This Summer, the American Water Crisis Becomes Real

Two high-profile water crises, juiced up by climate change and industrial overuse, are building in the US. From a city in Texas staring down a drought emergency to a decades-long political crisis coming to a head for the states that rely on the Colorado River, water issues in the West will take center stage this summer—and experts tell WIRED that other places should take notes and start planning ahead for their own future.

In February, following a winter of record-breaking heat, snowpack in various mountain ranges across the American West reached record lows. March came in even hotter, smashing records in states across the region.

“What happened in March was unprecedented, and stunning, and disturbing, and out of this world, frankly—we had temperatures the likes of which we have never seen and couldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate researcher at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. “We had a crummy snowpack that went from crummy to god-awful in three weeks.”

This snowmelt crisis is having dire impacts on the Colorado River, one of the most crucial water sources in the West, which provides water for 40 million people across seven states. River flow in some areas on the Colorado had slowed to a trickle last week, thanks to the early snowmelt this year.

The Colorado River isn’t just a crucial water supply: It also provides power for more than 25 million people through dams at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the country. Low water levels in those reservoirs spell trouble for electricity generation. As of Tuesday morning, Lake Mead was sitting at just 17 feet above its record low level, set in July of 2022.

This record dry season is also colliding with a decades-long political crisis on the Colorado River. For years, the states drawing water from the river have sparred over how to equitably divide the supply from the river, as the growth of agriculture and a series of climate-charged droughts have begun threatening the long-term water supply. Alfalfa for cattle feed is the biggest consumer of water from the Colorado, using more water than all of the cities along the river combined. States have missed key deadlines, including one in February, to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which regulates how water in the region is distributed. Each state gets an annual allotment, and the total amount of water is supposed to be divided evenly between an upper basin and a lower basin.

Earlier this month, following dire projections for the summer, the US Interior Department stepped in, announcing a series of actions intended to keep hydropower at Lake Powell running. The government acknowledges that this could lessen hydropower at Lake Mead as well as water availability in states along the lower part of the river.

With all this chaos, there’s a chance, Udall says, that this season’s scarce water could cause a historic first in the next few years: States in the upper basin of the river could fail to deliver enough water to states in the lower basin, violating the 1922 agreement for the first time. This could trigger a potential lawsuit between states.

“What’s frustrating to somebody like myself is this is all foreseeable,” says Udall. “Those of us who are kind of in the know, and that includes a lot of people in the Colorado River Basin, have seen something like this coming for a long, long time.”