Officials need to plan for bad — but not quite the worst — scenarios when it comes to the Colorado River Basin and the water supply for 40 million people, experts say.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced Friday another year of water cuts in Arizona and Nevada, based on releases from Lake Mead in Nevada and Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border. The report does not call for cuts from California, the third Lower Basin state.

In upriver states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — experts are watching reservoir releases with water supplies, environmental needs and the potential of forced water cuts in mind.

“The reservoirs, the big ones Powell and Mead, are not only not going to recover, but they’re actually going to decline to pretty scary elevation levels,” John Berggren, a regiona

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