Commentary: The Arizona-Nevada-California water war is heating up, and all three states will end up parched

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Set us as preferred No one interested in pondering what looks like an intractably difficult conflict need turn their attention to Iran or Israel.We have one much closer to home.

It’s the riddle of how to divide up the ever-dwindling supply of water from the Colorado River.Seven Western states depend on that water impounded by Hoover Dam at Lake Mead, with Arizona, Nevada and California — the downstream basin states” — facing harsh steep supply cutbacks through 2028 and even harsher cuts over the following eight years under a scheme set forth by the U.S.Interior Department.

So it’s not surprising that the fight has begotten a new cycle of litigation in federal court.Nevada sued to block the plan in late August.

Last week, Arizona moved to join Nevada’s lawsuit.But it warned that its fight isn’t only with the federal government, but with Nevada too: Arizona’s interests in the case are “unique,” it told the court, and it can’t entrust them to “another State that has sued to protect its own unique, state-specific interests.”Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.

— John Wesley Powell (1893)California hasn’t expressed an interest in joining the lawsuit, as my colleague Ian James has reported.But as the largest consumer of water from the Colorado River, it’s not going to escape the fray.Here’s the basic fact underlying the conflict.

These three states are heavily dependent on water from the Colorado River, and there simply isn’t enough there.Already, the reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at their lowest levels since they first began filling.

As they fall further, Hoover and Glen Canyon dams could lose their capacity to provide water and power downstream and even become vulnerable to phys...