Nevada sued the federal government on Monday to block officials from cutting its share of the Colorado River, launching the first major legal fight over the Southwest’s dwindling water supply.
The state asked the U.S. District Court in Nevada to order the Bureau of Reclamation to rescind plans that would cut water allocations significantly for Nevada, California and Arizona over the next decade if the river basin continues to dry up.
Nevada argued the plans unfairly burden those three states while federal officials did not impose any mandatory water restrictions on four other states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico — upstream. It said that the Reclamation Bureau, part of the Interior Department, violated a complex web of laws, agreements and court cases known as the law of the river, as well as other federal laws governing administrative procedure and environmental regulation.
But Nevada did not name any of those upstream states as defendants, stopping short of an action that Western water officials have long feared. Such a case would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, carry significant costs and raise risks of unpredictable outcomes imposed by the court system.
Negotiations among the seven states that share the river’s water for a new long-term allocation have stalled, but the downstream states had agreed to restrictions on their water use for the next two years.
“The Department of the Interior can’t roll Nevada and solve the entire Colorado River shortage on the backs of the Lower Basin states,” Gov. Joe Lombardo, Republican of Nevada, said in a statement. “We’ve already shown that we’re willing to do our part, but the Colorado River is a shared resource, so the solution needs to involve everybody. Until that happens, we are prepared to fight for as long as it takes.”
Interior officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Nevada’s lawsuit took issue with elements of a longer-term plan issued last month that calls for potentially more severe actions to limit the lower basin states’ water use from 2029 through 2036. Officials said the state’s share of the river could shrink by 70 percent, even though Nevada has taken steps to cut its water use — the smallest share of any state in the river basin — by 40 percent as its population grows.
The federal plans had already also prompted threats of litigation from Arizona officials.
Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said the lawsuit did not represent the potential legal quagmire that has been feared as the Colorado River has dwindled. Three decades of climate change-fueled drought have reduced its natural flow well below the amounts that the seven states and Mexico are entitled to on paper.
“The real fear about litigation is that the states would sue one another,” Dr. Squillace said.
