SALT LAKE CITY—For the second year in a row, Arizona and Nevada will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River as the West endures more drought, federal officials announced Tuesday.
Though the cuts will not result in any immediate new restrictions—like banning lawn watering or car washing—they signal that unpopular decisions about how to reduce consumption are on the horizon, including whether to prioritize growing cities or agricultural areas. Mexico will also face cuts.
But those reductions represent just a fraction of the potential pain to come for the 40 million Americans in seven states that rely on the river. Because the states failed to meet a federal deadline to figure out how to cut their water use by at least 15 percent, they could see even deeper cuts that the government has said are needed to prevent reservoirs from falling so low they cannot be pumped….