Trump's Funding Freeze And The Fate Of The Colorado River
For years, the fate of the Colorado River has been a point of contention amongst lawmakers and environmentalists. Now, amid the Trump administration’s flurry of new regulations, the river’s future is further up for debate.
After years of drought and decreasing system storage, the Colorado River is currently operating under the 2007 Interim Guidelines, which will expire in 2026. The river, a critical water source for 40 million people, still finds its major reservoirs at “historically low levels.”
In the midst of new regulations and spending cuts coming down from Trump since his inauguration, some policymakers are concerned that the Colorado River will be caught in the crossfire. Arizona’s lead Colorado negotiator, Tom Buschatzke, told The Hill, “The level of uncertainty is greater than it’s ever been, and the challenges are greater than they’ve ever been.”
Particularly concerning to some protecting the Colorado River is the Trump administration’s pause on some disbursements from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which designated $4 billion for water management in the region.
But despite the uncertainty, some people are hopeful that these actions won’t directly negate all the work that’s been done to restore the Colorado River.
Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, emphasized to The Hill that “almost all decisions in this basin are at local and regional levels, plus state water rights and some tribal rights.”
Buschatzke also holds on to some optimism, finding reassurance in the fact that “most of the federal employees involved in the Colorado River’s post-2026 environmental review process were ‘still in their jobs,’” per The Hill.
Whether the administration’s actions will help or hurt the Colorado River, known as “the beating heart of the American Southwest,” remains to be seen.