A bipartisan delegation of Western senators and federal officials will tour key points along the Colorado River next week to see the nation’s depleted reservoirs and the basin’s vast water infrastructure.
The trip, which is being organized by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, comes amid tense state negotiations and looming federal action to address the fast-moving water crisis on the Colorado River. Water levels in the nation’s largest reservoirs Lakes Mead and Powell have dropped precipitously in recent years due to decades of overuse and hotter, drier weather driven by climate change.
As the river basin declines, Western states are in a standoff over how to further cut water use – water that is used to not only grow the country’s produce and raise cattle, but for municipal household use and industry.
Bennet will be joined by fellow Colorado Democrat Sen. John Hickenlooper, as well as Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. The four senators will travel from the Upper Colorado River Basin to the Lower Basin in Arizona and Nevada.
Deputy Secretary for the Interior Tommy Beaudreau and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton – the nation’s top water official for the Colorado River – will also be on the trip, the details of which were shared first with CNN.
Bennet told CNN he hopes the trip will help spur collaboration between senators and state officials as their negotiations on water cuts reach an important juncture.
“I believe very strongly these water issues are best decided at the state level,” Bennet told CNN. “The Western senators can play an important role in trying to backstop the consensus the states can come to. This is a real crisis for the American west and potentially for our future.”
The trip comes at a…
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