Water cuts are coming for Arizona. Is your salad on the chopping block?
NBC News · LC · trust 67/100
Farmworkers harvest broccoli in Yuma, Ariz., in 2024. John Moore / Getty Images Environment Water cuts are coming for Arizona. Is your salad on the chopping block? Yuma County, Arizona, grows 90% of the leafy greens the U.S. consumes in the winter. But the state relies on water from the Colorado River, which is at record lows.
With the river’s water levels at record lows, Arizona is poised to take the biggest cuts: about 30% of its Colorado River supply in 2027 and 2028.
Those are the terms stipulated by the Bureau of Reclamation, which imposed a mandatory two-year plan after the seven states that use Colorado River water failed to reach an agreement. If the megadrought persists and water levels continue to fall, a 10-year management plan the bureau has proposed would allow even harsher cuts that could threaten the country’s winter greens.
“If you cut us off at the knees, or if you restrict the water, it has a national impact,” said Jonathan Lines, a member of the Yuma County Board of Supervisors. “It’s a national security issue and a food security issue.”
Arizona’s agriculture is one rather large ripple of the Colorado River crisis, whose full scale is almost impossible to grasp. About 40 million people in Western states rely on the river for drinking water, but it is shrinking from overuse, drought and climate change. Utilities also depend on it to generate electricity at the dams on Lake Mead and Lake Powell, where much of the water is stored, but both reservoirs hit record lows this month.
The Colorado River flows past farmland near Yuma, Ariz., in 2023. Mario Tama / Getty Images file Arizona has boomed for decades on the back of the river, which has fueled both suburban expansion and high-tech desert farming. But as the cuts begin to reshape its agricultural economy, the state sits at a crossroads.
Winter produce thrives in Yuma County, which is a little bigger than the state of Connecticut, because of its fertile soil, ample sunshine and Colorado River water. In winter, nowhere else in the country has what it takes.
“It’s the sunniest place on Earth,” said Tanya Hodges, the executive director of the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture. (Yuma does actually hold the Guinness World Record for the most sunshine.)
“November through April in the United States, there’s very, very limited places to be growing,” Hodges said, adding: “This little 180,000-acre community is able to pretty much feed North America.”
So, each October, produce companies send their machinery, farm crews and shipping equipment from California’s Central Valley — which produces much of the country’s summer greens — to Yuma. From there, “about 2,500 to 3,000 semitrucks a day get loaded and distributed all across North America,” Hodges said.
The Colorado River cuts will cascade down a system of priorities that governs how much water people in Arizona receive in times of shortage.
The oldest claims get priority, and because Yuma has more senior water rights, that should protect the region next year, according to Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. After that, she said, all bets are off.
“The farmers can probably get their crops planted and irrigate them through April,” she said. “Will it be the same next year? I wouldn’t count on it.”
Fresh soil is spread on a farm in the desert in Buckeye, Ariz. Jim West / Universal Images Group via Getty Images file John Boelts, a farmer in Yuma County who is president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, said that if and when further cuts come, fellow Yuma farmers are likely to first sacrifice the rotational crops they plant to keep soil healthy, like alfalfa, cotton, durum wheat for pasta and silage to feed livestock.
“Every farm in Yuma that farms fresh produce is going to prioritize that,” he said.
That may bode well for America’s salads in the short term, but a shortage of those rotational crops, Boelts said, would quickly pose challenges for local dairies, ranchers and Italian pasta makers like Barilla, which use Arizona wheat.
“There are big dairies … that serve metro Phoenix and Tucson as well,” said Dari Duval, an extension economist for the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. “And those cows have to eat something.”
Colorado River water is divided up between seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico, according to rules that began with the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
Though the policy has been refined since then, the agreements had fatal flaws from the start: Negotiators overestimated the amount of water that typically flows down the river, so gave more water rights than what actually exists most years.
Record-low water levels at Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nev., on Aug. 12. Ian Maule / Bloomberg via Getty Images About 16.5 million acre-feet of water are allocated for use annually, but from 1906 to 2024, the average flow was around 14.6 million. Since 2000, the number has dropped to 12.4 million .
Now, a prolonged megadrought, along with increasing heat and aridity from climate change, are squeezing the supply even further. Utah and Colorado reported their worst-ever snowpacks this year.
Lake Mead is at 27% of its capacity, and Lake Powell is at 22% — all-time lows for both. Their hydroelectric plants could stop generating power within months.
Lines show previous water levels at Lake Mead on Aug. 12. Ian Maule / Bloomberg via Getty Images Sharon Megdal, the director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center, compared the river water to a person’s finances.
“People really haven’t wanted to have to cut back on their expenditures,” she said. “You’re relying on your savings, you plan to make a deposit, and then you lose your job.”
The Bureau of Reclamation’s plan requires Arizona to relinquish about 380,000 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water in each of the next two years. Almost every drop will come from the Phoenix and Tucson areas, which rely on the Central Arizona…
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