THE PEOPLE WHO CAUSED THE PROBLEM WILL FIX THE PROBLEM. NO WORRIES.

The government causeth the problem, the government will fix it.

Based on projected water levels for 2023, the tier 2 shortage will force drought-ravaged Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico to draw less from the Colorado River, upon which 40 million people in seven states and Mexico rely. Arizona will face the biggest cut—592,000 acre-feet, or about one-fifth of the state's annual allocation, while an 8% reduction in Nevada is expected to have little impact in a state that recycles most of its indoor-use water and does not use its full allotment. Mexico's allotment [c.q.]

The move came after Colorado River Basin states failed to meet a federal deadline at the end of Monday to come up with a plan to achieve a 15% reduction in water use, an amount scientists say is needed to prevent water stored in dangerously depleted reservoirs from dropping even further.

Strictly speaking, a shortage always exists relative to a price, but to an order of people that refuse to think of treated water as a commodity, there will be no discussion of that excess demand at a zero price, only one of changing by politics the allotments that the Great White Father in Washington doles out (and that water rate paying residents along the Great Lakes subsidize.)

It gets better.

"Every sector in every state has a responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum efficiency. In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the basin must be reduced," Assistant U.S. Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo said in a statement.

"The Interior Department is employing prompt and responsive actions and investments to ensure the entire Colorado River Basin can function and support all who rely on it," she added.

Assistant Secretary speak with forked tongue. There cannot be maximum efficiency without the recognition and realization of all possible gains from trade, which implies some sort of price system. An exchange rate among barter goods might work. Heap big liar think she can reduce conflict by issuing ukases and smoking peace pipe (with Aaron Rodger's supply?)

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said in June that in order to stabilize the Colorado River Basin, states and water districts must devise a plan by mid-August to cut 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water usage by next year. One acre-foot equals the quantity of water needed to flood one acre a foot deep—approximately 326,000 gallons. Touton warned that the federal government would intervene if states could not come up with a plan on their own.

"Instead of singing 'Kumbaya,' it appears they're sharpening their knives," Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, said of the riparian states in an interview with Marketplace.

Politics divides, trade unites, and public officials' salaries come from using politics to manage the crises their wishful thinking produce.  As do the salaries of the environmentalist wacko class of rent-seekers.

Addressing those interests within a California context, Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck decried the "massive water use of Big Ag and Big Oil."

"By switching to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, California could save 98% of the water currently needed for its fossil fuel production," she continued. "And by transitioning away from industrial mega-dairies, thirsty crops like almonds and pistachios, and engaging in regenerative farming, California will gain enormous water savings that could serve small farmers and domestic households."

"Today's Colorado River projections are undoubtedly a dire warning for the American West to eliminate rampant corporate water abuse before it's too late," Starbuck added.

I could agree with the final paragraph if it noted that the quickest way to stop "corporate water abuse" would be to sell the stuff at a price, but that's not how environmentalist wackos roll.  "We must stop treating water like it’s a commodity to be traded, sold or squeezed from everyday people for the highest bidder, and we need to start holding Big Ag and Big Oil accountable for exploiting this resource that people need to live."  It's precisely that water is not a commodity in the Colorado River basin, that the law, in its majesty, allocates water to California for flood-irrigating lawns, for maintaining golf courses, for dairy farms and almond groves alike, without regard to identifying -- there are those price signals again -- the most productive use of that water.

In fact, the state water authorities labor under the same incentives that a government purchasing manager faces.  You must remember this, dear reader, if the local office doesn't spend its full office supply budget by the end of the fiscal year, next year the office supply budget is smaller.  So, too, is it with Colorado River water.

Under the Colorado River Compact, states—without consulting Indigenous tribes—agreed to annual water allocations that they must use in full or face usage-based cuts the following year. This "use it or lose it" system has created what critics call absurd incentives for farmers to grow water-intensive crops in the desert.

Today, around three-quarters of the river's flow is siphoned off to irrigate more than five million acres of farmland, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hydroelectric plants along the Colorado also generate more than 12 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually.

Get the pricing right, and the incentive to raise dairy herds in California goes away, and the hydroelectric plants are able to buy sufficient water to keep the turbines spinning. Dependable hydro power is more dependable than wind and solar, and, subject to rain cycles, more sustainable than using natural gas or Powder River coal.

You can try to do the same thing without prices, but if you thought "fifteen days to slow the spread" was a catastrophe, you're going to love doing without prices.

John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the state's lead Colorado River negotiator, warned Monday in a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that the "unreasonable expectations of water users, including the prices and drought profiteering proposals, only further divide common goals and interests."

"Through our collective inaction, the federal government, the basin states, and every water user on the Colorado River is complicit in allowing the situation to reach this point," he continued.

"We are at the stage where basin-wide every drop counts, and every single drop we are short of achieving two to four million acre-feet in permanent reductions draws us a step closer to the catastrophic collapse of the system," added Entsminger, "as well as draconian water management practices to protect health and human safety that we have successfully staved off in the past through cooperation."

I wonder if those "draconian water management practices" include treating the water as a productive asset.

To repeat, with the right prices, dairy production using expensive California water will fall, while dairy production using less expensive Wisconsin or Vermont water, to think of a couple other places, can take up the slack.  I'm not as conversant with favorable growing conditions for almonds and pistachios (didn't Iran once upon a time supply a lot of the latter?) but can't help but think that whatever the government subsidizes, it gets more of, until it runs out of other people's money.

Heck, Wisconsin's neighboring states, whose dairy industries deflect from their comparative disadvantages by displaying butter cows, are probably helping to pay those Federal subsidies for Californians to inefficiently use the water they're now losing.

I know I sound like a broken record sometimes, but maybe there would be fewer things broken by government if government didn't sic its Wise Experts on people in the first place.