Senator Mark Kelly is asking the Federal Bureau of Reclamation to quickly distribute $250 million earmarked to help conserve and protect water in the Southwest's drought.
Lake Mead, along the Colorado River, is still at historic lows. Kelly, a Tucson Democrat, hosted a water roundtable discussion in Tempe Friday. He discussed two recent federal laws that will funnel billions of dollars into solutions. The funding includes $250 million this year to go to conservation efforts. Kelley said the efforts are estimated to save 650,000 acre-feet of water on the Colorado River system, which is enough to fill 10 feet of Lake Mead.
This week, Lake Mead's elevation is 1,046 feet. If the reservoir dropped to 895 feet, which is considered ‘dead pool,’ downstream releases from the Hoover Dam would no longer be possible.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s short-term solutions mostly focus on agricultural land, including changing from flood irrigation to drip systems or agreeing to keep fields fallow.
Kelly likened the projects to a Band-Aid. The measures buy time to get longer-term water conservation projects in place, including infrastructure improvements for water storage.
"We have all these needs - all these projects - that we want to get underway," Kelly said. "I worked really hard on this - the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Now it’s time to get the money deployed."
"Having those resources opens up multiple avenues to find successful conclusions that avoid litigation and put Arizona in the best possible light to deal with the reductions on the Colorado River,” said Tom Buschatzke the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
The federal funding also goes to further study of raising the height of Bartlett Dam northeast of the Valley, which would better harness excess Salt River Project water. This week, SRP's reservoirs were so full that managers had to release some water down the Salt River to make space for snowmelt. A higher dam would allow SRP to better control excess water and even share it with the Central Arizona Project canal, reducing the need for some Colorado River water.
