Tom Buschatzke, who directs the Arizona Department of Water Resources, delivered two verdicts on the federal proposal in a single breath. The outcomes it contemplates are "a lot of potential devastating impacts," he said, and they arrive with "a lot of uncertainties for all of us" [1][2].
The number underneath the uncertainty is 3 million acre-feet. The Bureau of Reclamation proposed on Friday that Arizona, California and Nevada together reduce their Colorado River use by up to that amount every year through 2036 [1][2].
An acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet, which puts 3 million of them at roughly 130.7 billion cubic feet, the figure both outlets round to 130 billion [1][2]. At 325,851 gallons to the acre-foot, the cut comes to about 978 billion gallons a year. Reclamation translates it into people: enough water to serve more than 25 million of them annually [2].
The sharper way to hold the number is against the entitlement it comes out of. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 apportioned the Lower Basin's 7.5 million acre-feet as 4.4 million to California, 2.8 million to Arizona and 300,000 to Nevada [4]. Three million acre-feet is 40 percent of that 7.5 million, exactly. It is also very nearly everything Arizona and Nevada hold between them. Their two apportionments sum to 3.1 million acre-feet, leaving 100,000 to spare.
Three states responded, and they took three positions rather than one. Arizona called the proposal flawed. Nevada called the reductions unrealistic and devastating. California called it an important milestone but not the finish line [1]. Those are not three phrasings of a single objection. Arizona is contesting the plan's validity, Nevada is contesting its feasibility, and California, holding both the largest apportionment and the most senior rights, is endorsing the direction while reserving on the terms. The proposal's structure explains the split: the three states would divide half the cuts under a plan they developed themselves, with the remainder falling by priority of water rights, an order that generally favors California [2].
The reduction is a ceiling, not a fixed annual figure. Actual cuts would be set every two years on basin conditions [1][2]. Interior says it would issue operating guidelines "within these sideboards, at anticipated 2-year periods, unless consensus-based agreements provide for a longer duration" [3]. The current guidelines expire this year, and binding replacements are due October 1, 2026 [1][5].
The Final Environmental Impact Statement published July 31 carries a second range that is easy to mistake for the first. It sets annual releases from Lake Powell between 5.0 and 12.0 million acre-feet [3]. That is water moving downstream through Glen Canyon Dam, not water struck from the states' books. The two figures measure different things and should not be added, compared or blended.
How far the reservoirs have fallen depends on which document you read. Al Jazeera reported the combined contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell at their lowest level since 1957 [1]. Interior's own release says the combined contents "have not been this low since before Glen Canyon Dam began filling in 1963" [3]. PBS reported only that the reservoirs sit at their lowest point since they began filling, with no year attached [2]. The record is unresolved on the date, and we are not going to split the difference. All three agree on the operative fact: the reservoirs are approaching the level at which they stop producing hydropower [1][2]. Reclamation valued that generation in February at more than 8 billion kilowatt-hours a year, enough for roughly 700,000 homes [5].
Rhett Larson, a water law professor at Arizona State University, named what the fight is actually about. "We are not running out of water. We're running out of cheap water." [1]
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the framework "provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions" [3]. Assistant Secretary Andrea Travnicek put the population depending on the system at 40 million people [3]. Reclamation received more than 18,000 comments on the draft, 785 of them unique submissions from the public, tribes, states and federal agencies [3].
Two months separate Friday's proposal from the October 1 deadline. The bargaining power in that window is unevenly distributed, which is why the three reactions read as differently as they do. If the states reach a consensus agreement, they write the allocation themselves. If they do not, the sideboards become the guidelines by default, the priority-rights fallback governs the unallocated half, and the 40 percent stops being a proposal.
