COLORADO — More water conservation efforts could be coming as the western United States faces extreme drought conditions along the Colorado River Basin.
This week, Colorado signed an agreement along with five other statesin the Colorado River Basin for a conservation proposal. California is the lone state in the basin to not join the agreement.
Over the past twenty years, there have been several conservation efforts that have paid off throughout the western parts of the country. David Shohet, a water attorney in Colorado Springs says those efforts will continue and Coloradans could see more efforts down the road.
“People should care because it really highlights the need for water conservation throughout the western region,” Shohet said about theagreement submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation this week.
The Colorado River Basin provides water to about 40 million people in the western United States, as well as Mexico. Colorado Springs Utilities says about half of the city's water supply, but by factoring in reuse that's allowed, it provides about 70 percent of the water supply for customers.
Right now, restrictions are put in place when it comes to watering lawns at certain times of day and other people will reduce water use within their homes as well.
"I do think we'll look hard at things like landscaping, lawns, parks, golf courses," Shohet said, "those types of perhaps more recreational types of things where there is a lot of water usage amongst municipalities."
Colorado's River Basin is made up both upper and lower basin states. States in the Upper River Basin, which includes Colorado, submitted a proposal in July of 2022 with afive-step plan for conserving water.
The latest agreement focuses largely on conservation efforts for Lake Mead, which is situated near the Arizona-Nevada border, and Lake Powell, near the Arizona-Utah border.
"All the states really make up and are responsible for this, but the reality is the upper basin states have largely been able to work together better than the lower basin states," Shohet said.
While California did not sign onto the agreement, the Associated Press reports the state released a proposal in October to cut 400,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot of water is about the size of a football field filled with one foot deep of water. One-third of an acre-foot is about the equivalent the average U.S. household uses in one year.
Shohet said California may have a legitimate argument for not signing onto the consensus. He said California is looking to Arizona to shoulder more of the burden of conservation, based on some water rights Arizona signed onto in the sixties.
“They’re looking at Arizona to share a larger portion of that.” Shohet said, “Arizona would really be impacted if they had to shut down a large portion of that project."
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