Over the past 20 years, the water levels along the Colorado River have dropped dramatically.
At Lake Mead, water levels are down 170 feet, which is more than halfway to a "dead pool," when no water at all will flow through Hoover Dam.
An Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon Dam may not be able to produce any power by early 2023.
David Palumbo with the Bureau of Reclamation says that water levels cannot get that low, or else.
The functioning of the systems needs to be maintained for the 40 million people that rely on it.
In the face of that fear, more than a thousand key players from the Colorado River Water Users Association came together in Las Vegas to share ideas and possible solutions, including CRWUA President Aaron Chavez.
"Everyone's worried at this point," Chavez says. "They know they need to do something about this situation."
Less snow from the sky is part of the problem, but the real issue is on the ground.
Warmer temperatures are drying out the soil, so when it rains or the snow melts, it’s soaking into the ground instead of running into the tributaries. Also, more of what does run off is evaporating.
The Bureau of Reclamation is being told by scientists to expect another abnormally low runoff.
Climate isn't the only cause. The roots run deep, going back as far as a century when the water was first allocated, according to water policy expert Elizabeth Koebele.
"We thought we had a lot more water than we actually do have, and we gave rights away to more water than we thought we had," Koebele says.
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Reclamation asked the seven states that share Colorado River water, including Arizona, to come up with a consensus on how to cut back use by nearly 30%. They failed to come up with a plan.
If the states don’t come up with a solution soon, the federal government will force one on them — a message made loud and clear at the conference.
"If we don't have a consensus alternative, we will have a federal alternative that we will implement. We've got to," Palumbo says.
A federal plan would limit how low the levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead can get and that would require drastic cuts in water use.
