
Trump administration's funding, staff cuts spark concerns over Colorado River
Federal funding freezes and staffing cuts are setting off alarms about the future of the Colorado River, a critical artery that supplies water to some 40 million people in 30 tribes and seven states across the U.S. West, as well as in Mexico.
The Trump administration's efforts to slash the federal budget and workforce coincide with a pivotal point in Colorado River history, as the region's states negotiate the long-term operational guidelines for the 1,450-mile artery. The current interim rules, set in 2007, will expire at the end of 2026.
Policymakers warn that a loss of funds and Bureau of Reclamation employees could disrupt programs important for sustaining the drought-strained river — and complicate the negotiations that will steer its course for years to come.
'The level of uncertainty is greater than it's ever been, and the challenges are greater than they've ever been,' Tom Buschatzke, Arizona's lead Colorado River negotiator, told The Hill.
The Trump administration's day-one pause on certain disbursements from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which earmarked $4 billion for water management in the region, is raising particular concern among stakeholders about the fate of key conservation projects that keep the Colorado River flowing.
Earlier this week, Senate Democrats from the region's Lower Basin states — California, Nevada and Arizona — urged the Department of the Interior to end the freeze, arguing that the disappearance of these funds could endanger the river's water supply.
They expressed particular concern over the future of a conservation program aimed at increasing basin-wide efficiency and 'the Colorado River system's reservoirs from reaching dangerously low levels that threaten water deliveries and power production.'
Two of the same senators, California's Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, then sent another letter on Thursday to the Interior Department, demanding a halt to further workforce cuts to the Bureau of Reclamation — the federal agency that is party to Colorado River operations and negotiations.
They noted that Reclamation is already slated to lose about 100 California employees, or around 10 percent of regional personnel. Emphasizing the constant monitoring required to maintain dams and reservoirs, the lawmakers warned that 'without adequate staffing, the risk of infrastructure failures increases.'
Meanwhile, the negotiations over the river's long-term operations are ongoing. The final structure of the guidelines remains unclear, with the Lower Basin states and their Upper Basin peers — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — at odds over the details. The Biden administration tried to hasten the process by issuing a bullet-point list of five options in late November and a longer version in mid-January, while state-level talks have continued in parallel.
In their initial appeal to the Interior Department, the Senate Democrats stressed the critical role their conservation program has played in shaping past agreements among vying states. Under such an arrangement last year, they explained, the Lower Basin states pledged to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water, with the goal of stabilizing the system until post-2026 guidelines materialized.
For reference, a century-old allocated 7.5 million acre-feet to each basin on an annual basis. The average American household, meanwhile, consumes about 1 acre-foot of water every year.
A cessation in funding, the lawmakers warned, could jeopardize conservation targets, local economies and ecosystems, while also 'undermining future multistate agreements.' Their message followed a similar appeal sent to President Trump by Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), who described current conditions as an 'absolute breaking point.'
The short-term reductions in water usage — the 3 million acre-feet arranged in last year's consensus — are not only large in volume, but they also have significant economic and political impacts, according to Buschatzke, the Arizona negotiator.
Previously, he explained, cuts were typically limited to big consumers like the Central Arizona Project, the massive system that brings water to more populous areas across the state. But if extremely dry conditions were to strike the region, the burden would spread to other Arizonans.
Such curtailments could 'cut into even higher-priority users, like my young farmers,' said Buschatzke, who is also the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
'That's the same thing in other states,' he warned. 'The risk is greater.'
If such drastic effects do come to fruition — and without the compensation that the frozen funds could have provided — future collaboration could become more difficult, according to Buschatzke.
Short-term losses, he added, could also have long-term effects by 'eroding confidence that creative tools like the conservation programs can actually be put into implementation moving forward.'
Of specific concern to Buschatzke was the financial viability of a concept proposed in the post-2026 alternatives, which involves creating 'pools' for water savings within the basin's two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Just how much money would be necessary to create these pools, he explained, remains unclear amid 'a lot of moving parts.'
Responding earlier this week to a query from The Hill about the funding freeze, an Interior Department spokesperson, declined to comment, only noting that that agency's 'policy is to not correspond with members of Congress through the media.'
Amid sporadic cuts and cancellations, the Trump administration's approach to the Colorado River remains elusive. The Bureau of Reclamation last month announced that 'a decision was made to reschedule' a meeting of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group, the body responsible for overseeing downstream flows from the Lake Powell reservoir.
Meanwhile, Anne Castle, a Biden-era appointee to the Upper Colorado River Commission, departed at the behest of the Trump administration a week after inauguration. In her resignation letter, Castle described an 'existential time,' in which stakeholders 'who rely on and care about the river' are working on guidelines 'that will govern our lives and our economies for decades.'
Castle also commended Interior Department public servants for their dedication and professionalism 'despite being vilified by the very administration they serve,' while blasting shifts in employment terms as 'explicitly designed to result in a wave of resignations.'
'This broad brush, unfocused purge in furtherance of the stated goal of liberating large corporations from regulation they do not care for will result in attrition of expertise, damage to the American public, and specifically, a more disordered and chaotic Colorado River system,' she added.
Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, told The Hill that he sees the federal government as playing an important role in Western water in general. In the Colorado River basin, he explained, this means providing money, setting environmental regulations, and administering projects and interstate agreements.
At the same time, however, Lund stressed that 'almost all decisions in this basin are at local and regional levels, plus state water rights and some tribal rights.'
As far as President Trump's rationale behind the $4 billion pause is concerned, Lund reasoned that 'this could fit as part of his widespread freezes on funding, some or many of which will likely be reversed or altered over time as they see fit.' Alternatively, he suggested that Trump could be 'collecting points of leverage on parties in the basin for later negotiations.'
'Money not yet spent is always a potentially useful lever. But it is unclear what he really wants,' Lund said.
Buschatzke, meanwhile, offered some optimism in that most of the federal employees involved in the Colorado River's post-2026 environmental review process were 'still in their jobs.'
'In the broader scheme of things, there are many Reclamation people that we rely on,' he said, referring to experts such as 'modeling gurus' and administrative contractors.
'All those people fit together in a way that enables us to get our collective work done,' Buschatzke added. 'How much of that is going to be impacted, I don't think anyone can tell you, and I certainly can't.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Washington Post
24 minutes ago
- Washington Post
‘Come and get me': Gavin Newsom has entered the meme war
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has found himself in the center of the internet's spotlight after squaring off with President Donald Trump on social media over the deployment of military troops to counter protesters in Los Angeles. While police deployed tear gas and shot at protesters in Los Angeles with rubber bullets on Monday, Newsom shared a screenshot on TikTok of a Washington Post headline reporting that California would sue Trump over the National Guard's presence, paired with a trending sound sampled from the movie 'Mean Girls. ' The video was captioned 'We will not stand while Donald Trump illegally federalizes the National Guard' and was liked more than 255,000 times.

Associated Press
25 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Judge tosses lawsuit over Trump's firing of US African Development Foundation board members
A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit over President Donald Trump's dismantling of a U.S. federal agency that invests in African small businesses. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., dismissed the case on Tuesday, finding that Trump was acting within his legal authority when he fired the U.S. African Development Foundation's board members in February. In March, the same judge ruled that the administration's removal of most grant money and staff from the congressionally created agency was also legal, as long as the agency was maintained at the minimum level required by law. USADF was created as an independent agency in 1980, and its board members must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2023, Congress allocated $46 million to the agency to invest in small agricultural and energy infrastructure projects and other economic development initiatives in 22 African countries. On Feb. 19, Trump issued an executive order that said USADF, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Inter-American Foundation and the Presidio Trust should be scaled back to the minimum presence required by law. At the time, USADF had five of its seven board seats filled. A few days later, an administration official told Ward Brehm that he was fired, and emails were sent to the other board members notifying them that they had also been terminated. Those emails were never received, however, because they were sent to the wrong email addresses. The four board members, believing they still held their posts because they had not been given notice, met in March and passed a resolution appointing Brehm as the president of the board. But Trump had already appointed Pete Marocco as the new chairman of what the administration believed to now be a board of one. Since then, both men have claimed to be the president of the agency, and Brehm filed the lawsuit March 6. Leon said that even though they didn't receive the emails, the four board members were effectively terminated in February, and so they didn't have the authority to appoint Brehm to lead the board. An attorney for Brehm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Another lawsuit over the dismantling of the agency is still pending before the same judge. In that case, two USADF staffers and a consulting firm based in Zambia that works closely with USADF contend that the Trump administration's efforts to deeply scale back the agency wrongly usurps Congress' powers. They also say Marocco was unlawfully appointed to the board, in part because he was never confirmed by the Senate as required. Leon's ruling in Brehm's case did not address whether the Trump administration had the power to install Marocco as board chair on a temporary basis.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Acting NJ U.S. Attorney Alina Habba says Rep. LaMonica McIver indicted
A grand jury indicted U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver on charges related to an incident at Delaney Hall in Newark last month, according to a social media post made by acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba. McIver was at Delaney Hall with U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez to "inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall." All three are Democrats. The congresswoman said in a statement the 'facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation. 'This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump's administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do,' McIver said. 'But it won't work — I will not be intimidated. The facts are on our side, I will be entering a plea of not guilty, I'm grateful for the support of my community, and I look forward to my day in court.' Habba said the federal grand jury 'returned a three-count indictment' against McIver for 'forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers.' 'It is my constitutional obligation as the chief federal law enforcement officer for New Jersey to ensure that our federal partners are protected when executing their duties,' she said. 'While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve.' The three counts have a maximum penalty of eight years for count one, an additional maximum penalty of eight years for count two and a maximum penalty of one year for count three. Earlier: NJ Rep. LaMonica McIver makes court appearance for assault charges in Newark ICE incident McIver said in a statement on May 19 she and her colleagues were "fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short." "Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka," she said. "The charges against me are purely political -- they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight." Newark Mayor Ras Baraka had been arrested at Delaney Hall for trespassing but the charges have since been dropped. He is suing Habba for 'false arrest and malicious prosecution.' McIver's lawyer, Paul Fishman, served as U.S. Attorney in New Jersey during the Obama administration. He said in May the "decision to charge Congresswoman McIver is spectacularly inappropriate." "She went to Delaney Hall to do her job. As a member of Congress, she has the right and responsibility to see how ICE is treating detainees," Fishman said. "Rather than facilitating that inspection, ICE agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos. This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE's behavior to Congresswoman McIver. In the courtroom, facts — not headlines — will matter." Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@ This article originally appeared on NJ U.S. Attorney Alina Habba: Rep. LaMonica McIver indicted