savings each year, with the tribe committing to leaving at least 78,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir that now sits at nearly three-quarters empty as two decades of drought and chronic overuse have taken their toll on the Colorado River system.

“In the wake of record drought throughout the West, safeguarding Tribal access to water resources could not be more critical. These types of agreements will support Tribal communities through essential water infrastructure projects and support water conservation in the Colorado River System,” Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau said in a statement.

Another $36 million is earmarked for an agreement with the Coachella Valley Water District in California to keep 30,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead annually over the next three years.

The funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Federal officials this week traveled to Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and California to highlight the funding from the two spending laws alongside federal lawmakers from their respective states.

The water conserved under the newly announced agreements amount to only a small portion of the 2 million to 4 million acre-feet that the Bureau of Reclamation has said needs to be saved along the river annually going forward to prevent the Colorado River and its reservoirs from crashing in the coming years.

By comparison, Nevada’s full legal share of the Colorado River is 300,000 acre-feet per year. California’s is 4.4 million acre-feet and Arizona’s is 2.8 million.

California has been at odds with the other six states that pull from the river in negotiations over how those cuts should be divvied up, and the two sides submitted competing plans to the federal government in January.

The Bureau of Reclamation is expected to unveil a draft of its plan to maintain levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell this month before making a final decision sometime this summer.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.