Brandon Loomis

speaker

112 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 5 Aug

Brandon Loomis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Excerpt · Colorado River cuts could reach far beyond the West · 5 Aug 2026 podcast

So if we have another year like that,

or two then within two years you can imagine that we'll be in for worse and this framework allows for a cutback of twice that much which would be really painful so help me understand how the cuts would be divided between arizona california and nevada if we assume that what we call the lower basin plan those three states are the lower base and if their offer is what the federal government imposes for the first two years

The bulk of it would go to Arizona, 760,000 acre feet per year.

California would get 440,000 acre feet per year.

And Nevada, I think 50,000 acre feet.

And it's, you know, California has the biggest share of the river.

Arizona's share, if times were good, would be 2.8 million acre feet.

So giving up 760,000 is substantial, although we've already, under emergency measures, been giving up more than 500,000.

Nevada's is very small.

Their share of the river is quite small, although very important because it's essentially the only water supply for Las Vegas.

You know, it's a long story and it goes back to conflict between those two states, which they've kind of become allies in this battle in the last several years because they both recognize that if Lake Mead dries up and we can't get any water out of it, we're both out of luck.

But the history is that, as I said, California was entitled to, in the good days, 4.4 million acre feet, Arizona, 2.8 million acre feet.

But we also have this, what they call a legal priority within the states.

And that basically means that the first people who use the water, they get to use that water with a higher priority.

So if you were first in line to use the water, then in bad times, you're going to be the last one to be cut off.

So we have a system in Arizona, a canal system called the Central Arizona Project, which has been delivering water from the river, pumping it across the desert to Phoenix and to Tucson for some decades now.

But when it was approved back in the late 1960s, it needed congressional authorization and financing.

And part of that compromise was that Arizona had to accept a lower priority for that portion of the water.

So California basically could sit back, not take any cuts, and that canal could go dry.

So that's why Arizona now has to take the biggest cuts first.

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