Congress will not stand on the sidelines much longer as the drought-riddled Colorado River system careens toward crisis and the states that share its flows remain deadlocked, one of the region’s most powerful Republican senators said Wednesday.
Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee of Utah used a Wednesday hearing as a show of political force on behalf of his state and it’s upstream allies — Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming — ahead of a critical decision point for a river that supplies 40 million people from the cattle ranches of Wyoming to the booming metropolises of Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego.
“Congress will not be a bystander in this process,” Lee warned.
The Trump administration’s Interior Department is preparing to issue a plan for unilaterally managing the shriveled waterway by the end of next month, and appears poised to include sharp delivery cuts to the downstream states of Arizona, California and Nevada along with plans to tap water supplies from smaller reservoirs in upstream states.
