Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other major cities could face huge water cuts in feds’ proposed plan to save the Colorado River

As of early April, Utah has the most snowpack the state’s seen in more than 70 years, which is very welcome news to a state that’s been battling drought and shrinking reservoir levels.

The U.S. Interior Department lays out options for how to slash water usage and solve the crisis should the levels in Lakes Mead and Powell, the nation’s largest reservoirs, continue to plummet.

(CNN) The Biden administration on Tuesday released a highly anticipated analysis of the Colorado River crisis that paints a dire picture of what that river system’s collapse would portend for the West’s major cities, farmers and Native tribes. In the draft analysis, the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation offers two different scenarios for how to slash water usage should the levels in Lakes Mead and Powell continue to plummet, with the immediate goal of keeping enough Colorado River flowing through the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams to supply hydroelectric power to hundreds of thousands of customers.

But the implications of the analysis go far beyond hydropower.

The Colorado River provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in seven states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California. Decades […]

Full article: Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other major cities could face huge water cuts in feds’ proposed plan to save the Colorado River