Just days after the federal government released new plans for sharing water from the shrinking Colorado River, it is getting sued by one of the states impacted by the plan.
Water officials in Nevada filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department on Monday morning.
That marked a major shakeup for water management across the region. Leaders from the seven states that use the river's water had spent the past few years locked in contentious negotiations while trying to agree on a new plan for dividing the river's dwindling supplies. Colorado River experts — academics, environmentalists and many of the state negotiators themselves — broadly agree that the future of the water supply should not be shaped in a courtroom, and publicly said as much throughout negotiations.
Now, at least one state is pushing to bring river matters in front of a judge.
Nevada's lawsuit takes aim at a federal plan, released late last week, that mandates big water cutbacks for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada. Officials in Nevada argue that places too much burden on its state, while failing to mandate any water cuts for the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
"The Department of the Interior can't roll Nevada and solve the entire Colorado River shortage on the backs of the Lower Basin states," Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo wrote in a press release. "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."
The new federal water management plan gives Interior the ability to cut more than 70% of Nevada's share of the Colorado River. The states and Interior worked together on a temporary plan that would mean significantly lower cutbacks through 2028, but those larger reductions could still go into effect in a couple of years.
"This isn't about political posturing," Lombardo wrote. "This is a matter of survival for a community that represents about two-thirds of our state's citizens and the lion's share of its economy."
Arizona's leaders are still figuring out how to respond to the lawsuit. They regularly meet with Nevada's water officials, as the two are allied in Colorado River negotiations along with California, but Tom Buschatzke, the state's top water official, said he learned of the action when his counterpart in Nevada called him around 5:45 Monday morning.
"We're still evaluating," Buschatzke said, "And we'll provide more information at a later date on how we're going to deal with this complaint. But it certainly adds a significant additional level of uncertainty to all of the outcomes facing us."
The announcement of the lawsuit came as a surprise to many others who follow the river closely, including Elizabeth Koebele, who researches water policy at the University of Nevada, Reno.
"To me, it isn't necessarily the kind of lawsuit that we often think about, or we might expect," Koebele said.
Much of the recent chatter about Colorado River lawsuits has been focused on Arizona, and a legal move called a "compact call." Arizona officials have not been shy about their ability to file a lawsuit on those grounds. They teased the details of potential future lawsuits earlier this month, and the state Legislature beefed up a "litigation fund" earlier this year, giving Arizona a total of $9 million to fund legal work surrounding the Colorado River.
Under a compact call, Arizona would essentially be arguing that the four Upper Basin states are violating the law by not sending enough water downstream.
Nevada's lawsuit does something different.
It alleges that the federal government violated procedural laws while drawing up its new plans for managing the river. In short, the lawsuit argues that Interior failed to check certain legally required boxes while writing its new strategy.
Nevada says the federal government had a legal obligation to consider the impact of its cuts on the state's people and economy, and failed to do so.
Koebele said the language of the lawsuit seems to explain that Interior has tried to stay away from addressing big legal questions about the Colorado River system. Nevada, she said, is not satisfied with their attempt to do that.
"Nevada is sort of saying, 'If you're unwilling to address some of those debates, then the solutions that you're putting out aren't necessarily lawful or fair to us,'" Koebele said.
Koebele said the lawsuit is not likely to put big questions about the river's future in front of the Supreme Court, which state negotiators have described as "rolling the dice" and "a folly."
Even so, she said a prolonged battle in lower courts could be a problem for a river system where urgent fixes are needed for record-low reservoirs.
"If [the federal plan] is not a good set of rules and it doesn't fairly treat the actors in the basin, then yes, it should be reconsidered," Koebele said. "But we also probably need to figure out how to take some emergency measures in the short term to keep the system from crashing."
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