Colorado River Water Is Too Cheap, Particularly for Agricultural Users

Colorado River water is not priced at rates that accurately reflect its scarcity, incentivizing inefficiency and overconsumption as climate change and overuse threaten the vital waterway for 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of agricultural land across the Western United States and northwestern Mexico.

That’s the takeaway from a new report on water pricing in the Lower Colorado River Basin States—Arizona, California and Nevada—from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The researchers found that nearly a quarter of all water diverted from the river to agricultural irrigation districts in those three states is obtained for zero dollars from the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the river’s operations. Municipal water distric