COLORADO RIVER NEWS: The federal agency overseeing the water supply for tens of millions of people in the West published a playbook last week for how it might manage the drought-stricken Colorado River in the future. KUNC’s Scott Franz has more.
Last week, the federal Department of the Interior released a draft environmental impact statement for the Colorado River Basin, and its two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The river’s current operating guidelines expire this year, and the document lays out potential scenarios for allocating water into the future. It comes in the middle of contentious negotiations between the states that use the basin over who will bear the burden of cuts to water usage as drought continues. To find out what this means, Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Chris Winter, the director of the Getches Wilkinson Center at C-U Boulder’s school of law.