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Page 2 CONTINUED FROM COVER STORY: Southwest states facing tough choices about water as the Colorado River diminishes Bill Whitaker: And it's still dropping? Brad Udall: Yes. And that's when power generation actu- ally becomes to come into question. Bill Whitaker: So it drops so low that it may not be able to generate-- Brad Udall: It may not be able to generate power-- Bill Whitaker: Hydroelectric power? Brad Udall: Yeah. Brad Udall has strong connections to the river. As secre- tary of the interior, his uncle, Stewart Udall, opened the Glen Canyon Dam. His father, Congressman Mo Udall, fought to channel river water to Arizona. As a young man, Brad was a Colorado River guide. Today he analyzes the impact of climate change on water resources. Bill Whitaker: Is the west on a collision course with climate change? Brad Udall: In some ways yes, but we have fully utilized this system. We've over-allocated it, and we now need to think about how to turn some of this back. 'Cause the only lever we control right now in the river is the demand lever. We have no control over the supply. So we have to dial back demand. Seventy percent of Colorado River water goes to agricul- ture. When the federal government declared the water shortage, it triggered mandatory cutbacks. Pinal County, Arizona got hit hard. Waylon Wuertz: Pinal County alone, we're gonna be los- ing 300,000 acre feet of surface water. That's water that would be delivered from Lake Powell, Lake Mead. As part of the Colorado River. 300,000 acre feet is 98 billion gallons of water. Waylon Wuertz farms 500 acres in Pinal County, south of Phoenix. His family has tilled soil here for four genera- tions. It's some of the most productive land in the state. Crops from Pinal County are shipped all over the country. Wuertz grows gourds, cotton and alfalfa — profitable, but thirsty crops and his allotment of Colorado River water is being cut by 70%. Bill Whitaker: This is Colorado River water? Waylon Wuertz: Yeah, kinda the-- the lifeline of our-- irri- gated ag here. Bill Whitaker: This comes straight in from Lake Mead? Waylon Wuertz: Correct. This is-- through hundreds of miles of canal system. It's-- made its way down here to Central Arizona. Bill Whitaker: And what percentage of your water is sup- plied by this canal? Waylon Wuertz: It's been close to 50% of the water that we've used to-- to farm here. And-- this next year it's prob- ably gonna drop down to about 20% of the water that we use. That's 1/7th of what he was getting a decade ago. To use less water and make ends meet, Wuertz sold more than 300 acres to a solar farm. He dipped into retirement funds to repair and restart old wells. He laser leveled his fields to make irrigation more efficient. Bill Whitaker: But it's just not enough in the middle of this drought. Waylon Wuertz: No, it's not enough. So, next year he told us he'll have to leave 150 acres uncul- tivated. Waylon Wuertz: What you see green here is eventually gonna die. I hope we'll have enough water to plant it in the future. But more than likely it's gonna stay brown for quite some time. Amelia Flores: All the water users are gonna have to give up something to keep that water in the lake. Amelia Flores is chairwoman of The Colorado River Indian Tribes, a reservation of four tribes a few hours west of Phoenix, with the oldest and largest water rights in Arizona. After being moved to reservations, Southwest tribes got rights to about a quarter of the river's flow, but government red tape and lack of infrastructure have pre- vented them from using their full allotment. Flores told us until this drought, tribes were never included in water negotiations. Bill Whitaker: Why had you not had a seat at the table before this? Amelia Flores: Because the tribes have always been over- looked in the policymaking and-- and in-- in the law of the river. But that day has come to an end. When western states first divvied up the Colorado River in 1922, and later, when the federal government built the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams, the future seemed boundless and manageable. Through negotiation and court battles, states worked out agreements — the law of the river — to split the water equally between upper and lower basin states. The lower states use just about all their allotment and it's fed their tremendous growth. The upper states have never used their full share. Now, they are booming and say they need the water they've been prom- ised. Bill Whitaker: I can see the bathtub rings around here too. Zach Renstrom: We're trying to keep every drop of water we can into this reservoir for next year's drinking water. Zach Renstrom manages the water system for Washington County in southwest Utah. St. George, the county seat, is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the U.S. Its pop- ulation grew 29% this past decade. The state of Utah gets about a quarter of its water from the Colorado, but most of Washington County has only one source, the Virgin River, which fills this reservoir. Zach Renstrom: So right now we're in the process of implementing really strict conservation measures. And if the cities don't adopt those standards then we'll be out of water very quickly. Bill Whitaker: What is very quickly? Zach Renstrom: Within the next five to ten years. So, in the midst of this drought, Utah is proposing to build a $1-billion to $2-billion pipeline able to bring 27 billion gallons of water a year from dwindling Lake Powell. Utah says it's entitled to the water by law. Bill Whitaker: You're talking about siphoning off water from a lake that's already at a critically low level to help a city grow in the desert. Zach Renstrom: Every state on the Colorado River was allotted so much water and a water budget. And so with their water budget the state of Utah has decided that it wants to use a portion of its water here in St. George, Utah. Bill Whitaker: But it was a budget that was set when water was plentiful. It isn't anymore. What is Utah hoping for? Zach Renstrom: Utah wants the right to do what every other basin state has done. We want to make sure that we have water for our future, for a hotter dryer scenario that's coming up. JB Hamby: Building a multibillion dollar pipeline to pump out more water from an already rapidly declining reser- voir simply doesn't make sense in the 21st century. JB Hamby is vice president of the board that runs California's Imperial Irrigation District, one of the richest agricultural regions in the country with the single largest allocation of water on the entire river. JB Hamby: There's a lot of urban growth and sprawl occurring in other parts of the Colorado River Basin that's really not necessarily sustainable. Hamby says California's Imperial Valley farms have cut water usage almost 20% since 2003, but points out as the population of St. George, Utah grows, so does its water use. JB Hamby: We need to think and rethink about how we grow and if we grow and where we grow. Bill Whitaker: St. George would say that they're not asking for more. They're asking for what they need. JB Hamby: I think what we all need to have is a reality check, here, and recognize that we live in an era of limits right now and that's not going away anytime soon. In fact, it's only going to get worse. A big part of the problem is the law of the river itself, a hodgepodge of rules and regulations pieced together over the course of a century. For example, after all the litigation and negotiations, the law ends up allocating more water than actually flows down the Colorado. And this: in times of shortage, channels that provide more than a third of Arizona's water must run dry before California is required to cut back. Bill Whitaker: So, so wait a minute, Arizona is being called on to cut its water intake before California has to give up even one drop? Brad Udall: Pretty amazing. It can't work in today's world. And it's in some ways a little microcosm, right, of this whole law of the river with these systems that have been put in place that just don't work. They can't work. And that's why a rethink's needed. One example of rethinking: the Colorado River Indian Tribes agreed to leave fields uncultivated, leaving 48 bil- lion gallons — almost three feet of water — in Lake Mead. The state of Arizona agreed to pay them for their losses. Amelia Flores: My people want to help during this drought. We want to save the river, because for centuries the river has always taken care of us, so now, we have to take care of the river. Brad Udall: That's what negotiations are all about, right? It may be there are ways to conserve and figure out how to get the same goods and services for less water. Let's let ag grow crops that use less water. Let's figure out how to make cities use water as efficiently as possible. So, I mean, we need some optimism here, right? Waylon Wuertz: This desert ground... But as we saw at this meeting of Pinal County farmers, optimism is in short supply. Waylon Wuertz: The farmer who's prepared the whole life, worked the land, farmed the land is getting the short end of the stick. Farmers here and across the Southwest feed the country. But it takes more than 2/3rds of the Colorado River to pro- duce the bounty. With lake levels dropping, Arizona farm- ers like Waylon Wuertz fear their fertile fields could become desert again. Waylon Wuertz: You're gonna see drastic cuts, a drastic change of what next year has to bring. And for my partic- ular family farm, we're doing all that we can to keep it going. But I have a feeling it's just a matter of time before none of this exists. Produced by Marc Lieberman. Associate producer, Cassidy McDonald. Broadcast associate, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Sean Kelly.